The iPad 3 would make me so horny... In my Dad's generation, middle-aged men of means would buy new cars at the end of every July because that's when new licence plates came out. Their old cars would be traded in as part-exchange, sold to third parties through classified ads, or passed magnanimously to relatives. This was regarded as civilised and financially …
The only way I can think it would is that images are not simply resized so each pixel is displayed as a 2x2 rectangle of the same colour, but upscaled/upsampled to try and improve the resolution, and this leads to blurring or other artifacts.
If this is the case Apple could easily release an iOS update which disables this or makes it a config option or an API option or something.
Welcome to the wonderful world of fragmentation. Yes, you all laughed an Androids efforts at solving the same-content-multiple-form-factor problem, but they pretty much have done a good job with a clear future roadmap which does include TVs - and even glasses as we heard this week. Android has had fragmentation solutions from the start, so save for kit a few years old which would have underpowered processing/memory anyway it's ok, and is just getting better. Apple on the other hand are just discovering it - they have to retrofit everything they can now since it's all an afterthought, and, err, sorry but this is only the start - it gets much worse from now on as they too get into different hardware. So who's laughing now?
I have both devices in front of me right now. Prerendered content looks identical, as do apps that have yet to be adapted for the retina display.
If there's a complaint at all, you quickly mentally adjust to the decent text rendering offered by [almost] all apps that render their text live, making the prerendered stuff look worse by comparison. It then looks equally bad on both devices.
Games that haven't been updated, like Angry Birds, look the same on both devices but even then my brain doesn't really notice anything particularly odd. It's really just the text where most people will be conscious of the difference.
If this is your example that iOS is going to be ruined by fragmentation, then fine. A small subset of apps (some e-magazines) reportedly look slightly worse on the new screen vs. the old one.
And since nobody seems to be able to describe or explain or demonstrate how they look worse, it's unclear if they REALLY look worse, or they look the same as before which is worse in comparison to content designed for the new screen. I'm fine with that.
...distributing magazine content on digital devices in the form of a bunch of raster images is a stupid, misguided, and profoundly sucky thing to do.
What good is a bunch of effin' PICTURES of magazine pages, fercrissake? The text isn't text, which means it isn't searchable, it can't be indexed, it can't be annotated, you can't copy-paste it into another app. Seriously, when it comes to ways to distribute information in the Information Age, this is imbecilic.
There are all sorts of file formats which are designed to preserve the look of a printed page in a digital file while keeping the text as text instead of pixels, so that, you know, it can be SEARCHED since it's on a bloody COMPUTER and that's one of the things we use computers FOR.
If it were possible to attach two icons to a post here at El Reg, I'd make them both "fail" for this.
Just to read magazines, advertising, email and weather, I can frankly save myself the annoyance.
For any real work or fun, like recording music or editing video, its too damned hard to get your own data in and out of it.
Its like submitting to a totally corporate controlled environment, where you have to play by anyones rules but your own.
Thanks, but no thanks...
Of course, I'm one of those people who tossed a brand new TV into the dumpster in 1997, after my TV addict ex refused to take it with her, and never missed either of them since.
Not so crazy a suggestion. We have a 24" 720p TV and a 1080p noname 24" TV. BR content looks better on the 1080P by far but DVD look shoddy on the 1080p compared to the 720p. All from teh same XBMC player (changed resolutions etc.) maybe the upscale software is crap?
As much as I dislike Apple for being a douchebag company and won't buy their overpriced products, perhaps they are needed in this world to keep the other company's on their toes. They must have done something right to grow this large, design, integration etc. If only they stopped being douchebags and were more price competitive I might even buy their products. But then they would stop being Apple.
