Windows 8 Has Scaling Issues On High-PPI Displays

crookedvulture writes "High-PPI displays are becoming increasingly popular on tablets and notebooks, but Windows 8 may not be ready for them. On a 13" notebook display with a 1080p resolution, the RTM version of Win8 scales up some desktop UI elements nicely. However, there are serious issues with Metro, which produces tiles and text that are either too small or too large depending on the PPI setting used. That setting, by the way, is a simple on/off switch that tells the OS to 'make everything bigger.' Web browsing is particularly problematic, with Internet Explorer 10 introducing ugly rendering artifacts when scaling pages in both Metro and desktop modes. Clearly, there's work to be done on the OS side to properly support higher pixel densities."

Comments

Device Independence?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

What? Haven't figured this one out, Ballmer?

Bet it renders just fine on the "Surface" tablets.

Re:Device Independence?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. THey think PPI is when I go peepee in your eye.

Re:Device Independence?

[mystikkman]

Thanks for the typical obligatory karma whoring post full of snark.

Meanwhile, they did figure it out to the extent it can be.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx

Meanwhile, Apple has similar issues with their retina display:

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

Meanwhile, let the anti-MS bashfest continue.

Re:Device Independence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your first link proves that MS has thought about this issue a great deal. Kudos to them. It doesn't prove they got it right.

Re:Device Independence?

[Reverand Dave]

Man, don't you know that when MS does it, it's a colossal fuck up, but when Apple does it, it's a feature? I understand it's hard to make the distinction sometimes.

Re:Device Independence?

[PRMan]

What's strange is: my work just bought me an Asus Zenbook Prime and I'm running 150% on it (I nuked the OS to get rid of the crapware and to be able to log on to the domain, so I've actually never seen it stock). I can scale web pages easily by doing a pinch-zoom on the touchpad and they look terrific, including images. (I mean, sure, the images ARE scaled up, which never looks 100% perfect, but it's just not that noticeable, and doesn't look anything the article.)

What they may be noticing is ASUS Splendid Video Enhancement Technology which is turned on by default (I'm told, I didn't install it after reading that people were trying frantically to get rid of it). Basically, it's supposed to "fix" your graphics so they look "more lifelike". But I've seen cases where people report that web graphics were getting very blurred by it, exactly like what the article is showing.

After using 150% and browser scaling for the past week, I've been pleasantly surprised by just how "arrived" high-DPI scaling was in Windows 7. I really didn't think it would work, but it's terrific so far, with ultra-readable text that's incredibly easy on the eyes and looks just as good as Apple's Retina displays.

Re:Device Independence?

[Joce640k]

I thought the reason they changed to flat squares was so it would scale properly. Guess I was wrong. Egg meet face.

Re:Device Independence?

[nschubach]

Meanwhile, let the anti-MS bashfest continue.

You'd think that a company with billions of dollars in revenue could test the product or at least re-use some old perfectly functional scaling code in prior products that performed the same task. /snark

Re:Device Independence?

[Pieroxy]

Your first link is a very interesting link, which kind of proves that MS doesn't understand dpi since they insist on a "minimum resolution" instead of a "minimum size" for screens for the Metro UI. Way off the point.

Both links on the Apple side of the story, however, are so stupid I have to assume you haven't even had a look at them. Basically, both complain that the UI elements have the same size on the MacBook Retina than on a normal MacBook !!! Right from your second link: "This configuration should offer amazing detail but you don’t actually get any more desktop space". Well, guess what: That was the point, very precisely.

Overall you just proved that MS doesn't know what they are doing and Apple does. Nice way to illustrate an anti MS bashfest. Wait... wasn't that your intent?

Re:Device Independence?

[ericloewe]

You'd think that the most valuable company in the world, with billions of dollars just sitting in the bank and a(n increasingly unwarranted) reputation for polished products, could test the product or at least quickly develop a decent solution.

Re:Device Independence?

[mcmonkey]

Meanwhile, Apple has similar issues with their retina display:

Completely off topic, but I think Apple has another issue with their retina display--the retina is used for seeing images, not displaying them. "Retina display" makes as much sense as a tympanic speaker, jumbo shrimp, or Microsoft quality control (zing!).

But seriously, a new camera with a retina detector would make sense, like a tympanic microphone.

At one time Apple was about producing innovative products, but now it's just about shiny boxes and fancy names. All packaging, no substance. /ob /. meme: In Soviet Apple, display watches you!

Re:Device Independence?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a key catch here you seem to be missing:

The macsales link points out a common issue with any high-DPI screen: What happens when you put a low-DPI image on one. This is a content issue. It doesn't imply that Apple's scaling is inaccurate.

The robertotoole link is lamenting the fact that this high-DPI screen isn't letting him use it in 1:1 mode. Fair enough, but again says nothing about Apple's scaling being inaccurate, but rather the lack of a built-in 1:1 mode. Interestingly though, an app can display things in 1:1 mode within a high-DPI UI. A photo editor app would work well in such a mode.

The point of this article is this: Microsoft's scaling isn't just imperfect, but inaccurate. Inaccurate display is a real problem when doing web design, image work and even some forms of type/layout work. The comparison to Apple's scaling is to point out that while it isn't perfect (how can it be when scaling smaller things up?), it maintains accuracy.

Re:Device Independence?

[recoiledsnake]

Meanwhile, let the anti-MS bashfest continue.

You'd think that a company with billions of dollars in revenue could test the product or at least re-use some old perfectly functional scaling code in prior products that performed the same task. /snark

Wait, are you talking about Apple?

After all, Apple has tens of billions more cash than Microsoft, which according to Slashdot wisdom, is dying.

Re:Device Independence?

[Samantha Wright]

The retina display scales everything by 200%, which means that a grid of one-pixel lines will at least be displayed evenly even with bilinear filtering. In TFA, they scaled to 125%, causing (predictably) this to mess up in IE. If anything I'd blame the user, although the argument can be made that IE should use a nicer scaling algorithm.

Re:Device Independence?

[SCPRedMage]

What I found interesting was that the article mentions that they noticed no difference on the Start screen at different DPI settings. I've been spending a lot of time of time in Visual Studio's Simulator lately, and it definitely displays a 10.1" 1920x1080 simulated screen differently than a 23" 1920x1080 screen. Meanwhile, 10.1" 1366x768 screen looks very similar to that 10.1" 1920x1080 screen.

Re:Device Independence?

[recoiledsnake]

Your first link is a very interesting link, which kind of proves that MS doesn't understand dpi since they insist on a "minimum resolution" instead of a "minimum size" for screens for the Metro UI. Way off the point.

What do you mean by "minimum size"? Like 7 inches wide? So you want MS to proclaim that all Metro apps are supposed to support a minimum of 7" width regardless of the resolution? So does that mean the apps must support a device with 320x240 resolution?

Both links on the Apple side of the story, however, are so stupid I have to assume you haven't even had a look at them. Basically, both complain that the UI elements have the same size on the MacBook Retina than on a normal MacBook !!!

They're no more stupid than TFA, which I suggest you read, and which complains about the same problem with scaling up graphics on the web.

Re:Device Independence?

[Tough Love]

Meanwhile, Apple has similar issues with their retina display

I agree. Microsoft and Apple both forgot how to innovate and only know how to litigate.

Re:Device Independence?

[Nemyst]

So hold on, super-high resolution displays should only be used so that the rounded corners are more rounded?

Thanks, but no thanks. The entire point of higher resolution displays is displaying more information on the same space. Apple's way of just doubling the resolution for each length is good for backwards compatibility, but it shouldn't be the standard for new applications: they should be designed to take advantage of the high resolution displays, and I don't just mean better text rendering.

Re:Device Independence?

[Pieroxy]

Your first link is a very interesting link, which kind of proves that MS doesn't understand dpi since they insist on a "minimum resolution" instead of a "minimum size" for screens for the Metro UI. Way off the point.

What do you mean by "minimum size"? Like 7 inches wide? So you want MS to proclaim that all Metro apps are supposed to support a minimum of 7" width regardless of the resolution? So does that mean the apps must support a device with 320x240 resolution?

Well... everyone's talking about resolution independent interface, and that's really what it should be about. Of course, it makes no sense. So there is the Apple approach that take shortcuts that work well, and the MS approach which tries to accommodate for every fucking screen on the planet. Guess who's more efficient? Guess who will end up with an average interface that will work so-so on most configs but will look clunky on not so common screens. Interestingly that's the very same approach that did lead them to the pre-ipad tablets. Talk about learning about one's mistake.

Both links on the Apple side of the story, however, are so stupid I have to assume you haven't even had a look at them. Basically, both complain that the UI elements have the same size on the MacBook Retina than on a normal MacBook !!!

They're no more stupid than TFA, which I suggest you read, and which complains about the same problem with scaling up graphics on the web.

