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Xcode 6 Allows Developers to Test Larger iPhone and iPad Screen Sizes

garylapointe said:
Some icons were replace with 2x images and if those images had words (not text, bitmapped words) on them (not saying they should but some did) and they didn't quadruple words in size (2 in both directions), they'd be smaller (or they might have changed "info" to "information", resulting in smaller text).

My iPhone-only apps are a whole lot easier to read on my iPad when running at 2x. Because they think they're running on a smaller device.
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I don't get it.

Non-retina: 300x300 images is mapped as 300x300 image.
Retina: 600x600 image is mapped as 300x300 image.

Why would bitmapped text become smaller? Either way, it gets mapped at 300x300. No difference here. The only way it would get smaller, is when you dedicate normal bitmaps as @2x bitmaps. But that's just silly.

Maybe you could provide some screenshots to make it clear what you're saying?
 
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petsounds said:
I wouldn't say "zero" doubt. It's equally likely that this relates to a forthcoming full-iOS Apple TV or an iWatch. I'm still not convinced that a bigger iPhone is coming.
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They're labelled as "Resizable iPhone" and "Resizable iPad", not "Resizable iOS Device".

Anyone got them to work yet? Just freezes up for me.
 
AdonisSMU said:
It's $99/year. I don't know how else you an get around it. I wish Apple would let every developer try out the platform who wants to. I'm not quite sure of the logic.
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Well, you can get a free developer's account. That is what I have. You can get everything but Beta stuff. Right now, the latest version of Xcode is in Beta.
 
AdonisSMU said:
It's $99/year. I don't know how else you an get around it. I wish Apple would let every developer try out the platform who wants to. I'm not quite sure of the logic.
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$99/yr is cheap. Real cheap, just over $0.25 a day. You spend more than that on soda. It just provides enough "friction" to dissuade those who aren't serious about development to any degree, people who really aren't suitable for using a beta version of infrastructure components (when, not if, it breaks it can really screw things up). If you don't have enough "skin in the game" to cough up $99/yr, wait for the proper release.
 
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TC03 said:
I don't get it.

Non-retina: 300x300 images is mapped as 300x300 image.
Retina: 600x600 image is mapped as 300x300 image.
Click to expand...

I'm not the one who said they look exactly the same: The 2x option for images is so that they do not look the same. A 600x600 2x image is put in a location area defined as 300x300 but retina knows it's bigger and it's showing it as 600x600.

If an app has a 300x300 icon that has the word "info" bitmapped 10 pixels high. But when they create 2x bitmap, and instead of bitmapping it higher quality 20 pixels high, they leave it 10 pixels high, it's going to be 4 times (halfhigh and half wide) smaller. (I'm not saying they should do it this way, I"m just giving this example as to how things can look smaller).

I only have one iPad at this time so I can't compare things for screen capture examples.

My easiest example is for you to run an iPhone only app on your iPad at 2x, things are bigger than at 1x (because it's x2 and they aren't adjusting the fonts to be smaller just because of the PPI. (Or compare the text on a iPad to an iPad mini, if they haven't adjusted icons, the icons will be smaller).

Gary
 
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Hmmmm. Well, If I think Apple should keep the 5s (and update it as hardware becomes available) and call it iPhone Classic. Then they should launch the 4.7" and 5.5" to cater to the markets demand. I have gone from an iPhone to a number of different Android devices and one thing I do enjoy is the screen size. If they ":apple:" want to gain market share they have to have options for different consumers. Why kill the 5s in favor of 2 fixed screen sizes? there may be more to it than just keeping 3 different units in production.
 
jonchacon said:
Hmmmm. Well, If I think Apple should keep the 5s (and update it as hardware becomes available) and call it iPhone Classic. Then they should launch the 4.7" and 5.5" to cater to the markets demand. I have gone from an iPhone to a number of different Android devices and one thing I do enjoy is the screen size. If they ":apple:" want to gain market share they have to have options for different consumers. Why kill the 5s in favor of 2 fixed screen sizes? there may be more to it than just keeping 3 different units in production.
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That is a good point. I kinda wanted Apple to make a platform for their devices based on javascript and responsive design. Instead we keep getting static designs. Yes it is tailored to the device but that also costs a lot of money to have a different version for each screen size. Lets keep all the different screen sizes and let the users chose what they want. Apple customers tend to what what is the newest gadget even if they don't want it. Maybe having three different sizes will force people to choose and force Apple to go responsive.