Top end Android phones like the HTC One X, reviewed today on the Reg, have 4 core CPUs - the "new" iPad merely has 2, and on that point there's talk of the overheating problems being down to that cheapkskate decision since 4 would spread the load more, resulting in each running cooler for the same workload, etc.
iOS is considerably better at offloading rendering tasks to the GPU, plus what CPU is required for the GUI is handled as a real time task. Android renders on the app thread, so it needs a more powerful CPU to provide the same apparent (free from glitches and jerks) GUI experience.
The reason that the iPad runs SLIGHTLY warmer than Android tablets like the Transformer or the Galaxy Tab (2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, not a significant difference) is the HUGE GPU pushing 3-4 times the number of pixels. It's still faster than the Tergra 3 GPU, even with the extra work.
GPUs only get hot when doing hardcore gaming work. Pushing graphics around is like driving you car slowly in second gear...
The main reasons the new iPad gets hot lie elsewhere. One is simple... big fat back light. 2.5x as much power as in the previous models. Second... the new Android devices use SOCs, like the nVidia Tegra 3, implemented in 32nm silicon. The A5x is 45nm, so, much more heat doing the same work. Like drawing pixels...
Also, the effect of dual vs. quad core CPU is the same as single vs dual. As long as your OS is properly multi threaded, the work is spread across all CPUs. Android does thus better, but iOS certainly does this too. For the same workload, four CPUs at 500MHz does the same work as two at 1GHz. But each 500MHz CPU will use 1/4 the power of that same CPU at 1GHz... of course better still in a more advanced process. So Apple's using more power here. They're also the only tablet so far to include a full laptop sized battery, so they backed this up right. But it still gets warmer.
Downvoted for such a ridiculous statement.
Even ignoring that iPads have been very competitively priced from the off, Apple don't set their competitors prices.
As for the article, the author lost me when he suggested that the "it's just a great big jpeg" style of digital magazines were anything other than an abomination.
Do you think that tablet prices would be the same if a lower-budget company had been there first? I don't.
They pretty-much invented the format, therefore they sat the price expectation for it. That is simple and straightforward, not ridiculous. How could they have been competitively priced, when there was no competition? Not possible. If you think they were fairly priced, that is a different issue: correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that Apple likes substantial margins.
The iPad WASN'T the first tablet. It was the first to combine form factor, content, hardware, software and price in a way that the public liked. Other companies are at a disadvantage from the software and content points of view so the obvious factors to compete on are price and form factor.
Cheaper tablets compromise on the hardware. TN rather than IPS screens, single A8 rather than twin A9 CPUs etc, and people don't seem to be keen on that.
Smaller tablets seem to be a hard sell also. They're not much more portable than 10" devices while decently spec'd models aren't much cheaper. Mostly people just go for the bigger models. The exception is Amazon, where they've got the content and a very low price point in their favour. The hardware is far from impressive.
Damn! Must be that wicked Apple marketing.
Even though I don't buy Apple products, I had got convinced that the iPad was the first of its kind, if not even the first tablet.
Whilst there might still be something in "first of its kind," as a collection of parts combined to make the whole as you describe, I guess I have to concede defeat on this one.
"The iPad WASN'T the first tablet. It was the first to combine form factor, content, hardware, software and price in a way that the public liked. Other companies are at a disadvantage from the software and content points of view so the obvious factors to compete on are price and form factor."
While you are correct about Apple not being the first tablet, you are wrong in your second statement. Apple is a marketing company and Apple was the first company to tell unintelligent people to buy a tablet. Prior to the iPad release, Asus had 17 inch tablets with quad core processors, 4 gigs of RAM, expandable hard drives, running full Windows 7. They were actually function. Apple did what it always does:
1.) Reduce specs by 10 years. They cut the quad core processor to a single core, cut the RAM from 4 gigs to 512kb, cut the hard drive from 500GB to 16GB.
2.) Cut features. Options are confusing to stupid people. Why should you be able to decide if you'd like to plug your tablet into a 1080p HDTV? That is too much responsibility for a moron. What the hell is an SD card? What is expandable memory? We'll just tell them to delete files when they run out of space on the 16GB hard drive, or buy a new one!