I was not comparing to TFA. I was just mentioning that apart from asserting that their author is utterly clueless, they pretty much serve no purpose.

Re:Device Independence?

[Pieroxy]

On a retina display you have the exact same real estate than on a regular (equivalent) display. You just have the ability to have more precise drawings, that's all.

How the developer want to use it is really the developer concern. Apple doesn't dictate anything in this regard.

However, just having the same per-pixel ratio for apps would have rendered pretty much everything useless. Apple's approach (pixel doubling) was just the sensible one.

But to be honest, for most applications, retina means sharper display and nothing more.

Re:Device Independence?

[recoiledsnake]

Well... everyone's talking about resolution independent interface, and that's really what it should be about. Of course, it makes no sense.

So when you claimed MS doesn't understand DPI because they insist on a minimum resolution instead of a minimum size you had no fricking clue about what you were talking about(perhaps you don't understand DPI) and you now say it makes no sense to have a minimum size instead of minimum resolution? That's quite a flipflop between your two posts.

So there is the Apple approach that take shortcuts that work well, and the MS approach which tries to accommodate for every fucking screen on the planet. Guess who's more efficient? Guess who will end up with an average interface that will work so-so on most configs but will look clunky on not so common screens. Interestingly that's the very same approach that did lead them to the pre-ipad tablets. Talk about learning about one's mistake.

Perhaps you should learn about the late 80s and early 90s, when MS with the help of Dell, Compaq, HP etc. etc. and the variety of hardware and screens you're now decrying absolutely crushed Apple and it's limited hardware support to near death. Talk about learning from about one's mistake!

I was not comparing to TFA. I was just mentioning that apart from asserting that their author is utterly clueless, they pretty much serve no purpose.

I make a similar assertion about TFA.

Re:Device Independence?

[cheater512]

They should all follow KDE's lead with this issue.

SVG display elements. Anything can be scaled to any resolution and PPI without any issues.
Such a simple solution.

Re:Device Independence?

[narcc]

All the other problems with SVG aside, using vector images only partially solves one problem with scaling. It won't help you at all when the aspect ratio changes.

Re:Device Independence?

[exomondo]

So there is the Apple approach that take shortcuts that work well, and the MS approach which tries to accommodate for every fucking screen on the planet.

That's the advantage of being vertically integrated, you control the hardware and the software.

Re:Device Independence?

[aaron552]

I'd be surprised it Metro UI elements weren't largely XAML.

Re:Device Independence?

[GigaplexNZ]

Luckily you have the option to get more real estate with the Retina instead if you wish.

Re:Device Independence?

[Pieroxy]

Apple crushed itself near death with it's own CEO, Microsoft just happened to be there at the time.

Re:Device Independence?

[LocalH]

You're thinking old-school, and thus are part of the problem. The point of high-DPI displays isn't to have more screen real estate or to display more information in the same space, it's to have sharper text and image display at a usable size. Since this is a transition period, images are going to be worse off than text. I'm sick and tired of displays that are approximately 100dpi or so (given the average 17" laptop display). Display technology has lagged behind every other improvement in technology over the last 15 years. Thank God there's finally a push for higher pixel density. The best of both worlds will be when image and video editing apps make use of the higher resolution while still displaying UI at a reasonable size. Ever wonder why a lot of people have run LCD displays at non-native resolutions? Because without resolution independence, high-res displays present UI and text that is way too small for them to read. Proper resolution independence will allow people to run their displays at native, without worrying about being able to read what's on the screen.

As with anything, early adopters tend to get burnt or otherwise are dissatisfied with the performance. Apple does happen to have a leg up here, with their experience on the iPhone/iPod touch 4. The fact that Apple uses integer ratios for their screens (even on the Macbook Pro where the resolution can be adjusted, the backend renders at an integer ratio) is a big plus as it means that what we see in these screenshots won't happen. I may not like some of Apple's business practices, but they completely win when it comes to presentation and aesthetics. Microsoft would do well to learn some lessons from them.

Re:Device Independence?

[LocalH]

Completely off topic, but I think Apple has another issue with their retina display--the retina is used for seeing images, not displaying them. "Retina display" makes as much sense as a tympanic speaker, jumbo shrimp, or Microsoft quality control (zing!).

You're confusing branding with technical specs. Apple merely calls it a "Retina Display" because at an average viewing distance for most people, the pixels are not discernable. Sure, there are people who will still be able to see the pixels. There will also be people who will get two inches from the screen and say "I can see the pixels durr hurr". I have been using an iPod touch 4th gen for quite a while now and think it's sad that the highest resolution display in my house is on a portable device. I can't wait until displays with 200-300 ppi are commonplace.

To be fair, though, even a large-screen 1080p device is a "Retina Display", since most people wouldn't be able to discern individual pixels from across the room. I can't, and I can see many artifacts in video (analog and digital) that most people gloss over.

Re:Device Independence?

[Ash-Fox]

Doesn't work on my iPad.

Re:Device Independence?

[Dalar_ca]

Not just dying, dead! Right? Honestly though, it doesn't matter how much money you have, you can't just launch a competitor to Google Maps, with ten years plus of experience and probably millions of labour hours of work and expect it to be just as good. They should have just had the Apple app as an installable alternative until they got all the feedback they needed to be ready for primetime. Lesson is, all the money in the world can't buy you more time.

Re:Device Independence?

[mcmonkey]

Completely off topic, but I think Apple has another issue with their retina display--the retina is used for seeing images, not displaying them. "Retina display" makes as much sense as a tympanic speaker, jumbo shrimp, or Microsoft quality control (zing!).

You're confusing branding with technical specs.

No, I'm confusing marketing with the English language. I'm aware of the difference. The issue is my brain spends most of it's time working in English. In English, "retina display" only makes sense if it's a display of an image of a retina, a piece of hardware that both detects and displays images--acts as both a retina and a display, or some cybernetic technology that interfaces directly with the retina.

As far as I am aware, Apple's devices do none of these things. A screen with a high quality picture or small pixels does not match the English definition of "retina display."

Apple is certainly free to use "Retina Display" in their marketing-speak. I'm sure they've accepted that the few of us who still operate in "English mode" more than "marketing-speak mode" are going to be annoyed every time we hear it. Obviously many people have no problem this abuse of the language. I'm sure zombie Steve Jobs is not losing his appetite for brains just because I'm not running out to buy the latest iShiny.

Wha...?

[DontBlameCanada]

Did the MS product mgmt, engineering and test orgs not think to try this out on a standard desktop machine with the high res monitors pretty much everyone uses these days? Incomprehensible!

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incomprehensible: I'm not sure if you're trolling, or just have the typical slashdot IQ.

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

1080p is just 1920x1080 - that part almost certainly works fine. It's that pixel density has, for years, been within a fairly narrow range (22-27 inch displays all maxing out at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080). The problem is pixel density is now increasing, think apple retina displays, and that's a problem most of us on the software side were never expecting and aren't used to having to cope with. At least not for desktops/laptops (phones is another matter because they are a rapidly maturing product used in a completely different way).

Besides that, different groups will have people who are more or less aware of this problem and trying to deal with it. Microsoft *should* have testing labs for all of these different things, and feedback about a very uneven experience should have moved up and down the chain. But as someone who writes games for a living, most of the stuff I have done in the last 5 or 6 years would look like shit on a 13 inch display at 1920x1080. Everything would be too small unless the screen is 10cm from your face. That's the catch here, we've designed for a single pixel to take up a certain fraction of your personal field of view, suddenly higher density displays come along, to which we initially ask, why, was there something wrong with the old pixel densities? Is this technology actually better or is it just going to be a method to sell expensive video cards. These new displays people are physically positioning the way their old setups were, but well, all of the assumptions about field of view get tossed.

Re:Wha...?

[ottothecow]

Yeah, is there any OS that handles this quite right?

I recently bought one of those korean ebay 2560x1440 27" displays and it looks great...but not *everything* looks great on it. Win7 UI elements scale pretty well with the built in settings, but if you turn off "Use XP compatible scaling" (or similar), applications start doing really stupid things. I believe that what they do with any application that does not report it is dpi-scaling-aware (and unfortunately, just because it says it is, doesn't mean it actually is) is that it renders the app on an off screen framebuffer and then literally just zooms the image and drops it onto your desktop.

For image content, this is no different than what a browser does when you hit ctrl-+ a few times, but it makes all text look awful since it just zooms the image of the text instead of rendering a larger font size.

