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Apple, here is why the iPad 2 should have a 1280x960 or 1920x1440 resolution!
- Thread starter wikoogle
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The wide-screen form factor is not suitable for tablets. The shape, at the 8"+ size, is just wrong. The widest market will be reached with 4:3 or 3:2, not cinema 16:10, or whatever. This will not change. Straight LED backlighting will make letterboxing less of a problem.
I'm not certain but I think a major issue with a fractional scaling factor can be seen on this web-site. If you look at the tabs at the top of this page (where it says "Mac Rumors", "Page 2" and so on) in a desktop browser there is a nice clear line under all of the tabs. If you look at the same tabs on the iPad's version of Safari, the line underneath the tabs is sometimes broken up and sometimes complete and this depends on how far you have zoomed the page in.
My theory is that this effect is caused because Mobile Safari is using a fractional scaling factor when displaying the page and this means that it has to round the sizes of some elements up and some elements down. Occasionally this will lead to some elements overlapping when they should just touch and touching when there should be a gap. I don't know enough to say whether Safari should be doing a better job of this or whether it is a fundamentally difficult problem. However by choosing an integer scaling factor, as was done with the iPhone4, you are guaranteed that this isn't a problem.
My theory is that this effect is caused because Mobile Safari is using a fractional scaling factor when displaying the page and this means that it has to round the sizes of some elements up and some elements down. Occasionally this will lead to some elements overlapping when they should just touch and touching when there should be a gap. I don't know enough to say whether Safari should be doing a better job of this or whether it is a fundamentally difficult problem. However by choosing an integer scaling factor, as was done with the iPhone4, you are guaranteed that this isn't a problem.
Thank you. It's amazing how many people without the slightest clue what they're actually talking about are quick to make statements about how a 1.25x increase in scale is so much harder for developers than a 2x increase.
Apple could indeed upgrade to a resolution of 1280x960 and the 1.25x interpolation of old apps will be handled entirely by the gpu, no developer work needed.
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I don't think Eso was saying that "no developer work" is needed. Eso was stating that any change in scaling will require the same amount of work from the developer.
So how do you interpolate a button? It consists of not only an image, but also a well-defined area for touch input. I think there might be problems trying to take the touch input and figure out exactly what to tell the lower-resolution app underneath. What happens if the touch input is on a pixel that is half button?
Remember that the solution has to work for absolutely every iPad app no matter what weird things the developer did or whether they put controls right next to one another because they didn't think their app would ever be upscaled.
Graphics and the buttons associated with them have identical dimensions so they would scale identically. Touch events must be translated to a particular point on the screen as well.
I am not understanding why iPhone/Pod apps scale so poorly to the iPad. Buttons are defined by the OS, not the app, the app only describes how big and where. The OS handles drawing the image and testing and responding to touches. All the app has to do is tell the button where (to whom) to send its click. An app scaled to a different resolution will still use the same button definition, but the button itself will be handled by the upscaled version of the OS. The difference should be transparent to the app, and same should also be true for other OS objects like tables and text fields. The only time the size matters is for apps that directly handle touch input, like say, WritePad, a game, or a drawing app.
Also, note that your fingertip is considerably larger than a pixel. A touch will take up dozens of pixels, it is up to the system or the app to determine where it should be read as centered at and what it should mean.
Both images are scaled up by a factor of 2. The one on the left is pixel doubled. The one on the right is interpolated (in the same way images would be scaled by 1.25).
Not only can interpolation scale by decimal numbers, it looks better for basically everything but text. My point is that increasing the resolution of the iPad isn't limited to just doubling the resolution (although I'm sure that's what Apple will do when the time comes).
Interpolation is still a fudge.
Imagine a simple image of three pixels horizontally:
BLACK WHITE BLACK
Add another pixel and interpolate:
BLACK ? ? BLACK
What goes in the middle? Two greys?
It is not going to be able to display the original image correctly.
Obviously at a higher resolution, the difference is not going to be as noticeable. However, saying interpolation is just as good as pixel doubling is false.
Imagine a simple image of three pixels horizontally:
BLACK WHITE BLACK
Add another pixel and interpolate:
BLACK ? ? BLACK
What goes in the middle? Two greys?
It is not going to be able to display the original image correctly.
Obviously at a higher resolution, the difference is not going to be as noticeable. However, saying interpolation is just as good as pixel doubling is false.
Agreed, too many posts where people are talking out of their butts.
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GPU scaling (not just iPad here) doesn't necessarily work that in that manor for "optimum" viewing. IMHO it will be 3 version before Apple updates the display because it doesn't make business sense from a corporate or developer POV changing display type or definition after one release.
1280x960 would mean they'd need to scale the form factor from 4:3 to 16:9 either hardware OR software, from a video perspective an updated display may not translate to a massive jump in quality for playback on video content. Also comparing it to an iPhone is a big unfair due to the fact that the iPhone is into its 4th flavor.
Dual GPU (Cortex A9, fingers crossed), more RAM, an SD port and more HDD space I would think be a far more logical and enticing update than a higher resolution display for the iPad2. Though who knows what the Apple Elves are cooking up for us.
Backgrounds images resolution, which one then?
It' was nice to read what's behind a "simple" (so thought I) point about screen size but in case I want to provide background images for the iPad, which resolution would still fit WELL in then (apart from the 1024 x 768)? E.g. 800 x600 or 1280 x 1024 would still be ok?
Sorry for the newbie question...
