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redryder

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2010
96
0
I haven't received my new iPad so I can't test. If a pdf reader app is not updated for the retina screen, would the text be just as sharp as ibooks 2 or will it be blurry?
 
I'm guessing it looks just like an iPad 2 would. It may seem to look awful, but it doesn't. I remember when apps started updating for the iPhone 4. The built-in apps had icons that were upgraded, but some took a while. Those lagging behind looked AWFUL, but it was just by comparison.

The good news for people like me is Kindle updated yesterday, which is kinda huge. I just hope the magazines I subscribe to update their future issues. I doubt the older ones will get changed, but maybe we'll get lucky.
 
When Apple introduced the Retina Display in the iPhone 4, they mentioned that text will be rendered in the higher resolution as part of the OS. So any app that is text heavy will look amazing already. Steve Jobs noted though, that if developers updated their apps with higher res images, then it would be even more amazing. But the text is always rendered in the higher resolution.
 
Not true with all apps, as was the case with the Amazon Kindle app. It had to be updated to use hi-res text.

Hmm, maybe it's the way that text is rendered then. If the app uses the built in rendering in the OS, then it doesn't, but if the app has a different way of doing it specific to the app, then it'll have to be updated. Who knows? lol
 
Not true with all apps, as was the case with the Amazon Kindle app. It had to be updated to use hi-res text.

That is a very special case. The Kindle app does some custom rendering so that the final display is actually a bitmap with text in it rather than normal system-rendered text. Almost all other apps will have hi-res text.
 
Unfortunately Goodreader hasn't been updated yet and I was surprised to see text rendered at the old resolution when viewing PDFs saved out of Word on my mac.

Does anyone know of a good PDF annotator for the new iPad that has retina-ready rendering?
 
Further research seems to suggest that blurry text is common in PDF apps that haven't been optimised for the retina iPad, contrary to what was suggested by Apple :confused:

I'm getting blurry PDF text in...

Goodreader
GoodNotes
neu.Annotate+

The only one I've used so far that can annotate retina-opimised text is...

Paperport Notes, but unfortunately it is very sluggish (interface and drawing).

Anyone got any other suggestions? I have a lot of annotating to do and I'd like to make the most of my pixels...
 
Does it really have everything to do with an app not being retina-optimised? I would have thought that high-quality PDF scans are a must. Kinda difficult for an app to extract pixels where there aren't any. Also, some devs may not have got their hands on the device yet in order to improve their app. Give it time ;)
 
Does it really have everything to do with an app not being retina-optimised? I would have thought that high-quality PDF scans are a must. Kinda difficult for an app to extract pixels where there aren't any. Also, some devs may not have got their hands on the device yet in order to improve their app. Give it time ;)

I'd say so. I'm talking about text data from an application, not graphic data from a scanner.

Sure, I know developers will update their apps. I just happened to have a big annotation project and a nice new iPad. I have been using Notability which has beautiful text rendering and responsive on-screen drawing which happens to be working fine for this project. I suspect other apps will end up being better when they are updated though.
 
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