I know that this is mostly the fault of 3rd party developers (which is why it occurs on other OSes as well) but maybe if Windows defaulted to ugly mode (instead of XP compatability mode which just leaves everything really small), then app developers would be forced to fix these issues. It is sort of like the iphone vs android screen size issues that are cropping up on the iphone 5...android developers have always had to develop for wildy varying screen DPI (as well as size) while apple let them sit with guaranteed DPI (and then just did 4x for retina) which means they can't just adjust the screen resolution without making all existing apps really ugly.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. There is something VERY wrong with old pixel densities.
Aside from the idea that I had a 1600x1200 display TWENTY YEARS AGO and since then WE'VE GONE BACKWARDS, I can offer a lot of very good reasons.

1. Clearer pictures. My phone can snap images many times larger than the effective res of my monitor. My monitor should not be the bottleneck.

2. Font smoothing - Subpixel rendering is an ugly hack and makes things look like garbage (If it looks good to you, you need glasses. Yes. You do.) You really need "retina" level pixel densities before font smoothing should even be considered.

3. Truely scalable UIs - Until you reach a certain pixel density you can't scale small UI elements without looking like complete garbage. Think about it. If you have pixels many times smaller than you can see, then your UI should scale to any aspect ratio or any size and still look ok.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to think that most software devs are like me, and did expect pixel density to increase, as it has steadily since the PC was first created. Someone would have to be looking at only the past few years, when cheap 1080p panels dominated the display market, to not see the trend.

Re:Wha...?

[JDG1980]

That's the catch here, we've designed for a single pixel to take up a certain fraction of your personal field of view, suddenly higher density displays come along, to which we initially ask, why, was there something wrong with the old pixel densities?

Yes, there was. The existing low-density displays require ugly (and often patented) hacks like hinting and subpixel rendering to display fonts at normal point sizes. When the pixel density is increased enough, this all becomes unnecessary. And it looks a lot better when it's done right. Have you ever tried using the new iPad? To me, it was a revelation: with a web page or PDF fully zoomed out, the letters were still incredibly sharp and clear, with none of the usual "cloudiness" that results from standard anti-aliasing techniques.

ClearType on Windows is very nice, but it's still just a hack compared to real high-DPI display. I am looking forward to cheap 4K TVs in smaller sizes (32" or so) so that I can use one of them as a desktop monitor. We've been held back by repurposed 1080p HDTV panels for too long.

Re:Wha...?

[Pieroxy]

Yeah, is there any OS that handles this quite right?

iOS and OSX. And that's all. Of course, you get the whole Apple package in which there might be elements you dislike.

Re:Wha...?

[LodCrappo]

sorry, no.

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

etc...

Hence the question "is there any OS that handles this quite right?". Because we all know about iStuff, and we all know it doesn't.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your links prove that that iOS and OSX handle high dpi perfectly fine.

Re:Wha...?

[vux984]

iOS and OSX. And that's all. Of course, you get the whole Apple package in which there might be elements you dislike.

Nope. Not at all. OSX and ios suck at it just as bad as windows.

Apple has just been careful to hide the problem by not shipping any hardware that exposes it. Their own high-dpi displays were carefully chosen to be exact multiples of the traditional resolution, so that they could scale things with pixel doubling.

But as soon as you get outside of that little box, and ask OSX to do 125% or 150% scaling of pretty much anything and you get the same mess.

Go ahead, hook up your mac to a 13" 1080p screen and try browsing the web on it... everything that this article complains about with windows 8 is present in osx.

Re:Wha...?

[aristotle-dude]

sorry, no.

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

etc...

Hence the question "is there any OS that handles this quite right?". Because we all know about iStuff, and we all know it doesn't.

Sorry but the OS does handling it properly but some websites and third party apps have not been updated to handle a higher DPI mode.

Re:Wha...?

[Pieroxy]

Did you even read those links? For god's sake, they prove MY point !

Re:Wha...?

[Pieroxy]

They chose to build their own hardware specifically so that they don't have to solve unsolvable problems. To me, it looks like they are the smart one in this fight.

But sure, blame it on Apple for taking a highly risky path to solve important problems hardware wise because it's so much simpler.

In the meantime I am entertained to see MS struggle to tackle a problem clearly too big for them. Windows 8 will soon be there with so many stupid design decisions in it, like, I don't know, having 4 different modes for their browser. As if testing IE7, IE8 and IE9 wasn't enough, we'll now have to add IE10 Desktop, IE10 Metro, IE10 Webview, IE10 WebviewMetro and IE10MicrosoftIsFullOfShitICantTakeItAnymoreHowCanAnyCompanyBeSoStupid

But please, give them your money. Support the good fight.

Re:Wha...?

[AmiMoJo]

The fix is to do what Apple did and simply double the resolution. All your scaling problems go away, just double every pixel of images and render vector stuff like fonts at full res.

I hope we get 4k displays soon. I would prefer 4k over Apple's intermediate Retina resolution because it is only an effective 1440 pixels wide. 4k gives you an effective 1920 pixels, the same as what I have now but sharper. Panasonic do a 20" 4k display and a few manufacturers have demoed 24/27" monitors, but they are still in the small car price range.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

1080p is just 1920x1080 - that part almost certainly works fine. It's that pixel density has, for years, been within a fairly narrow range (22-27 inch displays all maxing out at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080). The problem is pixel density is now increasing, think apple retina displays, and that's a problem most of us on the software side were never expecting and aren't used to having to cope with. At least not for desktops/laptops (phones is another matter because they are a rapidly maturing product used in a completely different way).

Dot pitch and allowable frequencies improved regularly on CRTs through the '80s and early '90s; LCDs came in about the time it tapered off, so there wasn't much change on the conusumer side, but the legendary T221 workstation LCD was introduced over a decade ago. I'm not saying software people in general did see the eventual advent of 200PPI desktop screens coming, but if they didn't, it was due to remarkably shortsightedness. I suspect most of them, at least in relevant sectors (it's more an OS and office apps thing than gaming), knew it was coming, but it wasn't coming now, and you know how the release cycle is -- there's plenty of stuff that matters now to be dealt with, so nonessential future-proofing gets put off till the next version.

Re:Wha...?

[vux984]

They chose to build their own hardware specifically so that they don't have to solve unsolvable problems.

They did no such thing. If grandma buys a mid-size imac, can't see it well enough, and scales it 30% it still looks like crap. Apple can't control what the customer is going to do anymore than Microsoft can.

If someone buys a 1080p 13" display designed to show a lot of content in a really small space, then it works great. If the user (or idiot reviewer in this case) decides he wants the text 30% bigger then its going to look like crap.

Your eyes can't quite make out the web on your ipad? Want it 30% bigger? Its going to look like crap.

Doesn't matter what OS it is. If the user steps outside the native resolution, it looks like crap.

Apple's little trick with the retina display is a clumsy hack. If you buy a retina macbook and happen to like it just as it is then your golden... new apps designed for it work, old apps designed for 1/4 the screen are pixel doubled to work as well.

But what if you don't happen to like it exactly as it is. What if you've got good eyesight and bought a retina display to make real use of some of that extra pixel space instead of just having smoother fonts at the same size you had on the old one? Scale it down? 30% to give you some more space... looks like crap.

What if your older and the default on the retina display is too small for you... scale it up 30% to read it better. Looks like crap.

Apple didn't "solve" the problem through hardware. The problem is unsolved and unsolvable. The only difference is that this particular reviewer didn't happen to try scaling things up by 30% on a Mac when he made his "discovery" that scaling off native pixel resolution looks like crap.

Re:Wha...?

[tlhIngan]

Apple has just been careful to hide the problem by not shipping any hardware that exposes it. Their own high-dpi displays were carefully chosen to be exact multiples of the traditional resolution, so that they could scale things with pixel doubling.

But as soon as you get outside of that little box, and ask OSX to do 125% or 150% scaling of pretty much anything and you get the same mess.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

Have you seen the Retina MacBook Pro running at a scaled mode? You have a variety of settings - from the 2x 1440x900 mode to the decidedly non-integral 1920x1200 mode.

And 1920x1200 is, despite not being a nice integral factor of the native resolutoin, looks practically native. As in, no scaling artifacts.

What happens is that internally, OS X creates a double height frame buffer - 3840x2400, renders to that "retina style" 2x mode, then runs a scaler (custom-designed by Apple so both the 650M and Intel 4000 scale it identically) to bring it back down to 2880x1800. And the results are DAMN good - you can't tell, other than the fact that the GPU is now too underpowered to do 60fps.

And this is 150% scaling (1920x1200 -> 2880x1800), and looks awesome - you definitely don't get the "non-native resolution" crap you see on other displays.

OTOH, the low end mode, I think there's one where it runs at something like 1366x768 or so. It looks awful because even in 2x mode, the virtual framebuffer is smaller than the screen resolution, leading to the hardware having to scale the image up again.

But going from logical 1440x900 to 1920x1200 on the same 2880x1800 panel? Looks damn nice for a 150% scale up.

Re:Wha...?

[vux984]

It depends what you are looking at. You mention 60fps which suggests games, and i agree they work out pretty good.

