Retina Display-Ready Apps and the iPad2- Concerns

marc55 · Mar 13, 2012

The thread below entitled "Great article to consider" posted by "Southernboyj" raises concerns about the size and storage crunch of the new Retina Display-Ready Apps, however, my concern is since the New iPad has a new chip optimized to run the new Apps, what is the effect on the older iPads?

Here's the article: http://www.cio.in/news/retina-display-ready-apps-and-coming-ipad-storage-crunch-236502012

From reading the article, it appears these new Apps will run on all devices, and if so, will older devices like the iPad2 run slower with these larger Apps.

Sure the older Non- Retina Display-Ready Apps will still be around, but you can be sure that they will now fall into the Legacy category by the developers, and all the effort will now go into development of the newer Retina Display-Ready Apps which will eventually dominate the market.

So to me, this is a greater concern than the Coming iPad Storage Crunch the article is referring to.

While I am happy with my new iPad2, I fear that it will run slower with the new Retina Display-Ready Apps and it looks like I will be returning it for the new iPad.

HelveticaNeue · Mar 13, 2012

The iPad 2 won't run slower just because apps are optimized for Retina Display. The apps are only larger because the image files suiting the Retina Display are massive, but on a non-Retina iPad these images won't be used or even loaded into RAM. Only the new iPad will load the Retina images.

Apple's apps are already Retina-ready and there are no slow downs on the iPad 2.

marc55 · Mar 13, 2012

I would think that something in the iPad2 has to sort through what to load and what ot to load, and wouldn't that slow it down?

What about text?

xSwift · Mar 13, 2012

marc55 said:
What about text?

Text won't consume more storage, it's rendered by the app at runtime.

ripkord · Mar 13, 2012

text is text, the graphics chip will render text separately, so theres no difference in the source material. there isnt retina- only text for example.

homeboy · Mar 13, 2012

marc55 said:
I would think that something in the iPad2 has to sort through what to load and what ot to load, and wouldn't that slow it down?

What about text?

That wouldn't have to be the case if texts and objects are designed in vector. Even if there were two sets of graphics of either devices, the iPad 2 would simply only use files from a specific folder and wouldn't need to sort through anything at all.

mortenandersen · Mar 13, 2012

Will the new Retina versions of the apps be bigger also in iPad 2?

HelveticaNeue said:
The iPad 2 won't run slower just because apps are optimized for Retina Display. The apps are only larger because the image files suiting the Retina Display are massive, but on a non-Retina iPad these images won't be used or even loaded into RAM. Only the new iPad will load the Retina images.

Apple's apps are already Retina-ready and there are no slow downs on the iPad 2.

I hope and think you're right regarding that the Retina made apps used in iPad 2 will not make the device slower. But what about the amount of storage of the app in the iPad 2? You wrote that the "files suiting the Retina Display are massive": Does this mean that upgrading an existing iPad 2 app to a new Retina version of the same app will take hold of much for storage memory of the iPad 2, even though the massive files in question obviously cannot be used in the iPad 2? This is perhaps something to be worried about?

HelveticaNeue · Mar 13, 2012

mortenandersen said:
But what about the amount of storage of the app in the iPad 2? You wrote that the "files suiting the Retina Display are massive": Does this mean that upgrading an existing iPad 2 app to a new Retina version of the same app will take hold of much for storage memory of the iPad 2, even though the massive files in question obviously cannot be used in the iPad 2? This is perhaps something to be worried about?

Absolutely, these apps will now take up 2 or 3 times as much space out of your iPads 16, 32 or 64GB. It is sucky.

Night Spring · Mar 13, 2012

marc55 said:
I would think that something in the iPad2 has to sort through what to load and what ot to load, and wouldn't that slow it down?

Not really. It's like a fraction of a fraction of a second to sort what to load. Compared to the time it takes to load graphics, time that it takes to figure out what to load is miniscule.

Chupa Chupa · Mar 13, 2012

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

How is this different from any other computer. There is always "cutting edge" s/w designed with the latest hardware in mind & basic programs that run fine on 6 yr old boxes.

As a consumer you have to decide what your needs are and buy appropriately.

mortenandersen · Mar 13, 2012

In other words...

HelveticaNeue said:
Absolutely, these apps will now take up 2 or 3 times as much space out of your iPads 16, 32 or 64GB. It is sucky.

I would say that I will think twice before upgrading an existing app, then, and I hope the description of the changes made in the upgrade will inform us about this capacity demand, due to the Retina Display.

HelveticaNeue · Mar 13, 2012

mortenandersen said:
I would say that I will think twice before upgrading an existing app, then, and I hope the description of the changes made in the upgrade will inform us about this capacity demand, due to the Retina Display.

I think you will find most apps will list iOS 5.1 support and Retina Display images in the change logs of their updates.

hefeglass · Mar 13, 2012

first thing to do with my new iPad....?

worry about everything involving it!!!!

mattraehl · Mar 13, 2012

HelveticaNeue said:
Absolutely, these apps will now take up 2 or 3 times as much space out of your iPads 16, 32 or 64GB. It is sucky.