3.) Apply a 50% margin. Apple charges $600 for something that costs $300 to make, comprised of components they buy from their competition. All Apple does is assemble: they do not design anything past the case.
4.) Add some kind of flaw or defect in the tiny amount of design they actually do. Make the tablet overheat in sunlight and shut down. No one can see the screen in direct sun anyway. What do you think this is, a kindle? Ground the antenna to the metal case. The metal case could never come into contact with a giant resistor, like say, a person. Why would anyone hold their phone?
Apple was and is competitively priced, even from the start. They priced the entry level iPad at half the price of their entry level laptop. Apple sells expensive stuff, but if you buy the brand cachet and all that goes with it, the iPad was a good priced Apple product.
Android devices entered the market copying Apple's pricing, as dud other tablets. But you don't pay Mercedes prices for a Ford. They failed largely due to that... and some have fixed that mistake, and are doing well. Apple doesn't need to change anything about their formula, yet.
You downvote him, but you don't give reasons?
Which was the first company that decided that people would want to plug stuff in to their computer without having to restart it first? Including mice and keyboards, FFS!
Which still uses16:10 ratio displays, instead of using TV leftovers?
Which has an audio subsystem that allows the use of multiple low-latency channels on an external soundcard?
Who had the balls to state the obvious: That Flash is just crap for mobile devices when it can quite happily take a chunk out of a Core2 Duo?
Other companies can make their own design decisions, and justify them accordingly. Horses for courses. Why hate something when you can simply choose not to buy it?
I don't use a Mac, but Hasham makes a good point. You have a different opinion to him, and that is commendable, but if you don't give your reasons you're not helping anyone.
Hot plugging peripherals like keyboards? I think DEC, via Access.bus. Though you could hot plug mice and keyboards on Amiga computers before Apple came up with ADB.
16:10 displays are offered by nearly every monitor company, including PC companies like Dell and HP. Only the discount monitors are 16:9 TV panels. Most non-Apple tablets and phones are 16:9; Apple for some reason still clings to the old-timey 4:3.
Low latency on an external sound card is pretty universal. At least, my Tascam US-1800 does thus just dandy, with up to 16 channels recorded at once, under Windows 7, and as low as 5ms, depending on what you want to do with it.
Flash ran just dandy on my old OG Droid. Yes, full HD flash video can stutter on a Core2 Duo. Just as any H.264 can, for exactly the same reasons. On the other hand, on my Core Duo laptop, 1080/60p plays with about 10% CPU. Same reason flash video is just dandy on mobile devices, as they all have dedicated video acceleration.. even more efficient than using the GPU. And as well, no need for 1080p video, usually. Apple's real opposition to flash was political.. very well documented.
"I do a lot of production work on tablet-based magazines and books. The problem is that vast quantities of iPad content is rasterised and paged."
Yup, that's the problem all right: your production method sucks. Sending magazines in the form of giant, dumb bitmaps was a stupid strategy from the start--your text is fuzzy, it isn't selectable, page turns are sluggish, and worst of all, the downloads are humongous. Who wants to download a half gigabyte issue of every magazine they subscribe to, every month?
But you took the easy, lazy way out, figuring that you could get away with selling your subscribers a series of big screenshots of text, that somehow they wouldn't notice. Well, you were wrong, and now the suckiness of your production method (all hail Adobe!) has become blatantly obvious. Your reaction? "Boo hoo, it's all Apple's fault!" Yeah, right. Get a life, mister.
There was an article about it somewhere, I forget, that explains it.
Down to two things:
Hardware limitations - at least in the first iPad, the performance of rendering text was actually slower than for graphics, so people just converted text to graphics.
Secondly, it is easier for designers to guarantee a fixed layout when they just effectively scan each page, rather than to get competent with using HTML5.