The web doesn't tend to do nearly as well. Various web-widgets and icons which are low resolution to start with simply don't survive scaling well. Those little shopping carts, and thumbups, and stars, and sites with line art/borders... some of the lines get doubled to 2 pixels which look to thick, even with gray scaling and anti-aliasing etc.

And the web, even today, is still full of gif buttons with and text-as-gif instead of as a font. These still get mangled by scaling.

Applications with toolbar icons, and other little graphical widgets also suffer.

Al that said, don't get me wrong, the retina display is a good screen; and the higher native resolution you have to work with the better the scaling results will be. 30% scaling on 2880x1800 panel is going to be better than 30% scaling on a 1980x1020 panel no matter what.

Re:Wha...?

[Nerdfest]

Apple can't control what the customer is going to do anymore than Microsoft can.

You really haven't been paying attention.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually developers that make software for OS X have been warned about high resolution displays for years.

Two versions of OS X ago they even included tools in Xcode to emulate high resolution displays, so that you can test your application when it is scaled bigger. This was important so you can get your widgets to draw the line in the centre of a pixel on the screen, because otherwise a line would occupy two pixels and anti-aliazing would make it greyish. They of course has functions to map your application internal pixels to screen pixels for this.

Apple wanted to go for completely resolution independence, which could work with their API, but I am guessing that not many developers made the step to change their applications to draw in the right way. Therefor the pixel doubling gave them a way out, all the vector graphics still draws perfectly and all the rest is scaled by doubling the pixels.

In any case there has been a lot of pushing toward resolution independence, being pretty much the main topics on their developer conferance topics for two years in a row (and that was several years ago). A company like Microsoft should have picked up on this and expect Apple to start working toward their goal of high resolution displays, and expect computer manufacturers to following what Apple is doing. Like the manufacturers have always done.

Re:Wha...?

[vux984]

Lol, touche

(stupid slashdot can't even handle touché properly)

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

What 1600x1200 display did you have 20 years ago? A 20 inch CRT? That's roughly the same pixel density as a 22inch 1920x1200 or 1920x1080. Aspect ratios screw things up a bit. Also, part of making shit cheaper has been making it lower quality, that's a separate problem.

In 1992 we were still looking at 15 inch 1280 x1024 displays, which is about the same as today, give or take an aspect ratio.

To your specific points

1. Clearer pictures. My phone can snap images many times larger than the effective res of my monitor. My monitor should not be the bottleneck.

And? How well can you tell the difference for most tasks? If you quadrupole the number of pixels you roughly quadrupole the amount of memory and processing power needed to display stuff on it. Is that actually worth while?

Pixel densities where chosen way back in the 90's precisely because they were pretty much good enough. Apple's 'retina' display aims to be the point at which there is literally no further benefit from more pixel density, but 'no further benefit' and 'good enough for virtually every task' are not the same thing.

2. Font smoothing - Subpixel rendering is an ugly hack and makes things look like garbage (If it looks good to you, you need glasses. Yes. You do.) You really need "retina" level pixel densities before font smoothing should even be considered.

Do you really need font smoothing? Can I read the text quickly enough without it? yep. And yes, I have glasses. Also, if you have any vision degeneration and can't notice font smoothing what is this getting you?

3. Truely scalable UIs - Until you reach a certain pixel density you can't scale small UI elements without looking like complete garbage. Think about it. If you have pixels many times smaller than you can see, then your UI should scale to any aspect ratio or any size and still look ok.

Huh? Thems some nonsense phrases there. You're right, aliasing and scalability is always a problem with UI's, but the question is whether current pixel densities are inadequate. Why does it matter if my UI can scale neatly at a level I can't see? Oh you want me to zoom in and use more pixels... so wait... what are you talking about?

I think you read a bunch of apple talking points.

Don't get me wrong there is a case for higher res displays, but you need a lot more computing power to supply them, and a 60 inch TV at 1920 by 1080 looks terrible compared to a 24 inch display at the same resolution - but that's the point, you're changing the pixel density a lot. Sure, 'retina' displays etc are slightly better looking, but only slightly, and that's the point. That's why your 1600x1200 display from 20 years ago was good enough - and is still good enough, any more than that generally doesn't justify the cost (in computing power) to run the display.

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

Right, and how much computing power does that take and is it worth it?

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

As someone else pointed out. Pixel densities reached 'good enough' about 20 years ago, and haven't increased since.

Well, that's not the point he was trying to make, but that's the point he made anyway.

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

Have you ever tried using the new iPad?

Yep. I can't fathom why anyone in apple design thought sticking on a high pixel density display was a good idea. It doesn't look appreciably better than a regular display and requires a lot more computing power to drive applications natively. Which is why no one else seriously tried something so stupid in the last 20 years.

Now they're all following along like sheep because apple is doing it, and it certainly makes sense to have standards and so on for larger displays, but there's virtually no benefit for a significant increase in performance cost.

We've been held back by repurposed 1080p HDTV panels for too long.

Sure. Monitors are not TV's. Nor should they be. A 32 inch TV (1920x1080) is a shitty monitor, a 32 inch monitor is supposed to be 2560x1600. A big display needs a higher resolution. But that's a 'TV' problem, not a monitor problem, and if someone is using a monitor as a TV well... that's they're own fault. Sure, you can double the pixel count (from 4 million to 8 million) on a 4k display, so pixels are 40% smaller in each dimension basically (sqrt(2)) but that effect isn't really all that big a deal unless you're like 15 with perfect eyesight. For everyone else it's a waste of money and processing power.

Re:Wha...?

[bertok]

Yep. I can't fathom why anyone in apple design thought sticking on a high pixel density display was a good idea.

Just because you have vision problems and can't appreciate higher DPI doesn't mean the rest of us are similarly limited.

I don't think the iPad 3 is a worthwhile upgrade to my parents, because they're past the age where they can see the difference. Ditto with technologies like 4K HDTV. They just can't see any difference.

I most definitely can.

Re:Wha...?

[exomondo]

iOS and OSX. And that's all. Of course, you get the whole Apple package in which there might be elements you dislike.

Actually OSX doesn't handle it well at all. Sure it's fine on the retina display when they know the screen size and number of pixels but when you plug it into an external display OSX does a terrible job, there is no arbitrary scaling, they are in no better position than Microsoft. With my mac mini plugged into my TV i want the UI elements and text a bit bigger but i don't want to reduce the resolution, OSX cannot do that (and Windows isn't particularly good at it).

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

Just because you have vision problems

A bold if flawed assertion. I have glasses for vision correction, which take me to 20/20, and I do computer graphics for about 50% of my time. I can very much tell the difference, if I couldn't my artists would murder me. And much higher res doesn't justify itself on the desktop. Tablets and mobile are a different problem a bit because it depends where exactly you think you're supposed to hold the device and where it's comfortable. If you're young and short you're going to have a different experience than a tall adult.

because they're past the age where they can see the difference

So you mean they're in their 20's?

Just because you claim to have super human vision or sit with a giant display glued to your nose doesn't mean designing for you is a good idea.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading PDF files with mathematical formulas and technical drawings in them. On a retina ipad you can read them properly, showing a full page at once, without smearing small details into grey blobs. On any other device you can't - your only option is to zoom in.

Re:Wha...?

[Sir_Sri]

Which is what I do all day and don't need a retina display for. Again though, mobile devices are a slightly different problem because of where they sit relative to the face varying quite a lot. Desktop displays are supposed to sit to occupy a particular field of view.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming a 12-point font as a baseline, subscripts are in 8-point font and double subscripts in 6-point font. If you show an A4 page on a screen 1024 pixels high, subscript characters are about 10 pixels high and double subscript characters about 8 pixels high. Such small font sizes would be legible with a pixel-aligned bitmap screen font, but that's not what you get on a PDF - what you get is a scaled-down image of a vector font typically intented for print. Ok, with practice you can learn to differentiate what each kind of grey blob means, but it's not comparable to reading a screen with four times as many pixels.

Re:Wha...?

[LocalH]

Sorry but the OS does handling it properly but some websites and third party apps have not been updated to handle a higher DPI mode.

I'm pretty sure the problem rests with such apps and websites, not with the OS or the display.

Re:Wha...?

[LocalH]

Pixel densities where chosen way back in the 90's precisely because they were pretty much good enough. Apple's 'retina' display aims to be the point at which there is literally no further benefit from more pixel density, but 'no further benefit' and 'good enough for virtually every task' are not the same thing.

I suppose that the print world should drop down to 100ppi or so, since that's clearly "good enough" for you (reference for the number: a 17-inch laptop panel at 1600x900 is roughly 109ppi, and if you bump that up to 1680x1050 then you'll be getting rougly 114ppi). Some of us want our screens to look like the printed page, and until then things aren't "good enough" but merely "mediocre".

