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iPad 1 vs 3...I SEE no difference

E

ericinboston

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 13, 2008
2,085
599
Hi all,

I have the original iPad and just bought the 3rd generation this weekend. I've put quite a few hi-res JPGs from my DSLR camera and frankly, side-by-side, I see no difference. Nor does my wife. Do any of you folks have this issue?

The JPGs are about 5.5MB - 7MB each and are roughly 2,592px × 3,872px...so it's not like they are 800x600 low-grade pictures. The original iPad has a screen res of 1024x768 which is greatly inferior to the 3rd generation in theory. But I just don't see it.

Anyone else have some feedback or other tests I can try? Thanks in advance!
 
Maybe someone sold you the ipad 2? There is a big difference on screen. Look at the home screen with the icons and you should see a difference on just the icons. Also, the text / message app the text is fuzzy and greyish on the ipad 1 and 2 but nice and sharp and crisp on the ipad 3.
 
How did you put the photos onto the ipad?

I know iTunes in the past would resize photos before sending them down to iPad1's and 2's. I don't know what it does with the new iPad and whether the resize is done differently.

What if you download pics from http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/downloads/rating/apple/ipad_3/ on the two devices, then go to Photo Roll and open them up?

For me the major different between earlier models and the new ipad is text crispness with minimum size set to small. Web pages, email, other stuff is sharp and crisp not fuzzy/blurry due to pixelation of the text.
 
deeddawg said:
How did you put the photos onto the ipad?

I know iTunes in the past would resize photos before sending them down to iPad1's and 2's. I don't know what it does with the new iPad and whether the resize is done differently.

What if you download pics from http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/downloads/rating/apple/ipad_3/ on the two devices, then go to Photo Roll and open them up?

For me the major different between earlier models and the new ipad is text crispness with minimum size set to small. Web pages, email, other stuff is sharp and crisp not fuzzy/blurry due to pixelation of the text.
Click to expand...



I pulled them in via email...sent them to my Gmail account from my Mac, saved the attachments while on the iPads, and poof. Unfortunately there is no way on the iPad (which drives me crazy) to see the properties of photos...such as dimensions, file date, file size, etc.

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jamesarm97 said:
Maybe someone sold you the ipad 2? There is a big difference on screen. Look at the home screen with the icons and you should see a difference on just the icons. Also, the text / message app the text is fuzzy and greyish on the ipad 1 and 2 but nice and sharp and crisp on the ipad 3.
Click to expand...

No... :) It was $600+ for the 32GB model. MC706LL is the model according to General>Settings...iOS 5.1.

Yes, the screen icons look different and such from the ipad 1. Even if I zoom into the pix, they still look the same/degrade at the same levels.

I bought it partly because of the super screen...and my eyes are 20/20 and we're not old fogies. :)
 
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ericinboston said:
I bought it partly because of the super screen...and my eyes are 20/20 and we're not old fogies. :)
Click to expand...

Respectfully, either you do not have 20/20 vision or you do not have an iPad 3. The differences between the two units are plainly obvious.

There is not an activity I've performed yet in which the difference was not stark.

I can tell a difference between iPad and iPad 3 from up to about 6 feet away.
 
phyrexia said:
Respectfully, either you do not have 20/20 vision or you do not have an iPad 3. The differences between the two units are plainly obvious.

There is not an activity I've performed yet in which the difference was not stark.

I can tell a difference between iPad and iPad 3 from up to about 6 feet away.
Click to expand...

Respectfully, i have to agree with this post too and my eyesight is very poor. If its really not better could it not be faulty?
 
phyrexia said:
Respectfully, either you do not have 20/20 vision or you do not have an iPad 3. The differences between the two units are plainly obvious.

There is not an activity I've performed yet in which the difference was not stark.

I can tell a difference between iPad and iPad 3 from up to about 6 feet away.
Click to expand...

This is why I am posting...2 of us here, with very high resolution photos and good eyeballs, do not see a difference...at all...between iPad 1 and 3 with these hi-res pix.

If there are other tests I can try...such as a website you can visibly notice or a particular picture on the web you want to point us too, we will be glad to try it out. Just give us the details and if you are zooming in/out or how far away you are standing, etc.