"Hardware limitations - at least in the first iPad, the performance of rendering text was actually slower than for graphics, so people just converted text to graphics."
What the...? The web browser seems to render text just fine, and that's just HTML in WebKit. I can read ePub and PDF files without any problems too.
I have an original iPad, not an iPad 2 or iPad v3. I also have a subscription to Popular Science magazine. Said magazine crashes with such annoying frequency that I haven't bothered reading any issues for a couple of months now. That's Adobe's damned fault, not Apple's. Text may render a little slower than graphics, but it's not as if you're animating it.
Good bloody god, Adobe, you used to be [i]good[/i] at this this. What the hell happened?
As for the fonts issue mentioned elsewhere: pay the damned license, you tightwads! If you're too tight to do that, I have to wonder what you're paying your writers. If it's peanuts, that means you're selling us the ravings of monkeys. (Which would explain the contents of many publications.)
Buy subscriptions to a couple of font foundries, so it's a fixed sum. Tell your artists that those are the only sources they can use for fonts. This guarantees the foundries will produce more fonts for you to use, as well as ensuring this unloved, unsung work actually gets the remuneration and recognition it deserves.
(All this is ironic given that one of the few college courses the late Steve Jobs did attend was on typography.)
"Why DO they do it as image per page? "
The Archos 605 WiFi had similar problem.
PDF far too slow and awkard
You needed to build an ancient version for "Flash" (v8?) to work and too slow
HTML problematic on page size. Nearly impossible to have "pages" filling screen well but not exceeding slightly triggering scrolling. Scrolling is evil on eBooks.
So people generated .png and .jpg images...
Fixed Page width is easy enough on HTML. Fixed page length is a pain.
I can't believe you don't know this already (owing to the 80 gazillion iOS devices that now seem to be out in the wild), but iOS handles PDF quite beautifully. I can't imagine why you wouldn't be using PDF for your iOS app unless you've come up with a BETTER idea. Shit developers plague all platforms, unfortunately...
iOS has a PDF renderer built in; it's part of the core graphics processing format.
I've heard it claimed, though I don't know if this is true or apocryphal, that Conde Nast opted to go with screen shots of every page rather than PDFs of every page because they didn't want to pay the licensing fees to embed the fonts in the PDFs. If that's true--and I stress that I'm not sure it is--it sounds pretty ridiculous to me, as the licensing fees are not that expensive in the overall scheme of things. Probably about comparable to the storage and bandwidth costs of keeping and pushing out these honking big bitmaps.
If you do it as PDF, then you've got to licence any embedded fonts. Let's say you do that and it doesn't cost much.
Now the text looks better as it's rasterised on demand to fit the display - although by some accounts the original iPad couldn't manage that fast enough anyway.
What about your pictures and diagrams?
Most of those images are not going to be available as vectors, and even those that are may not be in usable formats so you've got to rasterise those anyway.
So you still have to rasterise some of each page.
Yet in all magazines there are full-page images on many of the pages, so you still have to handle full-page images either way.
So why bother?
"So you still have to rasterise some of each page...So why bother?"
Because the PDFs are far smaller; only the raster content is delivered as raster.
Because the text remains text, meaning it can be searched and annotated and manipulated like...err, text.
Because the text renders cleanly on any kind of display, regardless of resolution or pixel density.
Because PDF is a universal format, so the same file will work on desktop machines or wherever else you want to take it to.
Because the reader has more control; the PDF can be rendered exactly as the designer intended, or for folks who have vision problems, the text can be enlarged.
Because the text is available to assistive devices like text-to-speech programs for the blind.
Shall I keep going? I have more!
Article has a mistake...
"The retina display is great, but that's the only new feature. And let me tell you, it's a feature that is turning out to be a nightmare for *CONTENT* developers..."
There I just fixed it for the author. iOS is not a nightmare for real developers (read code) and there is no fragmentation (read Android).. iOS for real developers has the @2 graphic resource designation and will magically switch between high res and standard res graphics without a real developer (read code) having to write any software to detect if the iOS device has a retina display or a standard display.