If you think a "retina" display is "slightly better looking" then you clearly haven't used one at length. I use my iPod touch 4th gen daily for hours and prefer a pixel density where I can't detect anomalies from low pixel count.

Re:Wha...?

[LocalH]

I've read your posts in this thread and can't for the life of me figure out your actual reason for arguing against high-DPI displays. Thank fuck you don't have any say-so in the industry.

Re:Wha...?

[ultranova]

That's the catch here, we've designed for a single pixel to take up a certain fraction of your personal field of view, suddenly higher density displays come along, to which we initially ask, why, was there something wrong with the old pixel densities?

Yes: the higher the pixel density, the sharper everything will look, exactly because a single pixel will take up a smaller fraction of your field of view. Assuming, of course, that the UI elements were vector graphics rather than raster images in the first place.

Re:Wha...?

[ultranova]

Sure, you can double the pixel count (from 4 million to 8 million) on a 4k display, so pixels are 40% smaller in each dimension basically (sqrt(2)) but that effect isn't really all that big a deal unless you're like 15 with perfect eyesight. For everyone else it's a waste of money and processing power.

Which is why modern games no longer use anti-aliasing - since pixels in modern displays are too small to be seen, the jagged edge aliasing problem is a thing of the past, so it would be utterly useless. No, wait...

Re:Wha...?

[assassinator42]

Non DPI aware applications being marked DPI aware is Microsoft's fault. They decided to mark MFC applications (and potentially others) DPI-aware by default (at least when compiled with Visual Studio 2010).
It doesn't help that the GUI designer (at least for Windows Forms) in Visual Studio doesn't work right at non-default DPIs. It also doesn't help that their automatic scaling for Windows Forms doesn't work right (probably why they haven't enabled it by default).
I was assuming a huge part of Metro was fixing the DPI scaling issues. I guess not.

I find it funny...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...that MS has been one of the first to do the "device-independent drawing stuff" with GDI, and yet twenty years later, there's still no working device-independent UI from them.

Re:I find it funny...

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair TFA is not comparing like with like. Windows is being asked to scale the display by 125% which is obviously going to lead to blurry images. Apple Retina displays are exactly 2x the previous resolution so have 200% scaling, so there is no blur when scaling images.

If you install Chrome on MacOS and scale it to 125% it will look just as bad as it does on Windows. There is no escaping the fact that scaling to 125% looks crap.

Both options have their advantages. 125% scaling on a 13" laptop with 1920x1080 screen gives you ideal size controls and thus maximum productivity, while allowing the screen to be full HD. The effective horizontal resolution is about 1600 pixels. Retina displays are effectively only 1440 pixels wide (with scaling taken into account) so practically you have much less usable space but they look nice because everything is scaled by 200%. Take your pick.

Re:I find it funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really funny is that they are having trouble scaling the new UI: rectangles filled with solid colors.

Re:I find it funny...

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft has offered a UI framework with device-independent UI scaling since 2006 - that's WPF. Ironically, to do that fully, it also did the same kind of font rendering that OS X and iOS do (idealized rather than snap to pixels), but users hated it for that.

Metro apps in Win8 also have strong explicit support for DPI scaling.

Re:I find it funny...

[narcc]

Was it possibly earlier? IIRC, Windows GDI was all about device independent scaling since at least Windows 3.1. If I'm missing something, let me know.

Re:I find it funny...

[shutdown -p now]

No, GDI was never about device-independent scaling, it always operated in physical device units (i.e. physical pixels when it came to the screen). You could certainly do it before, but you had to query the system for the current DPI value, and do your own calculations to translate points or inches or whatever it is you were using to physical pixels. There was one exception - CreateDialog - which used "dialog units" in dialog template, which were designed to be device independent.

Oh, there was also VB, which did its own thing, measuring all controls in twips, and did DPI translation for you.

Re:I find it funny...

[LocalH]

Troll post. The issue isn't with the scaling of the solid-color rectangles, but with graphic elements in webpages (and presumably non-high-DPI-aware apps).

I have a good idea what causes this on IE

[Anonymous Coward]

I once worked on hardware rendering with a webkit-based browser, and these kind of issues are very common when you're converting between floating-point layout coordinate and integer screen space.
Some rendering pipelines make it harder than others to deal with, especially if you can't control the behaviour of non-integer pixels at the edge of images. To fix it, you have to visit all the conversion sites and decide how you want to handle the conversion. It gets especially tricky if you're scaling and stitching images together that you've uploaded as multiple textures to get around maximum texture size issues. Concatenated transformations through composition layers can be tricky too depending on what your graphics API does.

Re:I have a good idea what causes this on IE

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it floating point then?

i mean, i get that the GPU can accelerate the transparency stuff etc, is the GPU limited to floating point? can't you use integer math for everything?

Re:I have a good idea what causes this on IE

[Anonymous Coward]

For the stack I was working with, webkit->openVG, it wasn't restricted to floating point but you don't get correct results with integer coordinates since you can't control the rounding as necessary depending on the circumstances. Using only integers results in gaps and overdraw, and when you're composing with alpha overdraw is a serious problem. Webkit itself runs float for everything in render space, even colors.

Re:I have a good idea what causes this on IE

[Anonymous Coward]

The API on OS X does have coordinate conversion functions between application-float-space and screen-pixel-space to be able to easily figure at what exact coordinate to start drawing your lines through the centre of your pixels.

To be honest I am one of those developers that doesn't actually use these functions, I did try and run my application at 1.5 screen resolution years ago to see what would happen, luckilly my application does not look too bad, so I thought I would fix it when apple finally did up the resolution. I guess too many application developers where waiting for real devices, so the 1.5 increase in resolution never materialised, I guess a 2 up sidesteps a lot of issues.

Except for a few low resolution images my applications looks wonderful on a retina display, I was already doing most of the drawing using vector graphics, and most of the icons are actually high resolution mixed vector and pixel art .pdf files (that actually works .pdf as icons, except for the application icon itself which you have to deliver in many resolutions up to 1024 x 1024 pixels).

I blame apple...

[chris200x9]

I blame apple...if the wouldn't have released those retina displays high-PPI displays would have never come and windows 8 would have been a huge success. Apple can you not leave Microsoft in peace for one second?!

Re:I blame apple...

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Apple created a market of stupid people wanting VGA sized UI displayed on 2560 X 1440 screens just so their rounded corners are not as fuzzy.

Re:I blame apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your emotional problems are showing. Apple brought us great displays that make fonts much easier to read.

Re:I blame apple...

[MightyYar]

I like how it fits incredibly small, readable text. Improves web browsing, email, and other reading (like Kindle app), even if the benefit is only aesthetic for games and such. I'm currently on Android, but I do like the 4s screen.

Re:I blame apple...

[narcc]

If it's PPI you're after, the iPhone 4/4s/5 isn't your best bet. If you're an Android user, you've got plenty of great displays to choose from.

Re:I blame apple...

[teg]

If it's PPI you're after, the iPhone 4/4s/5 isn't your best bet. If you're an Android user, you've got plenty of great displays to choose from.

The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels - it's what they coined the phrase "retina display" for - so there's no point in going for something higher. And the iPhone 5 apparently has the best screen among smartphones today.

Re:I blame apple...

[lilfields]

Actually, without Microsoft clear type wouldn't exist and the retina display on fonts would be useless.

Re:I blame apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you give IBM some credit for inventing it in the first place?

Re:I blame apple...

[marsu_k]

The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels

Well, this phone doesn't quite match the "retinaness" of the latest iPhones (the definition seems to be pure marketing; my Transformer Infinity is not as high-PPI as the "new iPad", but according to Apple's official gospel whether a display is retina or not is both a factor of DPI and viewing distance - and I use mine almost always docked, and it has a higher PPI than the retina MacBook, so arguably it's more retina), but still manages a respectable PPI of 313. In 2007. How do you like them apples?

Re:I blame apple...

[narcc]

Nonsense. There were other phones with >300ppi prior to the iPhone 4 such as the Samsung S8000 (2009) and the Sharp SX862 (2008).

They just didn't give it marketable name like "retina display", probably because the term is virtually meaningless.

(Quoting Steve Jobs on what "retina" means: "It turns out that there is a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch that, when you hold something around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina['s ability] to differentiate the pixels" Ref)

Re:I blame apple...

[MightyYar]

The S8000 had a horrendous touch screen (resistive) and the display was of the AMOLED variety.

The Sharp SX862 was a flip phone.

Re:I blame apple...

[narcc]

And that makes the ppi lower somehow?

Re:I blame apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

In your quest to discredit "them Apples," you seem to have missed the whole point of the TFA, which is that modifying an existing OS to look nice on a high DPI screen is a hard problem. Was Windows Mobile 6 on that Toshiba ever designed to handle high DPI? Didn't think so. Apple gets a lot of credit because they were the first to crack the software issue as well as the hardware.

