Are You Disappointed from Retina Display Exclusion?

[zhenya]

My entire argument is that a retina is a luxury not actually particularly needed, and you are wondering how the iPad currently being easy to read is relevant to my argument? Really?

And calling small text, which I'm currently staring at, blurry is a reach. Yeah if I lean in and stare at one spot I can see the pixels, but reading a foot from my face it looks good. I mean come on the pc monitors people read on all day long are lower dpi. Did you buy a 1900x1200 11 inch monitor so you couldn't see any pixels?

Retina would be cool, I'm sure it would look great. But I don't see why it's an absolute must have a year from now unless someone else does so and we are talking marketing and I certainly do not care much at all that the ipad2 doesn't have it.

If they made such monitors, I would gladly buy them. I ALWAYS buy the highest resolution monitor available with any device purchase I make. However, it is somewhat less important on a computer used on a desk, because my reading distance is generally about 3 feet. With the iPad it's typically 12-16 inches. And again, I use the iPad primarily for reading, so no, I don't think it's a luxury to have crisp text. I'm glad it's sharp enough for you - it's not for me.

 

[hayesk]

Complete day dreaming Retina Display level would required the iPad to be 2560x1920... for 330 ppi... that's even greater then the highest resolution computer monitors of 30" with 2560x1600...

Realistically not possible...

It depends - people hold their iPads further than their phones, on average, so a lower DPI might be ok. 2048x1536 was bandied about, but simply not possible with today's combination of battery and video card technology. My guess is iPad 4. Maybe iPad 3, but I doubt it.

And to the OP, it wasn't "excluded" - it was never a contender. It's not like Apple had it ready to go and decided to leave it out.

 

[johnc22]

As a reading device, higher resolution is needed. At smaller text sizes the text is clearly blurry and grey. With good vision, you can see individual pixels at normal reading distance. I don't know how much more functional a part you could get than the display that you interact with 100% of the time you are using the device.

I agree. I can read much smaller text on my iphone4 with no problems. It would have been nice but unrealistic, IMO.

 

[McGiord]

The pixels look nasty. The fonts look awful when they are small. The video camera is very poor to populate the whole screen. I am disappointed. I didn't have the previous model, and yes I am spoiled with my iPhone 4.
My wife is also not happy as she tought she would be with the iPad 2 instead of a MacBook.

 

[Sodner]

Absolutely NOT disappointed. This new iPad is rocket fast. It just feels so much better, lighter, thinner even though in reality they only shaved a tiny bit of weight off. I am 100% satisfied.

You resolution spec whores just go without 1 more year while the rest of us enjoy our iPads.

 

[Martyimac]

Saw one yesterday at the local BB and was surprised at just how good it did look. At my normal reading distance I could not see pixels. So for me, retina display or not, I would have bought one, if they hadn't already sold out.

 

[BergerFan]

I laugh when people talk about the current iPad's pixel density, amidst claims of "it hurts my eyes etc."
Pure placebo effect, in my opinion.
Folks had no problems looking at lower res displays on fuzzy monitors back in the day, when 1024x768 was considered 'high resolution'.
I remember when 640x480 or 800x600 was the norm.
As much as love my iPhone 4's Retina Display, and hoped it would be on the iPad 2, realistically, I knew it was a non-starter(for now).

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

Display is pretty gorgeous by itself.

 

[zhenya]

I laugh when people talk about the current iPad's pixel density, amidst claims of "it hurts my eyes etc."
Pure placebo effect, in my opinion.
Folks had no problems looking at lower res displays on fuzzy monitors back in the day, when 1024x768 was considered 'high resolution'.
I remember when 640x480 or 800x600 was the norm.
As much as love my iPhone 4's Retina Display, and hoped it would be on the iPad 2, realistically, I knew it was a non-starter(for now).

Uh, I don't know where you were at the time, but in the days of low-res CRT monitors, eye strain was a major issue for people who worked all day with computers. Modern panels that don't flicker have eased this greatly, but higher resolution certainly hasn't hurt.