The author's problem is as rightfully stated with his graphics/editing/layout/publishing tool chain, not with Apple and not with the iOS and not with the retina display.
It is the same as people running snOracle Java and Adobe Flash blaming Apple for a Trojan infection... Lolz
Yes, it's disappointing that Apple could not make the retina display on the new iPad thinner, and lighter, and less battery draining, and that it was so expensive to develop and manufacture that they couldn't upgrade the processor a bit - I mean, hell, they can just miracle new technology into existence to match the fantasies of all the most obsessive fanboys, so why didn't they?
The new display is, however, amazing. This is the first iPad I bought, because I was waiting for this feature. Imho, a tablet without it is not worth having, seeing that the main usage for reading text and looking at pictures. It is fantastic for this.
The retina display does certainly show up the work of lazy, bad developers though. But where it is done well, the results are stunning (compare the Times app to the Guardian, for example)
So crappy wired magazine doesn't look so good because they make it as one giant, low resolution gif file?
You have to use htm instead? How terrible.
Having said that, I do look forward to getting the new model next year which will be thinner, lighter, have a battery that lasts longer and charges quicker, and will have one of those spanking new ARM 15 chips.
"If you never owned a previous model you're not really in a place to make the comparison"
Yeah right. The fact that I have spent hours looking at the screen of previous iPads owned by various people including my girlfriend, is irrelevant. I really can't possible compare without having owned an iPad 2 for a year. Plus the fact that they have the two versions on sale side-by-side in the shops.
No I can't possibly make a comparison, and my opinion is invalid.
" certainly I note not one jot of graininess compared to my PCs/laptops."
Yes, but it's still visibly pixellated, unlike a Kindle, and unlike the new model. Maybe for playing angry birds it makes no difference.
I am glad you are happy with your iPad2. There is no deed to be a dick about it.
Perhaps he looked at one of the previous models and decided not to buy it, just as I did. You know, kind of a try before you buy? Maybe he also, like me, had an iPhone 4 with an amazingly sharp little screen and thought to himself, why would I buy a 10 inch phone that can't be used as a phone and that has a screen barely better than the one in my existing phone? Apple will probably include a higher res screen in their next iPad update, I think I'll reassess my purchasing decision when they do.
Pretty simple, and logical, thought process.
The new registration letters were issued in August. People bought cars at the end of July because the "old" registration letter was worth less than the "new" one would be a few days later and the cars were therefore cheaper. People buying every new iproduct at launch are like those who bought a car every August. The only value you get for the extra price is a moment's exclusivity.
If it looks cr@p maybe it's you? Try some vector graphics or better optimisation - what people used to do with minimal memory was amazing - ever wonder is some programmers / developers have got a bit lazy in comparison?
Crying about the extra size - can compare it to my digital camera - yes the first one I had did 2m pixels - the one I have now over 10m - so of course the file sizes are much, much larger - I wonder if canon would take my complaint seriously?
"Did you even read the article? He clearly contends you get LESS for the same money... heavier, thicker, less battery life."
You bothered to check the difference? The new iPad is just 0.6mm thicker and 50g heavier - but you get a bigger battery (or would you have preferred significantly less battery life), 4x resolution screen, better camera - all for the same price as the model it replaces.
Ooh - so brave, so counter-cultural: "I am going to speak an unspeakable truth."
Except so much of it isn't true. I, too, cleared put loads of apps and content when upgrading to the new iPad, expecting the larger photos and apps would take up way more room. And guess what? Yes, you lose a bit of space, but it's minimal (about 1gb). Hardly the apocalypse.
And then there's the dismissal of the obvious advantages of the new display in order to moan that his crappy workflow will have to be adapted. Boo hoo.