As far as movies/videos, we don't rent anything and won't use that feature on the iPad...so we can't test that.

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Paulywauly said:
Respectfully, i have to agree with this post too and my eyesight is very poor. If its really not better could it not be faulty?
Click to expand...

It could be faulty...it's definitely an iPad 3. I would think if it was faulty, it wouldn't just drop to a lower resolution...that it would be much more "broken".
 
Try putting a Low-Res version (longest side = 1024) of the photo on the iPad 1 and a Hi-Res version (longest side = 2048) on the iPad 3 to eliminate any up-scaling or down-scaling done by the iPad.

Make sure the brightness on both iPads are near enough identical to look at, not by the brightness setting, as people have mentioned that the screens have a different brightness with the same setting.

See if that makes a difference.

Also the photo obviously needs to be sharp to start with.
 
Try using Dropbox Or some other method. Not every picture in my library screams retina display, but the ones that do just pop when viewed on the new display in a way that never happened on my 1st gen device.
 
I thought the same thing until I made an iPhone app 2x. That's where the difference really showed up. I'm not sure why - it seems counter-intuitive. I have identical pictures on both the 1st gen and 3rd gen (sync'd off the iCloud) and the only difference was that I could barely see the edges of the pixels on the 1st gen, and can't with the 3rd gen. I made the local newspaper's app full screen on the 3rd gen and it made a HUGE difference.
 
snowmoon said:
Try using Dropbox Or some other method. Not every picture in my library screams retina display, but the ones that do just pop when viewed on the new display in a way that never happened on my 1st gen device.
Click to expand...

I tried that (sorry, forgot to list that earlier in my original post) to be sure the email system on iPad wasn't fudging anything. No difference. :(

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chukronos said:
I would return it. If you cannot tell the difference between the two, then something is very wrong with your iPad.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm gonna have to call Apple about this...because I will be away for 7+ days and don't want to hear any garbage about the box being opened, etc. I thought the return policy was increased to 30 days awhile back...I believe it is now still 15 days...sad policy...I live 45+ mins from the Apple store...
 
If I look decently hard, I can see the icons are sharper on the iPad 3...such as the Google Maps icon or the Youtube. But meh, I was looking for a real clarity improvement over the iPad 1 as far as high-res pictures...the iPad 1 was pretty good but I was really just expecting a lot more, especially while zooming, on the iPad 3.

Running various 1080p Youtube videos seems to be the same as I'm not so sure that Youtube 1080p is truly what it claims anyway. :)

I guess the test will be with some apps that come out that are said to be Retina quality...I doubt Angry Birds will help as that is really a cartoon-ish, 32-color type game...would be fun to find something in low-def and Retina to compare. Anyone have some apps that are less than $3 for me to try?
 
Well, upload some pictures for us. I still have both iPads. Let's take a look at the source material.
 
phyrexia said:
Well, upload some pictures for us. I still have both iPads. Let's take a look at the source material.
Click to expand...

Well the Attachment area of this forum limits stuff to under 3MB...all my pix are 5-7MB. I'll have to find someplace to host it...will reply back soon with the link.
 
throAU said:
Agreed with this. The difference between non-retina text and retina-class displaying text is night and day.
Click to expand...

As in...? reading books? emails? chat/texts? websites? PDF attachments in email?

I'd love to know what you folks are stating is such a big difference so I can test, too.

Thanks.
 
ericinboston said:
As in...? reading books? emails? chat/texts? websites? PDF attachments in email?

I'd love to know what you folks are stating is such a big difference so I can test, too.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

That is what we are saying. Everything looks better. That's why we're having trouble here. The keyboard looks better. The status bar at the top looks better. PDFs look better. Websites look better. All text not embedded in an image looks better. Words With Friends looks better, even though it's not yet optimized. The Apple Logo at bootup is crisper. Literally I cannot pick up this thing without immediately noticing a huge jump in image quality.

I'm starting to wonder if you really have one ;)

Can you tell the difference between 480 and 720 TV? What about 720 vs 1080?
 
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