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After playing with iPads in stores for the last few months I realized what is wrong..

T

thesmoth

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2008
367
0
The resolution is awful!

They look really sharp and nice, and the colours really pop, but everything is HUGE. The icons are huge, and HD apps don't actually have much more real estate, they are just expanded (angry birds HD has the same coverage on screen as an ipod touch, just bigger). It's like looking at an ipod touch with a magnifying glass!

They need to shrink everything down and actually take advantage of the bigger screen, because it looks terrible with those massive oversized icons on the screen.
 
Yeah I agree it is like playing Call of Duty on a thirteen inch screen with 720p with a 48 inch tv with 1080p. I wish they took better advantage of the extra screen rel estate making the view more panoramic on the 48in
 
thesmoth said:
The resolution is awful!

They look really sharp and nice, and the colours really pop, but everything is HUGE. The icons are huge, and HD apps don't actually have much more real estate, they are just expanded (angry birds HD has the same coverage on screen as an ipod touch, just bigger). It's like looking at an ipod touch with a magnifying glass!

They need to shrink everything down and actually take advantage of the bigger screen, because it looks terrible with those massive oversized icons on the screen.
Click to expand...

Right. You hit the nail on the head (??). Great analysis and review. I wish I didn't buy mine before I read this.
 
he is fine with the resolution he just wishes that the birds would stay the same size and just have bigger levels not just HD birds with the same size levels.
 
Depends on the app. If you compare Flight Control with Flight Control HD, the HD version has the same five airports as the non-HD. So those look the same only bigger.

But there are also new HD maps that have two airports on them. Then each airport is about the same size as on the iPhone, but now there are two airports on the screen and more space around them.

http://firemint.com/?page_id=1144

Greg
 
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ryan0402 said:
he is fine with the resolution he just wishes that the birds would stay the same size and just have bigger levels not just HD birds with the same size levels.
Click to expand...
Which means he's not fine with the resolution. If they made everything smaller it would look like crap.

The OP's been spoiled by the retina display like many others, myself included.
 
QuarterSwede said:
Which means he's not fine with the resolution. If they made everything smaller it would look like crap.

The OP's been spoiled by the retina display like many others, myself included.
Click to expand...

I've never even used a retina display, just a 2g ipod touch.

Just the icons on the home screen look massive and over sized. You have this beautiful 10 inch screen, but it even seems to hold the same number of icons as an iphone, just BIGGER.

I just fee like the icons should be smaller and they should fit more things on the screen, even with the same resolution. It's like having the icons on your desktop in OSX massive and taking up a ton of space, and then shrinking them down and having a lot of extra space.

It's a crude explanation and maybe some apps and things like web browsing are fine, but just a couple of apps I quickly tried out and the home screen icons looked like a magnified ipod touch. It literally looked like they had taken an ipod touch and stretched the screen out with all of the same proportions (but not blurry obviously).

It seems like they could improve it without changing the actual screen resolution. My 13" macbook pro is only 1280 x 720 or whatever, and it fits tons of icons, info, etc... It doesn't look like a blown up, oversized touch phone for old people. I still wan't to get an iPad 2, and I know it will have the same resolution screen and i'll get used to it, but something has seemed off when i've used the iPad and I just realized what it was today.
 
thesmoth said:
I've never even used a retina display, just a 2g ipod touch.

Just the icons on the home screen look massive and over sized. You have this beautiful 10 inch screen, but it even seems to hold the same number of icons as an iphone, just BIGGER.

I just fee like the icons should be smaller and they should fit more things on the screen, even with the same resolution. It's like having the icons on your desktop in OSX massive and taking up a ton of space, and then shrinking them down and having a lot of extra space.

It's a crude explanation and maybe some apps and things like web browsing are fine, but just a couple of apps I quickly tried out and the home screen icons looked like a magnified ipod touch. It literally looked like they had taken an ipod touch and stretched the screen out with all of the same proportions (but not blurry obviously).

It seems like they could improve it without changing the actual screen resolution. My 13" macbook pro is only 1280 x 720 or whatever, and it fits tons of icons, info, etc... It doesn't look like a blown up, oversized touch phone for old people. I still wan't to get an iPad 2, and I know it will have the same resolution screen and i'll get used to it, but something has seemed off when i've used the iPad and I just realized what it was today.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, your biggest gripe is the size of the icons on the home screen and not necessarily what is in each of the apps? My response would have to be so what?

If you make the icons smaller, what exactly are you doing to do with that space? put more icons?

I will say that some apps don't do a very good job of utilizing real estate, but if you look at apps like Mail and Keynote, they are far from a blown up iPod or iPhone.