As always with these sorts of mock-contentious articles, the question should always be asked: "What would YOU have done"? What iPad was he expecting, which would have satisfied him? There wasn't one - he just wanted to write an article to counter all the "new iPad is a success" pieces, as so many other saddoes have done.
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Wow you earned money rasterizing PDFs and now you complain?
Do you call yourself a content producer professional?
Not sure what the ipad's biggest secret was, that it was so crappy that it couldn't render a PDF fast enough or that the content producers were overpaid 0-value-added PNG generators.
Seems all the Windows, Macintosh and Linux fans have settled their differences. They're joined forces to give a roasting to their common enemy - Wired - because of their braindead way of publishing issues as 250 megabyte of straight images.
It's ironic. I remember that Wired were one of the most technophillic magazines when I first encountered them. You'd expect them to jump in boots first into HTML5. Instead, they're perpetrating canonical "DO NOT DO THIS" behaviour of the WWW: representing text as images.
What a load of Tosh.
I've been using a Mac for the past 5 years.
The new job requires me to use Windows 7.
Windows just gets in your face at every opportunity. I've threatened to wipe W7 and install XP
Now I remember why I ditched my Windows Laptop and moved to a MacBook.
Even Ubuntu is better than Windows (I'm a dev who works with Fedora in my spare time)
I used to own an iPhone(provided by work). Now I have an Android (HTC Sensation). It is a POS. Admittedly, a lot of that is down to HTC and their mangling of Android. I'll be rooting it as soon as the warranty runs out and replacing it with something a whole lot better.
I know I'll get downvoted but here goes...
So to summarise:
1. You use a Mac, and have an iphone
2. You prefer XP to Windows 7, but don't like your HTC Sensation.
3. You use fedora, BUT
4. you're commenting on an article that criticise the iPad 3 without mentioning it.
Did I miss anything (e.g. a critical review of the article or an intellectual argument in favour of the ipad 3)?
About every tenth time it happens, I ask - why on earth are people so damn RUDE on the internet?
Why do people on forums routinely use the sort of language that would get them sacked if they used it at work, and smacked in the face if they used it down the pub?
It's possible to disagree with someone, or observe that they have missed a point, without resorting to abuse.
1 - To have this kind of resolution on a screen the size of iPad is only useful to attract complete idiots in the first place. Like "HD" videos on iPhone. Maybe they should start selling these big water-filled lenses again to let the eyeBads "realise their full potential".
2 - Has anyone ever heard of anti-aliasing, down at Apple?
Text and graphics in iOS have had sub-pixel rendering and antialiasing from day one, since that's a fundamental feature of OS X and they just ported the graphics libraries.
But antialiasing isn't some magic potion that makes resolution meaningless. How useful is a tablet or phone going to be if its screen is 10 DPI with antialiasing?
I'd love that on a 14" to 16" laptop. Or on 11.5" x 11.7" active area eBook so as to read US & European technical PDFs actual size.
I'd have thought that with 16M colours, and sub-pixel addressing that you only need 120dpi to 150dpi on any tablet.
The iPad3 is 9.7" so it's about 264 dpi which just a waste of power.
Un- Aliased B&W text needs to be 300dpi to 600dpi to look really sharp. 180dpi pure white or black looks jagged. But if you anti-alias then you can use 1/4 resolution, so 150dpi is nearly as good as 600dpi. Laser printers can't as they either put a dot or not. But eInk can do 16 shades (enough) and LCD/OLED about 256 shades.
So decently done 133dpi LCD can look like over 500dpi. Add subpixel addressing and you nearly double the effective quality.
264 dpi (the iPad3) needs nearly 4 times the TFT power as as 132dpi as it's four times as many dots.
Apple egotisim wining out over common sense.
Add visual acuity. Not all iPads are owned by teenagers. Over 80% of adults won't see improvement above 150dpi for anything shaded. Why do you think colour photo resolution on books and magazines is about 150dpi?
Then how many adults should be using "reading glasses" and are not:?