Re:I blame apple...

[marsu_k]

Reading comprehension FAIL. You seem to have missed the point of the message I replied to, which implied that Apple was first in introducing a high PPI phone. Which is false. And FWIW I don't think Apple has cracked the software issue, simply doubling (or quadrupling really) the resolution is hardly an elegant solution. I think Android does this better, the apps on Infinity (1920x1200) look pretty much the same as they do on the original Transformer (1280x800), that is, the physical dimensions are the same, but everything is crispier on Inifinity.

Re:I blame apple...

[LocalH]

Cleartype is shit because fonts are still hinted. Unhinted rendering on high-DPI displays is the future and I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft does away with hinting in Windows 10.

Re:I blame apple...

[MightyYar]

No, but it makes the screen really crappy - or on a crappy phone. I want a smallish Android with a good screen. The Galaxy Nexus has a nice-ish screen (from reviews, not as nice as the iPhone 5 but maybe almost as good as the 4s) but on an aircraft carrier of a phone.

If you read up the thread, I'm not the one saying that Apple was the "first", I'm the one saying it's really nice.

Re:I blame apple...

[Ash-Fox]

The S8000 had a horrendous touch screen (resistive) and the display was of the AMOLED variety.

The Sharp SX862 was a flip phone.

I don't understand your point. What does this have to do with having >300ppi prior to the iPhone 4?

Re:I blame apple...

[MightyYar]

I realize that I replied at a poor point in the thread. I was trying to minimize the number of replies I would have to the same guy (narcc).

I wasn't making a claim that the iPhone was first - I was wishing that there was an Android device with the iPhone screen.

That said, "teg" was claiming that the iPhone was the first smartphone with such a high-res screen. The SX862 would I think be described as a "feature phone" and the S8000's screen was early AMOLED. I've never held one, but my understanding is that they used a strange pixel layout which required more pixels compared to a standard LCD. Thus the high pixel count on the S8000 was there to make the screen comparable to an LCD, not to improve resolution. Wikipedia says, "Device uses PenTile technology. Its pixels consist of only two sub-pixels instead of three and the claimed pixel density is only achieved using subpixel rendering. In any case, the ppi numbers are not directly comparable."

So I think teg was technically correct.

More half-baked Metro crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing that Microsoft goes out of their way to force windows 8 users to use metro! You'll use it, and by Balmer's sweaty pit stains you'll like it!

What do you mean JUST windows 8

[Billly Gates]

One of the arguments to leave XP behind is that it can't work at all beyond 100 DPI or the apps will break. I assumed Windows 8 Modern UI took care of this? This issue alone made me weary of a macbook as 200 DPI will not run so great in bootcamp with Windows with most of the apps all misrendered.

100 DPI is so ancient and it is time to get rid of it. The fact that Windows 8 has mostly but not 100% got rid of it is problematic. Lets hope Windows 9 fixes this or at least a service pack in win 8.

Not a biggie in 2012 but in 2016 1080p will be the next 1024 x 768.

Re:What do you mean JUST windows 8

[JDG1980]

One of the arguments to leave XP behind is that it can't work at all beyond 100 DPI or the apps will break. I assumed Windows 8 Modern UI took care of this? This issue alone made me weary of a macbook as 200 DPI will not run so great in bootcamp with Windows with most of the apps all misrendered.

Windows 7 does DPI scaling pretty well. There are a handful of misbehaved apps that break, but unless you're unlucky enough to regularly use one of these, you'll be fine. The usual stuff will work fine.

I don't know what happened with Windows 8 Metro. According to their blog, it was supposed to scale based on the screen resolution. But Metro has been such a clusterf*** that nothing would surprise me at this point.

Re:What do you mean JUST windows 8

[shutdown -p now]

Win8 Metro apps did take care of it.

For the desktop, it's the same as Vista/Win7 - it'll bitmap-scale apps that do not declare themselves as DPI-aware in the app manifest, but will let them do what they see fit if they do declare themselves such. Unfortunately, there has been a number apps that add the declaration but ignore the requirements.

Re:What do you mean JUST windows 8

[pod]

Windows 8 (and 7) scale UI just fine. There are, and always will be, unruly apps and do not cooperate and don't scale their UI properly. And of course, when you're scaling bitmaps by non power-of-2 factors, like 125% (such as in TFA), they're going to look like shit, no matter if it's Windows or OSX.

Been waiting for this

[jfdavis668]

I don't know why it has taken Windows so long to handle high-ppi displays. I don't want the text and icons smaller, I want them the same size, only higher definition.

Re:Been waiting for this

[Billly Gates]

The problem is apps are not tested with anything other than 100dpi because thats what people use. People only use 100 dpi because that is what programs are optimized for. Only Apple and Google have broken this.

Again it shows just how much better your cell phone is with hardware accelerated smooth graphics, html 5, and ppi and dpi with web browser over your computer. Too much legacy is really holding everyone back. Old IE, ancient java, and older apps using GDI for the low 15% of users hold things back for the other 85%.

I have not even read up on HTML 5 yet as IE 7 and 8 wont die for a very long time. Even though they represent so little of hte market I can't lose them so everyone else needs to suffer.

Re:Been waiting for this

[ModernGeek]

As someone who is reading this from his Retina MacBook Pro, I can say that my computing experience is way beyond anything a phone could ever hope to offer.

Re:Been waiting for this

[Billly Gates]

I meant Windows desktops with mediocre hardware acceleration due to XP support/DirectX 9, IE 8, and crappy desktop resolutions, and websites degraded to support old IE users if the agent detects a desktop.

My android displays okcupid with beautiful gradients, animations, and graphics in web mode or the stand alone app. It looks like crap regardless of the browser on my Windows desktop because of legacy users.

Re:Been waiting for this

[JDG1980]

I think it's crazy that Windows still does not support vector icons (SVG or a similar format). Instead, Windows icon files contain about a half dozen different sizes of raster images (each at multiple color depths!), maxing out at 256x256, and then scales these bitmaps as needed if there isn't an exact match.

256x256 is good enough for icons even on high-DPI displays, but this is still an incredibly clumsy and inelegant way of doing things. I can understand why you'd want a custom 16x16 icon because at that small size, scaling down a vector image usually won't work, and you need a hand-drawn substitute. But there is no good reason why two different bitmaps should be needed to render the same icon at 48x48 and 256x256. A single SVG could handle both quite nicely, and could handle even higher resolutions than that if needed.

Re:Been waiting for this

[narcc]

What we need is a better standard than SVG for static vector images. Well, and significantly improved tools for producing them.

Re:Been waiting for this

[Tough Love]

I don't know why it has taken Windows so long to handle high-ppi displays.

Because they managed out or Kimmed every developer who develops instead of facetimes.

Re:Been waiting for this

[JDG1980]

What we need is a better standard than SVG for static vector images.

In what ways does SVG fall short? It's a widely supported open standard, which does pretty much everything you need for 2D vector graphics. It can even be tweaked by hand, since it's XML-based. (I've done a couple of simple SVGs entirely in Notepad.)

Well, and significantly improved tools for producing them.

Adobe Illustrator has supported both import and export of SVG files for some time. And while Inkscape is far from perfect, it's a workable free solution for most non-professional users. Are there other, better vector editing tools that don't allow the creation of SVGs?

Re:Been waiting for this

[shutdown -p now]

Do you think it's crazy that the same thing goes for OS X?

Re:Been waiting for this

[narcc]

Being XML is one of the reasons that SVG hasn't really taken off. XML killed MathML as well. That you can't use it like other image types is also a major problem. I'd go on and on about it, but it's not important enough to me to spend the time. Just google SVG criticism or something.

I'd love to use vector images, but SVG is just a huge pile of mistakes. Had the W3C kept it simple, not XML, individual elements out of the dom, and ditched scripting, we'd see it used everywhere.

Re:Been waiting for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Yip, OS X does the same thing actually.

You can use any kind of vector graphics as icons inside your application, I use freaking PDF files with mixed vector and raster images as icons in my own application.

But for the icon of the application itself I have to deliver the icon as a bundle of raster images in the following sizes:
icon_16x16.png
icon_32x32.png
icon_128x128.png
icon_512x512.png
icon_256x256.png
icon_16x16@2x.png
icon_32x32@2x.png
icon_128x128@2x.png
icon_256x256@2x.png
icon_512x512@2x.png

The @2x are actually images that has twice the resolution as is advertised in the filename. So the icon_512x512@2x.png actually contains a 1024 x 1024 image.