I am probably in the minority, but I think the only thing that needs improved from a UI perspective after 4.2 is better notifications. Everything else just really very utilitarian. One thing that you probably have not experienced because you only use the iPad in a store is operating the iPad with it flat on a table and an arms distance away from you. The larger icons become very useful from this angle.
 
jb1280 said:
Just to clarify, your biggest gripe is the size of the icons on the home screen and not necessarily what is in each of the apps? My response would have to be so what?

If you make the icons smaller, what exactly are you doing to do with that space? put more icons?

I will say that some apps don't do a very good job of utilizing real estate, but if you look at apps like Mail and Keynote, they are far from a blown up iPod or iPhone.

I am probably in the minority, but I think the only thing that needs improved from a UI perspective after 4.2 is better notifications. Everything else just really very utilitarian. One thing that you probably have not experienced because you only use the iPad in a store is operating the iPad with it flat on a table and an arms distance away from you. The larger icons become very useful from this angle.
Click to expand...

Ah, gotcha.

Don't get me wrong I still want an iPad, but I just noticed this today and figured i'd see what other people thought.
 
No, you missed it

I have to disagree with you completely.
I like the resolution on my ipad.
 
I have no problem with the iPad's resolution. I love the screen size and most apps do a much better job with the iPad versions over the iPhone ones.

I'm not sure what more resolution would gain anyone. IMO, 1920x1080 on anything smaller than a 40" screen is useless. The current resolution is fine for this screen size. Besides, more resolution would require more graphics memory which would in turn make the iPad warmer to run and the battery to run down quicker.
 
thesmoth said:
The icons are huge, and HD apps don't actually have much more real estate, they are just expanded (angry birds HD has the same coverage on screen as an ipod touch, just bigger). It's like looking at an ipod touch with a magnifying glass!
Click to expand...

Yup, some of the iPad apps are lazy ports of the iPhone version. You just didnt' look at enough of them.
 
Ahahah iPad screen is fantastic, resolution is ok.

It will get retina or similar display in the future but it doesn't mean now the screen is bad. Indeed is pretty good!
 
IMO, the user interface (size) on the iPad is pretty close to optimal (I could see one or maybe two additional rows/columns). Moreover, it does display a little more information than on the iPhone/iPod touch (on the home screen 24 or 26 icons versus 20 on the smaller devices). If you increase the icon density too much you'd overwhelm the user's ability to easily scan for content and that would make the iPad much more difficult to use. Also, the icons on the iPad are nearly a perfect match for the size of a user's finger tip (unless you have small or unusually large hands). Frankly, I find the spacing and icon size on the iPhone a little too cramped and in no way would I want that density of icons on the iPad.

Steve Jobs has claimed that the iPad's physical size was determined after a lot of user testing and if that is true then one has to conclude that they've done the same with the spacing/sizing of the icons on the home screen.
 
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thesmoth said:
The resolution is awful!

It's like looking at an ipod touch with a magnifying glass!
Click to expand...

I do hope you realise that for a lot of people that is a selling point. Not everyone is blessed with decent eyesight.

You might want to ponder the success of the iPad with the older generation who won't bother with high-res computers and netbooks.

It is one device and cannot possibly be all things to all people.
 
I agree that the spacing between the apps is way too big, things like that irritate the life out of me and are not something I could put up with. I don't like folders so if I followed Apples rules I would need all 11 pages to display my apps which is hardly practical, thankfully jail breaking allowed me to have my display how I want it.
 
I absolutely love my iPad, and believe that keeping the icons nice and big helps not to overcrowd one page, so that it's easier to scan through them. But yes, I'd definitely enjoy having the open space better utilized, but you get used to the openness very quickly :)
 
For me, the most annoying thing about the iPad is the lack of sufficient RAM memory than the resolution itself, I looked at the iPad's screen carefully and realised the resolution seems to be the same as my iMac, but I also hate blown up apps from iPhone, I think that the apps must scale up naturally, but I would like the Ipad to take advantage of the retina display someday...


(Excuse my bad english I'm not a native speaker ;))
 
thesmoth said:
The resolution is awful!

They look really sharp and nice, and the colours really pop, but everything is HUGE. The icons are huge, and HD apps don't actually have much more real estate, they are just expanded (angry birds HD has the same coverage on screen as an ipod touch, just bigger). It's like looking at an ipod touch with a magnifying glass!

They need to shrink everything down and actually take advantage of the bigger screen, because it looks terrible with those massive oversized icons on the screen.
Click to expand...

Then don't get one.

As for me, I love mine and continue to enjoy it every single day.
 
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