It will be interesting to see what the actual numbers are. I don't have a strong sense of what percentage of a typical app's size is taken up by graphics, vs the actual binaries, sounds, and user data. There will definitely be an impact but I'm not sure it will be a factor of 2 or 3.

HelveticaNeue · Mar 13, 2012

mattraehl said:
It will be interesting to see what the actual numbers are. I don't have a strong sense of what percentage of a typical app's size is taken up by graphics, vs the actual binaries, sounds, and user data. There will definitely be an impact but I'm not sure it will be a factor of 2 or 3.

Yeah, I realized that after what another commenter said. It does depend on the type of app and how many images it has versus other data types. I was just going off the Apple apps which have updated, which include iMovie and Garage Band.

Jason S. · Mar 13, 2012

marc55 said:
I would think that something in the iPad2 has to sort through what to load and what ot to load, and wouldn't that slow it down?

Nope. Apps will have graphics for iPad 2 and lower, and graphics for third-gen iPad and higher.

The image files are named something like this...
Regular graphics: name_of_image.png
Retina graphics: name_of_image@2x.png

If the iPad has a "Retina" display, it will load the @2x files. If it's an older iPad, it won't even try to load them. If the app hasn't been updated yet with high-resolution graphics, the third-gen iPad will just fall-back and use the regular graphics.

If an app is specified to work on a first-gen iPad or iPad 2, it must include the "non-retina" graphics.

In short, you have nothing to worry about, except the file size of applications. Once an application is updated with "retina" graphics, its size will increase, even if you don't have a new iPad with the high-resolution display.

mortenandersen · Mar 13, 2012

Then THIS is the real problem and potential worry...

Jason S. said:
In short, you have nothing to worry about, except the file size of applications. Once an application is updated with "retina" graphics, its size will increase, even if you don't have a new iPad with the high-resolution display.

The main point (and big problem to avoid) for me (as long as I have an iPad 2) is exactly the possible huge increase of the file size of apps due to the "retina" graphics.

It remains to be seen how big this issue turns out to be. It seems to be a possible "killing my iPad 2 softly" issue (if not aware of it and avoid it). But one never knows. At least not yet.

DS3 · Mar 13, 2012

They won't run slower, but it is kind of ridiculous that iPad 1/2 owners are going to have large app size increases with zero benefits to them.

Apple needs to finally get on their whole download system.. introduce actual update downloads rather than the whole thing over again, download a package for your device not a retina one, lite edition/demos on the same page as the premium....

marc55 · Mar 14, 2012

Jason S. said:
Nope. Apps will have graphics for iPad 2 and lower, and graphics for third-gen iPad and higher.

The image files are named something like this...
Regular graphics: name_of_image.png
Retina graphics: name_of_image@2x.png

If the iPad has a "Retina" display, it will load the @2x files. If it's an older iPad, it won't even try to load them. If the app hasn't been updated yet with high-resolution graphics, the third-gen iPad will just fall-back and use the regular graphics.

If an app is specified to work on a first-gen iPad or iPad 2, it must include the "non-retina" graphics.

In short, you have nothing to worry about, except the file size of applications. Once an application is updated with "retina" graphics, its size will increase, even if you don't have a new iPad with the high-resolution display.

Thanks for the explanation.

The final concern I have is how long will the developers continue to write code for the ipad 1 & 2 Apps?

I know the Apps that cost $$ will more than likely continue to see updates/enhancements, but I can imagine in the near future that free Apps will only be updated/enhanced for ipad3, and that new Apps will only be written for ipad?

Nova Sensei · Mar 14, 2012

You can worry yourself silly about this, or you can trust in the fact that Apple values the user experience second only to it's big old pile 'o money. The choice is yours, but I think you're wasting your time stressing about it.

d0vr · Mar 14, 2012

Uhh.. what? Why would larger images on the 3 slow down the 2? The 2 does use the retina images (@2x modifier to the rescue) and I think theoretically, app developers could even release different versions for different devices if they were that concerned about size...

So iPad 1/2 owners wouldn't need to download bigger files.

memko · Aug 13, 2012

HelveticaNeue said:
The iPad 2 won't run slower just because apps are optimized for Retina Display. The apps are only larger because the image files suiting the Retina Display are massive, but on a non-Retina iPad these images won't be used or even loaded into RAM. Only the new iPad will load the Retina images.

Apple's apps are already Retina-ready and there are no slow downs on the iPad 2.

you mean that the retina ready app will occupy on ipad2 the same space it occupies on the new ipad??

irDigital0l · Aug 13, 2012

memko said:
you mean that the retina ready app will occupy on ipad2 the same space it occupies on the new ipad??

Yes, they do.

memko · Aug 13, 2012

irDigital0l said:
Yes, they do.

Thank you very much

Retina Display-Ready Apps and the iPad2- Concerns

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