Apple should make the iPhone 5 1280 x 960 and the iPad 3 1920x1280.
The iPhone 5 would have double the resolution of the iPhone 4s to display two iPhone 4s apps side by side, and the iPad 3 would have double the resolution of the iPhone 5 and four times the resolution of the iPhone 4s.
Apple clearly can't stay at a resolution of 1024x768. That's a lower resolution than some competitors already, and that's only going to become more prominent by next year.
People like Eso are saying that the pixel doubling (upgrading the iPad to 2048 x 1536) isn't the only option, that Apple could go to an intermediate resolution and use interpolation to make images look better than they would with simple pixel doubling.
Also, by upgrading to a resolution of say 1280x960 (the current resolution x 1.25) or 1920x1440, the iPad could play back 720p or 1080p content in it's native resolution without any scaling. And it could display two or three iPhone apps (640x960) side by side for multitasking, once again without any scaling. Both those resolutions maintain the exact same 4:3 aspect ratio as the current iPad.
I would be fine with that. What about you guys?
To the people saying Apple going to 1280x960 or 1920x1440 would make things harder for developers, or would cause old apps to look bad, I found this article (about interpolation, something the A5's GPU can easily do on it's own without taxing developer's time) particularly insightful...
Apple's Embarrassing Predicament
Also, Eso's post on this was insightful...
I just don't see 2048x1536 happening. Such a high resolution display at 10 inches with multitouch would cost as absurd amount of money and I don't see how they could do that and still sell the iPad at $500.
But I'm very unhappy with the current resolution, that is lower than most competiting tablets. I would feel much better even with an upgrade to 1280x960 which would bring it more in line with competing tablets (many of which offer a higher resolution than the current iPad). 1920x1440 would completely leap frog the competition while still maintaining compatibility with most websites and images on the web.
The iPhone 5 would have double the resolution of the iPhone 4s to display two iPhone 4s apps side by side, and the iPad 3 would have double the resolution of the iPhone 5 and four times the resolution of the iPhone 4s.
Apple clearly can't stay at a resolution of 1024x768. That's a lower resolution than some competitors already, and that's only going to become more prominent by next year.
People like Eso are saying that the pixel doubling (upgrading the iPad to 2048 x 1536) isn't the only option, that Apple could go to an intermediate resolution and use interpolation to make images look better than they would with simple pixel doubling.
Also, by upgrading to a resolution of say 1280x960 (the current resolution x 1.25) or 1920x1440, the iPad could play back 720p or 1080p content in it's native resolution without any scaling. And it could display two or three iPhone apps (640x960) side by side for multitasking, once again without any scaling. Both those resolutions maintain the exact same 4:3 aspect ratio as the current iPad.
I would be fine with that. What about you guys?
To the people saying Apple going to 1280x960 or 1920x1440 would make things harder for developers, or would cause old apps to look bad, I found this article (about interpolation, something the A5's GPU can easily do on it's own without taxing developer's time) particularly insightful...
Apple's Embarrassing Predicament
Some wager that the upcoming iPad 2 will pixel double both axis, similar to what the iPhone 4 did relative to its predecessor, while others believe that it will keep the resolution of the current generation.
Doubling both axis is a formidable technical challenge and would be a unique, likely expensive display. Continuing with the current resolution would represent a significant competitive disadvantage. As people acclimate to high density smartphones, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad's low density is really starting to stand out.
Few believe it will do anything in between. It won’t, the common wisdom goes, go to say 1920 x 1440 or 1280 x 960, or any other fractional improvement less than an outright doubling or quadrupling. The logic is that pixel scaling issues eliminate the possibility of such a half measure.
This harkens to discussions that occurred over 20 years ago.
It should be an embarrassment that such a discussion is occurring in 2011.
In the TiPb article linked above the author leads off with a slur towards Android, saying “Either iPad 2 will have a standard 1024×768 display or a doubled 2048×1538 Retina Display, or developers and users will be in for the type of frustration usually ascribed to Android.”
That makes for an odd, if not outright ignorant, statement: I can’t recall ever reading anyone complain about the density independent pixel of Android, or its awareness and accommodation of a wide variety of profiles. That’s a problem that it has solved very well, and a large ecosystem of sizes and resolutions of displays exist in remarkable harmony.
Consumers like being able to choose between 3” – 15”+ devices with a wide variety of densities. Choice is good.
Because of course the DPI issue has long been solved. Otherwise you would be lamenting that your 72dpi word processor isn’t compatible with your 300dpi printer: “Everything prints out all tiny-like”. Is that the case?
Vector fonts with pixel independent abstractions have been around for a long time (in TrueType and Postscript form), with Apple as one of the primary inventors. Most GUI frameworks, including iOS, have the ability to scale UI rudiments to virtually any resolution and pixel density with ease.
That is an ancient problem, long solved.
But what about icons? What about bitmap graphic artifacts?
In an ideal world icons would come in vector graphic form. That isn’t the case on Android (the platform doesn’t support SVG, including in the browser, which is a huge deficiency), but it is still shocking that Apple, which usually takes the lead on such innovations, doesn’t use them for iOS, as had been widely speculated as a given before the iPhone OS was first released.