Re:Been waiting for this

[jensen404]

The reason for multiple sizes is so elements can be perfectly aligned to the pixel grid for maximum crispness. A vector image won't help in this case. You can lose up to half the effective resolution by not designing for an exact pixel size. Of course, this becomes less important at higher PPI.

Re:Been waiting for this

[jensen404]

In some ways, it's worse on OS X. The dock never shows any icons at their native pixel resolution, so they are always less crisp than the same icon in the windows 7 task bar.

Re:Been waiting for this

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows 8, the platform natively supports vector graphics. Any images exported as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) or XAML art will scale without getting blurry. "

That tidbit of information is from Steven Sinofsky's post about scaling to different screens in Windows 8:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx

Wish granted.

Re:Been waiting for this

[dkf]

Being XML is one of the reasons that SVG hasn't really taken off.

Grumbling about the serialization format? Really? Of all the reasons to pick, that's the one which is least insightful. The real reason its had problems taking off is that Microsoft doesn't support it properly, probably because they mistakenly think of it as a "web technology" instead of a "vector image format" (that happens to be somewhat human readable). But it's not exactly like vector formats are unheard of on Windows; it's just that the particular group that does core services for UI elements doesn't seem to believe in tackling scalability that way (and there's now boatloads of crap that works around this basic problem).

Re:Been waiting for this

[narcc]

Stop and think about WHY for just a moment. While I'm no fan of XML, it doesn't take a genius to puzzle out why XML has kept MathML and SVG out of mainstream use.

You can do it. It's really easy.

Can I get a WTF?

[popo]

Releases of new operating systems come with a large number of bugs, and that goes with the territory. In general, users are understanding and patient.

But these seem like alpha level bugs that should have been stomped out ages ago.

1080p displays are hardly unusual or non-standard. This does not bode well...

Re:Can I get a WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?
 
You are welcome, I will be here all week.

Re:Can I get a WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about high PPI. not about total number of pixels.

Re:Can I get a WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

But these seem like alpha level bugs that should have been stomped out ages ago.

Why pay for testers when you can have suckers, er, customers both test it and pay you?

To be fair

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

This is not a Windows issue but rather the way that developers support High DPI in their apps.

Way too many developers are still using MFC and Win32 for UI development, which has no concept of High-DPI and requires scaling to be done manually. If the app doesn't even poll for the current DPI of the OS then nothing is going to scale correctly using those antiquated API's.

WPF automatically adjusts controls to the DPI settings of the OS, however if you don't use vector paths to render UI elements you might see an ugly bitmap stretch here and there. Haven't fully investigated Windows RT (the framework, not the tablet), but I am sure DPI awareness is also a fundamental part of its presentation framework. If a developer throws a 16x16 icon into an app resource, you are going to get and ugly scale.

When it comes to web pages then its anyone's guess how the web designer will support high DPI. Web pages are still mostly a bunch of static jpg's so scaling up something that looks like a line on regular DPI settings, only to see it smear and blur into a bar as shown in the article is purely the fault of the web page designer.

I do agree that as a whole Microsoft needs to do a little better job supporting High DPI across their API's, but most of what this article mentions comes from poor app/web design more then anything.

Re:To be fair

[Billly Gates]

It is up to the web browser. The only thing the web master should do is put a CSS if it is a mobile screen to take away some complexity or change the dimensions of the text for readability.

The web browser is what takes care of integrating the images with the operating system and rendering them on screen. Windows 8 supports high DPI but I am fairly shocked IE 10 which is an excellent browser contrary to past releases of IE does not fully support it. IE 10 needs to be patched asap as it is used in Windows 8 mobile as well where phones have bizaare resolutions and DPI combos.

Re:To be fair

[Missing.Matter]

This is not a Windows issue but rather the way that developers support High DPI in their apps.

It's still sort of a Windows issue. The complaint the article raises is that there are no fine grained controls for adjusting dpi. The default setting was "too small" but flipping the switch to "make everything bigger" was too large. Also changing this doesn't change things on the desktop side, and adjusting things on the desktop side doesn't change the metro side. This should be reconciled sooner rather than later.

Re:To be fair

[shutdown -p now]

Way too many developers are still using MFC and Win32 for UI development, which has no concept of High-DPI and requires scaling to be done manually. If the app doesn't even poll for the current DPI of the OS then nothing is going to scale correctly using those antiquated API's.

This isn't entirely correct.

First of all, Win32 does have some very basic support for DPI independence. In particular, the various dialog-related APIs (CreateDialog etc) measure things in "dialog units", which are defined in terms of system dialog font - the size of which varies depending on your DPI setting.

Additionally, if you write an app in Win32, and you don't explicitly state in your app manifest or via an API call that you are "DPI-aware" (i.e. know how to scale), then Windows will tell your app to render as usual and give you the fake value of 96 DPI, but then take the output and upscale it as a bitmap to whatever the setting really is. It's ugly, of course, but at least it preserves all proportions and such.

Haven't fully investigated Windows RT (the framework, not the tablet), but I am sure DPI awareness is also a fundamental part of its presentation framework. If a developer throws a 16x16 icon into an app resource, you are going to get and ugly scale.

The framework is called Windows Runtime, or WinRT for short (yes, I know, it's confusing).

As far as widgets and layouts go, it's largely the same as WPF and Silverlight - you define sizes in DPI-independent units, and use dynamic layouts to flexibly scale otherwise (e.g. for different screen size proportions). For images, you either use vectors, or else the frameworks offers you a way to define bitmaps at several different scale levels, and will automatically pick the right one.

This is as far as it goes for XAML-based (C++ and C#/VB) apps. For HTML5/JS apps, obviously, you use the same techniques as you do for DPI-independent websites - again, device-independent units for sizing, flexible layout to match screen shape, and SVG for graphics.

Re:To be fair

[TheoCryst]

I'm not sure that you understand the point he was making. Yes, the web browser is the one that ultimately displays the image, but you can't magically make a small image look clear when stretched to be larger. The only way to fix that problem is for the web designer to serve higher resolution images. Or better yet, avoid static PNGs and JPGs whenever possible, especially for text.

Re:To be fair

[Billly Gates]

True, but if it is a DPI issue then that is too low of a level for a webmaster to worry about and the OS/Browsers job to implement that properly so they can focus on element contents and styles. Not rendering. The webmaster is responsible for the content and unfortunately, IE 6 taught them they are responsible for working around bugs in the OS/browser too which should have never been their job if it was not such a piece of shit.

Since that dinosaur is going away we need to blame IE 10/Win 8 for this.

Like people have been saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows has contained high-PPI support for YEARS already.

But what does this have to do with Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I come here to see stories about Australia! Don't the /. editors understand just how much my needy and fragile psyche depends upon believing that Americans are eagerly reading about my country?

Re:But what does this have to do with Australia?

[0123456]

Windows 8 is even worse in Australia. Since Australians hold their tablets upside down, all the text falls to the bottom of the screen.

Resolution independent layout

[fredmosby]

I can't believe modern devices still don't support resolution independent layout, especially on tablets. All they would have to do is design displays to send their ppi as well as their resolution to the computer, then change the operating system to make that data available programs.

Re:Resolution independent layout

[jones_supa]

I think you can already pull DPI from EDID information. However it requires a lot of coding to make the scaling work through the OS and apps properly, so it's not exactly that easy.

Re:Resolution independent layout

[Tough Love]

I think you can already pull DPI from EDID information. However it requires a lot of coding to make the scaling work through the OS and apps properly, so it's not exactly that easy.

It's not hard either. The GPU does the scaling. On Android (but not on iOS) the font manager takes care of hinting text to the native resolution. OP talked about resolution-independent layout, which is indeed lacking across the board. It's not rocket science for anybody except Apple, who stupidly backed themselves into a corner by relying on fixed size screen resolution.

Re:Resolution independent layout

[shutdown -p now]

They already do everything that you've mentioned.

In specific case of Win8, here is a rather detailed explanation of how it all works, and why.

Re:Resolution independent layout

[fredmosby]

Unless there's something I missed, that article says windows 8 doesn't support resolution independent layout. It says windows 8 does layout in pixels, but scales every thing up for certain devices (they can have scale factors of either 100%, 140% or 180%).

Re:Resolution independent layout

[shutdown -p now]

If your "pixels" in layout actually get scaled according to DPI, then they are in effect device-independent units (as they are in CSS today, for example).

It does say that it doesn't scale precisely to your DPI, but rather to one of 100%, 140% or 180% that is the closest match for your actual DPI - which is done to let people use bitmaps, so that they can just provide three versions of those and there wouldn't have to be any stretching which looks awful on bitmaps. XAML stuff is all vectors, though, and it can scale to whatever - it's just that they will only scale you to one of those three by default (but you can override it and scale however you want, really)

Only Android seems to do this right.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Honestly Android is the only OS I've seen that elegantly handles scaling to higher resolutions and varying aspect ratios. Hell, the SDK itself gives you many options to make sure your app scales well.