/rant
 
Wow. If ever you needed proof that larger iPhones/iPads are upon us, there it is right before your eyes. What the heck else could that possibly be for??? :)
 
garylapointe said:
I'm not the one who said they look exactly the same: The 2x option for images is so that they do not look the same. A 600x600 2x image is put in a location area defined as 300x300 but retina knows it's bigger and it's showing it as 600x600.

If an app has a 300x300 icon that has the word "info" bitmapped 10 pixels high. But when they create 2x bitmap, and instead of bitmapping it higher quality 20 pixels high, they leave it 10 pixels high, it's going to be 4 times (halfhigh and half wide) smaller. (I'm not saying they should do it this way, I"m just giving this example as to how things can look smaller).

I only have one iPad at this time so I can't compare things for screen capture examples.

My easiest example is for you to run an iPhone only app on your iPad at 2x, things are bigger than at 1x (because it's x2 and they aren't adjusting the fonts to be smaller just because of the PPI. (Or compare the text on a iPad to an iPad mini, if they haven't adjusted icons, the icons will be smaller).

Gary
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I write iOS apps for a living, and your logic makes my head hurt.
A 300x300 image on a non-retina display is displayed as a 300x300 image. A 600x600@2x image on a retina display is displayed as a 300x300 image. When you write iOS code, you specify size as points, not pixels.
What you're referring to is scaling. When you run an iPhone app on your iPad, and choose the 2x option, you're upscaling everything on the screen. This has nothing to do with the app.
 
bizack said:
I write iOS apps for a living, and your logic makes my head hurt.
A 300x300 image on a non-retina display is displayed as a 300x300 image. A 600x600@2x image on a retina display is displayed as a 300x300 image. When you write iOS code, you specify size as points, not pixels.
What you're referring to is scaling. When you run an iPhone app on your iPad, and choose the 2x option, you're upscaling everything on the screen. This has nothing to do with the app.
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I understand running an iPhone app at 2x has nothing to do with the app.

When you say "A 600x600@2x image on a retina display is displayed as a 300x300 image" you make it sound as if you are only seeing one-quarter of the image. The coordinate system you use when programming is treated as a non-retina display, but when you decide where that "300x300" location is, it's displaying the 600x600 image. You might treat it as a 300x300 image when you reference it, but it's displaying your 600x600 image properly. I get that the OS is is taking care of sticking the correct image there for the retina display (assuming you've supplied a 2x image).

I get the pixels vs. points: the location is treated 300x300 points in size, whether it's a retina or non-retina, and even if it's a 300x300 pixel or a 2x 600x600 pixel.

What I don't understand is why you're saying it's displayed as a 300x300 image: you might treat the 600x600@2x image as a 300x300 image (as a programmer), but it's not being displayed as 300x300, it's displayed (viewed) (to the viewer) as 600x600.

And if you don't supply the 2x image, the OS is going to scale the 300x300 image to fit the 600x600 area, right? (that's what happens to apps that aren't optimized for retina)

All I was trying to originally say, that it's be nice to somehow make (trick) some of the apps that make text to small to think they're on a smaller device and then scale (didn't use that word) them larger so that they're more readable (like the 2x iPhone scaling). That option that made me think of that is not even an option on the iPad (it's in the simulator).

Thanks,
Gary
 
Mattsasa said:
what??? it doesn't work that way.
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FlipBoard on the retina iPad appears to do so: when browsing Tumblr, some image sizes it choses to display in the same size as the web and the tumblr app.

You can clearly see this (quite often) when someone has a Tumblr post with one or two larger images horizontally and then a horizontal row of three images. On the web and app all three rows are the same width but in FlipBoard some of the lines aren't the same horizontal width. I won't say it happens every time when the images numbers per row are mismatched, but many times it does.

It's like they chose to treat some images @2x and some sizes not that way.

If I was creating a program and had the resources I understand how to create the 2x and 1x images and let the system take care of properly mapping them on retina and non-retina devices (from the programming standpoint, you treat it as a non-retina device).

From a programming standpoint, I don't know how moving bitmaps around that you're downloading on demand works, but Xcode must give you an option to tell it if the bitmap is 2x or not).

Gary
 
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