 

[vrDrew]

How disappointed would you be if the iPad 2 started at $800; had a 4 hour battery life; had laggy screen performance; and held half as much digital video content as it does now?

Because thats what would have happened if they'd put a Retina display in it.

Until Apple introduced the Retina display on the iPhone less than a year ago, I'll guarantee that most of the people crying about how "disappointed" they are had never even noticed the resolution on their smartphone.

 

[zhenya]

How disappointed would you be if the iPad 2 started at $800; had a 4 hour battery life; had laggy screen performance; and held half as much digital video content as it does now?

Because thats what would have happened if they'd put a Retina display in it.

Until Apple introduced the Retina display on the iPhone less than a year ago, I'll guarantee that most of the people crying about how "disappointed" they are had never even noticed the resolution on their smartphone.

Uh, it was a major issue for me on the early iPhones. At the scale I wanted to view most web pages, the text was not readable. On the iPhone 4, it is. Why did the iPhone 4 double the screen resolution but get markedly better battery life?

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

YES I am very disappointed. With several things, not just the lack of retina display...

I went to the Apple Store yesterday to play with a new iPad 2. The first thing I noticed was that I kept wiping the screen thinking there had to be smudges on it. Why else would the screen seem blurry or unfocused? Then I realized I've gotten accustomed to looking at my iPhone 4 for almost a year, and now the iPad 2 display looks fuzzy. Text looks especially bad, and is practically unreadable when viewing a full-size web page zoomed out.

The quality of the front-facing FaceTime camera is staggeringly bad. The front camera in the iPhone 4 is much, much better. The camera in my 4-year old MacBook Pro is better. I noticed a tremendous amount of pixelation and aliasing on things like my hair, diagonal lines, etc. My partner decided the quality was so bad that he would be downgrading his video chatting experience by using an iPad 2.

It's sad, but while Apple may have made the product thinner and sexier, they really missed the boat with some obvious omissions. Overall the iPad 2 feels like a toy and not a serious product. That's just my impression. This definitely leaves an opportunity for companies like Blackberry, HP and Samsung to put out more "pro" level products. Apple lost my business on this one.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

How disappointed would you be if the iPad 2 started at $800; had a 4 hour battery life; had laggy screen performance; and held half as much digital video content as it does now?

Because thats what would have happened if they'd put a Retina display in it.

Until Apple introduced the Retina display on the iPhone less than a year ago, I'll guarantee that most of the people crying about how "disappointed" they are had never even noticed the resolution on their smartphone.

Really? I mean really?

If you double the pixel resolution, you get four times as many pixels as before. But wait - Apple says the iPad 2 has 9x faster graphics... so having four times as many pixels on a 9x faster system means that you can absolutely use a retina-level display and still offer 2.25x the graphics performance of iPad 1. It's perfectly possible.

 

[WoodrowCall]

I'm absolutely disappointed...with the fact that I can't even find one to buy. Right now, that's a bigger problem than this "alleged" screen everyone is able to look at.

 

[BergerFan]

Uh, I don't know where you were at the time, but in the days of low-res CRT monitors, eye strain was a major issue for people who worked all day with computers. Modern panels that don't flicker have eased this greatly, but higher resolution certainly hasn't hurt.

As you rightly point out, the flickering, etc, was the cause of the headaches and eye strain.
I doubt that the low resolution had anything to with it in reality(although it probably was blamed too).

 

[fertilized-egg]

I'm absolutely disappointed...with the fact that I can't even find one to buy. Right now, that's a bigger problem than this "alleged" screen everyone is able to look at.

And there's the difficulty. If Apple was making this thing an expensive niche item, they could've gone with higher res, etc just to experiment. However you need:

- enough yearly display supplies for, what 30 - 50 million units? They already can't make enough of them.
- good enough QC for those millions of units. They are already having trouble with some QC stuff as we know.
...and going "Retina" will only make these two problems worse. Apple won't jump unless they are absolutely sure there's enough production of Retina screens to satisfy the demand, which might make us wait yet another year after the next one, who knows.