With a vector graphic the rendered image is always perfect for the target, ideally with hints that suppress decorations at very low sizes.
Even with bitmap graphics, however, while it’s easy to contrive ridiculous examples to demonstrate the worst of scaling, the reality is that given that text should always be UI generated from vector fonts, perfect for the target, and graphics are usually just supplementary decorations, where scaling up or down by partial multiples is often perfectly adequate.
For your consideration below are some iOS icons (used for fair use purposes but owned by Apple) at their original pixel size, and then scaled to 125% and 150%. Scaling was done using Sinc (Lanczos3), which is a good algorithm to use when scaling up and you want to maintain fine detail.
The horrors! Just to be clear (as it's hard to imagine what the larger images would look like when shown in the same physical space), we're comparing this to simply pixel-doubling, which would look like the following (cropped to avoid exceeding most reader's screen bounds).
There is no universe where a straight pixel-doubled image looks better than an interpolated image, unless you have fine detail in the image (like text) which shouldn't be in the image to begin with.
Not only do they still look great, but remember that in such a case the actual viewed sizes would also decrease proportionally, so the marginal artifacts would be rendered completely irrelevant. Reading some of the blog entries on scaling you would think you’d end up with some sort of blob.
Not to mention that most iPad apps would be fixed up to handle the new platform shortly after the SDK were released...
Doubling both axis is a formidable technical challenge and would be a unique, likely expensive display. Continuing with the current resolution would represent a significant competitive disadvantage. As people acclimate to high density smartphones, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad's low density is really starting to stand out.
Few believe it will do anything in between. It won’t, the common wisdom goes, go to say 1920 x 1440 or 1280 x 960, or any other fractional improvement less than an outright doubling or quadrupling. The logic is that pixel scaling issues eliminate the possibility of such a half measure.
This harkens to discussions that occurred over 20 years ago.
It should be an embarrassment that such a discussion is occurring in 2011.
In the TiPb article linked above the author leads off with a slur towards Android, saying “Either iPad 2 will have a standard 1024×768 display or a doubled 2048×1538 Retina Display, or developers and users will be in for the type of frustration usually ascribed to Android.”
That makes for an odd, if not outright ignorant, statement: I can’t recall ever reading anyone complain about the density independent pixel of Android, or its awareness and accommodation of a wide variety of profiles. That’s a problem that it has solved very well, and a large ecosystem of sizes and resolutions of displays exist in remarkable harmony.
Consumers like being able to choose between 3” – 15”+ devices with a wide variety of densities. Choice is good.
Because of course the DPI issue has long been solved. Otherwise you would be lamenting that your 72dpi word processor isn’t compatible with your 300dpi printer: “Everything prints out all tiny-like”. Is that the case?
Vector fonts with pixel independent abstractions have been around for a long time (in TrueType and Postscript form), with Apple as one of the primary inventors. Most GUI frameworks, including iOS, have the ability to scale UI rudiments to virtually any resolution and pixel density with ease.
That is an ancient problem, long solved.
But what about icons? What about bitmap graphic artifacts?
In an ideal world icons would come in vector graphic form. That isn’t the case on Android (the platform doesn’t support SVG, including in the browser, which is a huge deficiency), but it is still shocking that Apple, which usually takes the lead on such innovations, doesn’t use them for iOS, as had been widely speculated as a given before the iPhone OS was first released.
With a vector graphic the rendered image is always perfect for the target, ideally with hints that suppress decorations at very low sizes.
Even with bitmap graphics, however, while it’s easy to contrive ridiculous examples to demonstrate the worst of scaling, the reality is that given that text should always be UI generated from vector fonts, perfect for the target, and graphics are usually just supplementary decorations, where scaling up or down by partial multiples is often perfectly adequate.
For your consideration below are some iOS icons (used for fair use purposes but owned by Apple) at their original pixel size, and then scaled to 125% and 150%. Scaling was done using Sinc (Lanczos3), which is a good algorithm to use when scaling up and you want to maintain fine detail.
The horrors! Just to be clear (as it's hard to imagine what the larger images would look like when shown in the same physical space), we're comparing this to simply pixel-doubling, which would look like the following (cropped to avoid exceeding most reader's screen bounds).
There is no universe where a straight pixel-doubled image looks better than an interpolated image, unless you have fine detail in the image (like text) which shouldn't be in the image to begin with.
Not only do they still look great, but remember that in such a case the actual viewed sizes would also decrease proportionally, so the marginal artifacts would be rendered completely irrelevant. Reading some of the blog entries on scaling you would think you’d end up with some sort of blob.
Not to mention that most iPad apps would be fixed up to handle the new platform shortly after the SDK were released...
Also, Eso's post on this was insightful...
Here's an experiment, which image looks better?
I just don't see 2048x1536 happening. Such a high resolution display at 10 inches with multitouch would cost as absurd amount of money and I don't see how they could do that and still sell the iPad at $500.
But I'm very unhappy with the current resolution, that is lower than most competiting tablets. I would feel much better even with an upgrade to 1280x960 which would bring it more in line with competing tablets (many of which offer a higher resolution than the current iPad). 1920x1440 would completely leap frog the competition while still maintaining compatibility with most websites and images on the web.
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