Owning an ipad 2 myself, I can say that iphone apps scale horribly to ipad, and apple themselves even had a blunder when they changed aspect ratios (lol letterbox phone.) It's no mystery why when they increased the resolution on the ipad 3, they had to evenly multiply from 1072x768.

Any competent mobile OS should be able to handle this. In todays world of very high resolution displays, desktop ones should as well. When microsoft decided "let's make windows work for mobile platforms" and created metro, they should have taken this into consideration, yet oddly enough, they didn't.

Linux isn't much better though, in fact its worse in some ways in my experience. For some reason I always run into major problems with font scaling in x11.

Re:Only Android seems to do this right.

[Tough Love]

When microsoft decided "let's make windows work for mobile platforms" and created metro, they should have taken this into consideration, yet oddly enough, they didn't.

Maybe it wasn't on the Powerpoint slide.

Life was better when

[Spy Handler]

there was only one true screen resolution: 640 x 480

Back then the only thing you had to worry about was whether to support 256 colors or stick with 16.

Re:Life was better when

[Anonymous Coward]

80x25 should be enough for anybody.

(yes, 25, not 24)

Re:Life was better when

[narcc]

(yes, 25, not 24)

Them's fightin' words.

(Ignoring for the moment that you're 100% correct, everyone coded to 80x24 anyway.)

Re:Life was better when

[Anonymous Coward]

When exactly was this? I don't remember ever having a single graphics card that could do 640x480x8bit and couldn't muster a higher resolution with fewer colors.

EGA couldn't even get 640x480, it maxed out at 640x350.

VGA only had a stock 256-color mode at 320x200 (0x13, rectangular pixels and all), though using the Mode X family of tweaks it could run up to 360x480x8b with a stock VGA monitor, or 400x600x8b with an SVGA monitor; conversely, 640x480 wasn't the only, or even highest, 4bit mode -- you could get it up to 800x600x4b with an SVGA monitor.

Windows 8 might be do or die

[Edward Nardella]

IMO MS needs to make windows 8 a great product to succeed as a corporation in the coming years. I don't think they get that.

Re:Windows 8 might be do or die

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? They're still making money with Windows 7, and I would think that they can survive another bad OS, since they do so every other OS release.

Woo Hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

No steenkin Windoze 8 in Retina iPads, iPhones or MacBook Pros!

Steve rests blissfully in peace.

This app is best viewed in ...

[Misagon]

The Metro APIs were designed for web front-end programmers, not people who write for real GUI toolkits. You can build quite competent Metro apps in HTML and Javascript, and if you reach any limits, your web shop could hire a third party to write a module in C# or C++ to work around it.

The API for web programmers includes also rules that that apps should be made for a finite set of fixed screen sizes. Not resolutions -- screen sizes. Metro was never designed to be scalable.

This is not only a Windows problem, though. MacOS X on Retina(tm) displays is just as bad, but there the OS draws everything twice as big to begin with and scales down if needed when compositing windows. Apple never cared about hinting anyway, so all controls and labels are just as fuzzy scaled to 125% as always.

Re:This app is best viewed in ...

[shutdown -p now]

You realize that you don't have to write Metro apps in HTML and JavaScript, right? There's also the XAML route, with C++, C# or VB as languages.

This is not a Microsoft problem.

[MaWeiTao]

So Microsoft is being blamed for graphical limitations they had nothing to do with. From what I'm seeing the problem isn't that elements within the GUI are scaling poorly, it's that designers didn't account for the fact that some day someone might want to blow up their graphics on a much higher resolution display. It's ridiculous and unfair to blame Microsoft for this considering this would affect any high res display in any OS. What do you think happens when you run an iPhone 3 app on an iPad? By the logic displayed in this article that should also be Apple's fault.

Anyone with the most trivial experience in resizing photos will understand that this is an unavoidable problem. There's no practical way to fix it unless you rebuild the app to account for wildly varied resolutions. You could use vector art, but it's not a realistic solution for a lot of things. There's no elegant solution but hopefully the pixel density is high enough that these artifacts aren't all that obvious. This is one of those situations where it's on the third party developers can only fix the problem after it's arisen. Microsoft can't fix it for them.

Re:This is not a Microsoft problem.

[0123456]

Microsoft developed the APIs. Give developers a way to use an API in a stupid way, and they will do so.

Still, could be worse: I remember the days when our video drivers had to always report 72DPI to Windows regardless of what the real value was because half the apps would render garbage if it wasn't set to 72.

Sadness

[SuperKendall]

Aside from the idea that I had a 1600x1200 display TWENTY YEARS AGO and since then WE'VE GONE BACKWARDS

You are so right there... I would not have believed 10 years ago that newer large monitors I bought would feature worse resolution. Yet that has been the case for years with monitors that align to 1080p...

Thankfully we are finally starting to break free and actually get more resolution at last, as with the Korean displays people have mentioned here... going to get one of those soon I think.

iOS handles varying screen sizes quite well

[SuperKendall]

Owning an ipad 2 myself, I can say that iphone apps scale horribly to ipad

It's a simple 2x scaling, but it does have one redeeming aspect - if the images are larger than original size, you get more pixels.

It's no mystery why when they increased the resolution on the ipad 3, they had to evenly multiply from 1072x768.

They did not have to but it made everyone's life much simpler.

Apple themselves even had a blunder when they changed aspect ratios (lol letterbox phone.)

See? They didn't have to @2x new resolutions all the time. The iPhone 5 is proof of it. As for the aspect ratio changing, most apps needed only minor adjustments to auto-resizing rules. What people who claim iOS cannot handle different screen sizes well always forget is that the screen changes size every time you take a call, and the call status bar drops down... the iPhone 5 is just the display going the other direction in size, so the existing rules app developers already had in place mostly worked.

In iOS6 there is an amazing new API for Autolayout and a number of classes that let you do extremely complex non-linear layout, so to claim the OS cannot handle application scaling well is dramatically wrong.

Macs with retina displays also have issues

[flimflammer]

How is this described only as a Windows problem?

Re:Macs with retina displays also have issues

[Ash-Fox]

Please elaborate.

Whaaaaa

[AtomicDevice]

IE10 HAVE RENDER ISSUES ME NO BELIEVE.

I get that it's really hard to make a browser do everything right, but if you're going to push IE as such a major competitor to other browsers, maybe make it less of a steaming pile? The web browser is basically a commodity nowadays, drawing things right is just about the only thing that matters.

A Solution

[CityZen]

The issue comes into being most likely due to off-by-a-fraction errors when doing non-integer scaling of multiple elements.

One solution is just to get all your fractions right across the entire rendering pipeline. That is hard, and maybe impossible in some cases.

An easier solution is just to render to a canvas that is an integer multiple of the "base" or "expected" case, then finally apply a single scaling from that canvas to the display size at the last moment before the image is displayed.

For instance, let's say that software was developed for a 100 dpi display, and for a given device, that works out to a 1366x768 resolution (if its screen were 100 dpi). Now the screen is really 1920x1080, but that is not an integer multiple of 1366x768, so instead we render to a canvas that is 2x both dimensions: 2732x1536. The rendering here should be without any issues, since it's an integer multiple of 1366x768. From here, there are two paths to follow. If the display controller of the device can automatically scale 2732x1536 to 1920x1080, then let it do that. Otherwise, have the GPU scale the the canvas size to the display size, then display that. (Typically, the display controller can do a better job with multiple tap filters.)

Note that this requires extra rendering power and bandwidth vs. the first solution. However, that's what hardware is good at, right?

Note also that doing non-integer scaling will always result in what looks like "blurriness" around what would have otherwise been sharp pixel edges. This is not avoidable, really (unless you want really ugly results where some lines are fatter than others).

Not just high PPI displays

[DrXym]

Large displays too. Look how much space Windows 8 wastes on a 20 inch monitor rendering overly large tiles. People with large monitors and mice and keyboards should be able to zoom out and see more tiles at once if they so wish.

Service Pack 3

[b_dover]

Some things never seem to work right until Service Pack 3.

Fortunately...

[Type44Q]

This latest version is still in alpha, right?

Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 has worse problems to worry about than display. Take interoperability between architectures for example.

Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitmaps do not scale well and nothing can change that.

another problem with metro

[samion.blanc]

"However, there are serious issues with Metro" what a surprise that there's another reason not to like metro.

The scaling issues are mostly in Chrome, not Win8

[elabs]

As the article mentions, scaling issues are in certain apps like Chrome or IE9. Windows 8 itself works great.

Easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Press Win+D. Metro scaling problem solved.

Windows ME

[Anonymous Coward]

In Windows 8 future I can see another Windows ME.
Half baked preemie that doesn't actually know what it wants to be when it grows older, if it grows older. :)