And while the GPU probably is good enough, the RAM probably isn't for such high res. Apple will have to give it at least 1G+, which means even higher cost.

 

[mikejs210]

Absolutely NOT disappointed. This new iPad is rocket fast. It just feels so much better, lighter, thinner even though in reality they only shaved a tiny bit of weight off. I am 100% satisfied.

You resolution spec whores just go without 1 more year while the rest of us enjoy our iPads.

Exactly what he said.

 

[stabile007]

Yes I am disappointed but I also know that reality sets in and that Apple wants to maintain that $500 price point (something I firmly agree with) and that with that in mind it is very very difficult to put a screen of that resolution onto the iPad and maintain the same price point. I am positive Apple is working with its screen manufacturers trying to figure a way to do it but for a screen this size I think expecting a retina display this year was unrealistic.

It would need to be perfect when it comes out and meet that 300ppi or higher requirement Apple set itself because they do not want to keep having to change the resolution like every year as it gets better so that app development gets fragmented. So if it takes the iPad 3 or even iPad 4 before they can do that then I don't mind and I understand the reasons why. I will though be lining up to get whatever iPad that ends up being then.

 

[olternaut]

Disappointed absolutely. But realistically now that we think about it the Retina was a long shot. Not only the display would've cost a lot more, it would've been necessary for Apple to cram in at least 1G of RAM if not more. Seeing that we're looking at 30~40+ million of iPads, it probably just wasn't possible.

A similar danger was AMOLED. Imagine what would've happened if Apple had picked AMOLED for the iPhone and was severely constrained by the limited supplies of that screen.

It wouldn't have cost more to us and that's the only thing that matters. After Apple's 7 billion dollar component deal we would have gotten the component well within Apple's normal consumer product price range.

We just didn't get it because of manufacturing issues. March 2012 will be another story though.

 

[bidwalj]

It's hard to be disappointed when such a display has yet to be seen in one. Now if the iPhone 5 didn't have one, then yes I probably will be

 

[CrAkD]

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I waited in line and love my iPad 2 but for some reason the scream seems worse to me then the iPad 1. I know it's not and I know the retina wasnt possible yet but apple has to do something next year even if it's not retina cause text really does look bad when you have a webpage completely zoomed out.

 

[zacware]

Please keep in mind that having a 2X "retina" display on the iPad would mean FOUR times the pixels of the current model. That's 4 times as much work for the graphics chip to paint a frame on the screen.

Scrolling in web browsers, and Frame rates in animations and games would greatly suffer compared to how wonderful they are now.

It wasn't too long ago that people were using 15 and 17 inch monitors on their computer running at 1024x768 resolution and the iPad is running 10" at the same resolution so it's much higher pixel density that many people were using just a few years ago.

I love my iPad screen.

 

[xraydoc]

No, I'm not disappointed. I just don't see 2048x1536 pixels - nearly a 27" iMac - on a 9.7" screen as realistic at this point. Perhaps in a year. Perhaps not. Even every other tablet manufacturer, from Motorola to Samsung to RIM, haven't yet gotten above standard 10" screen resolutions yet, either 1024x768 4:3 or 1280x800 16:10 despite trying desperately to out do the iPad.

 

[theturtle]

All bias aside. To the people who have had or used a xoom. Is the difference in pixels noticeable (3G to iPhone 4 type diff) or not really?

 

[chrono1081]

Okay, before someone flames me. I'm one of the people who LOVE my iPad 2. Waited in line for five hours and am very happy with my purchase. Just curious though, is anybody who bought the ipad 2 a bit disappointed that the retina display was excluded? Is it even possible to have included the retina display? Wouldn't it have cost too much?

Just asking cause from the constant reviews I read of the iPad 2, they always bring up the fact that the xoom has a higher res screen.

I'm not disappointed because retina display is not doable with the current technology with an iPad. It would take some serious graphics power (and battery power) to pump out the graphics for the device. I'm sure Apple will be the first to stick it in there whenever it becomes possible.