It' was nice to read what's behind a "simple" (so thought I) point about screen size but in case I want to provide background images for the iPad, which resolution would still fit WELL in then (apart from the 1024 x 768)? E.g. 800 x600 or 1280 x 1024 would still be ok?
Sorry for the newbie question...
Of course if a developer updates an app specifically for the new resolution it will look fine and isn't any harder to create the new assets. However, what we're talking about is up-scaling of lower res graphics. 2x upscaling will look cleaner than 1.25x.
I'm a programmer not a digital artist so I don't have much practical experience with this sort of thing. But seeing as you haven't had any other responses I'll give you my suggestions anyway!
The approach that I'd take would depend on what sort of wallpaper you were creating. If the wallpaper was based on a photo or naturalistic artwork then I would try to stay in the resolution of the original image for as long as possible. Then at the end of the process I would downsize once for iPad 1 and once for iPad 2 if it does get a higher-res display. I would also investigate whether I could keep any text I use editable until I save the final JPEGs. This would allow the text to stay really sharp. I'm not sure if image editors will let you do this but I wouldn't be surprised if Photoshop could.
If the wallpaper was a more abstract design (such as a logo or line art) I would look at using a vector drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. These are normally harder to use as you don't paint directly but instead create lines and shapes to produce your design. However the big advantage is that vector drawings can be rendered at many different sizes and they will be sharp at all of them.
If you wanted to have a single wallpaper image that works well on both iPad 1 and 2 then I think you will have to wait until iPad 2 is actually released before deciding. You could use a high-res image(maybe 4 megapixel) and rely on the iPad/iTunes to scale it down. For photos and some artwork this would work well but obviously you would have a much larger image to host/download.
Finally I would probably create the wallpaper as a square image; remember that iPad wallpapers have to work in both portrait and landscape.
This is not exactly correct. Let's say I'm a developer (which I am) and one of my buttons has a 1 pixel wide border in the 1x (non-retina) version, which I create as a vector-based graphic in Photoshop. When I go to make the iPhone 4 version of this button at 2x, I can simply scale my vectors by 2 and my Retina display button will have a 2 pixel wide border around it as it should. However, if the scale factor is not a whole number, say 1.25, then I have to decide how to treat the border of the button. Should it become 2 pixels? Should it stay 1 pixel? Should I interpolate somehow? Photoshop can handle sub-pixel units, but getting everything to look right and line up correctly in the scaled up version requires some extra tedious work at least. This extra pixel tweaking can really add up in an app with a lot of custom graphics.
If it's truly a vector graphic, then the border is not defined as being 1 pixel wide. That's simply how Photoshop chooses to render it when you export it in a raster format for your application. Your assumption is that the 1 pixel-wide border perfectly represents the actual thickness of the vector object, but it very well may not. In fact, the smaller the resolution you export the graphic, the less likely the result represents the intended proportions of vector objects.
Therefore, increasing the scale by 1.25 can serve only to produce a more accurate representation of the vector information. It doesn't require any extra work on your part either because you do not choose how to render the object in pixels (making it 1 or 2 pixels wide).
By the way, you owe me $50.
You can't scale like the iPhone 4 does with iPhone apps unless you're using a multiple of the original resolution, I.E, 2x, the only way to go with that is to require developers to support two different screen sizes which is not a go.
This is wrong on all accounts (by the way, many apps already support two different screen sizes - the iPhone and iPad).
No, it's not.
And by the way, that's different from what I'm saying and you know it; you don't have to support the 960x640 res on the iPhone 4 and the 480x320 res on the 3GS, you just make the app (and add HD images) and iOS handles it -- Apple isn't about to make a developer support two iPad resolutions.
1) You can't scale an application which has elements inside it of specific dimensions by anything but a multiple of its original resolution; you can do this with videos or images, but they've no elements inside of them. It just doesn't work (well).
2) Images yet to be updated would look terrible if they weren't an exact multiple of their original resolution; in fact, one of the "big" emphasises Steve put on the iPhone 4 when introduced at the Keynote event was that your app looks great already, all you have to do is add HD images to make it look even better. The old images look identical on the iPhone 4 as they do on the 3GS, I.E, no worse off; if the images were being scaled up by 50% instead of 100% they would look terrible until updated.
So, what you are saying, is that an iPhone app has both standard and HD graphics and the iOS automatically scales everything else about the app dimensions? For apps that do not have HD graphics, the standard graphics are also scaled up? You do realize that means the iPhone apps support two resolutions, right? Two sets of graphics - the OS handles scaling of everything else.
How would that be different than if iPad apps included standard and 1.25 scaled graphics and iOS "handled" the rest? It's the same thing. Two sets of graphics, the OS handles scaling of everything else.
These "elements" are defined in pixels. Images are defined in pixels. So it works the same way.
I just demonstrated to you at the top of this page that interpolation actually makes graphics look better than pixel doubling. Using the same processes, interpolation looks better at a scale of 1.25 or 1.5 too (and I can show you)!
Yes, but it's iOS that supports two resolutions; the developer doesn't have to do squat aside from provide higher resolution images.
I'm not talking about that. I was saying Apple won't make developers support two resolutions, regarding your reply saying that they already have to support two for the iPhone. The problem here, is the same as below:
It doesn't work the same way. Let me use a really bizarre but obvious example (quoted for easier reading):
I'm not talking about pixel doubling, that's what happens on the iPad with an iPhone app and it looks terrible.
Sorry was thinking 1280X720... 1/2 asleep when posting
Though I still stand by the fact that it wont make a massive difference when it comes to playing back video content.