People seeing my 15" 1600 x1200 screen laptop are first:
Staggered by resolution.
Second
can't believe it's over 10 years old.
It's 133.3dpi and yes, sub pixel addressing works to make text look clear and smooth (though the default settings are not the best, but you can manually "tune" it).
I'll buy a tablet when it's eInk and 8.5" x 11.7" active area at more than 120dpi.
Most of the cheap 7" androids are opposite extreme to iPad3 with having a useless 800 x 480 resolution. My 4.3" Archos is 800 x 480. 16:9. It's too chunky for portable and too small/low res for eBook or Internet sensibly.
I think a 3:1 format might work for a phone for scrolling pages 1440 x 480 Like LG Chocolate shape,
But 4:3 is better than 16:9 for a larger Tablet. Apple do have that correct, though for large "eReader" that would give 11.7 x 8.775 (US letter size needs 8.5" and Eu A4 needs 11.67")
The iPad3 screen res does make sense for text. The text quality is excellent. And no anti-aliasing is not quite the same.
For those who claim it is, please provide evidence or proof. Otherwise all this academic commentary of how sub-pixel rendering *could* do this at lower dpi is pointless.
Arguing a feature against a different way of doing it is fine, but only if someone is actually doing it. If someone else was doing sub-pixel optimised rendering on a tablet, then fine you'd have a point. But no one is, especially given that Apple's competitors would love to do so.
If it were feasible, and economical Hell Apple would do it! This retina stuff could wait until it became a cheaper "gimmick" as you put it.
<joke> I'm only getting broadband when I get at least 10 Gbps. My ebook reader will be 64bit colour, reflective, 0.1ps response time with subpixel rendering and with 1PB of storage for all my holographic 3D videos and my laptop/smartphone one will have at least 2 years of battery life at max screen brightness, it will have a replaceable nuclear fusion battery. </joke>
Yeah you are not that far fetched, but one can always N years for some product definition that will fit what one wants, That's great but that does not make a certain product out today pointless.
Regarding storage, I think the idea is that everything is in the iCloud and not on the device to make sure that you stick with Apple.
As for the article itself, it is pretty sad and quite pointless. It reads of an Apple fanboi's mid-life crisis.
I think it is just wisdom of the years and rational thought becoming part of the buying equation.
Don't want one, don't buy one, end of.
Just stop whining about it!
@Mage - the things that take the extra power are the GPU and the LCD backlight (higher resolution screens have lower light transmission, so need more light from behind to give the same brightness), TFT switching is neither here nor there. See the Pixel QI screen for a prime example of this.
Sub-pixel anti-aliasing of fonts isn't a perfect solution, and needs more CPU power to achieve. The results aren't much better than fax quality (150 dpi, way short of the 500 you've pulled out of thin air), and there's a good reason that laser printers print text at 300+ dpi, pixels are much more obvious in high contrast B&W than colour photos.
We don't care what you think because we've seen and used high res screens for years. The one in the current iPad is fabulous, and obviously different/better to it's predecessor. Real world experience counts for a hell of a lot more than your made-up stats. Why not pop down to the shops and have a look at one so you can then fuck off back to whatever shithole you live in with a clue?
Where's the 'fuck off' icon?
Don't be an idiot.
Do four tiny light bulbs need four times the power of one giant light bulb?
The only reason why the new iPad screen uses more power is because the circuitry for each pixel blocks more of the backlight, so the backlight has to be brighter to get the same amount of brightness to the user. Based on microscope photos of the two screens I calculate that the backlight needs to be about 50% brighter, not 300%.
I'm inclined to agree with you and the author that the higher resolution of the Ipad 3 is overrated and the increased power draw is a problem. A problem that will probably be redressed in a release later this year, I guess. But there are several points worth noting: the higher resolution does make for better text rendering which is easier on the eye. The problem with the Ipad as reading device is that it is not suitable for use in bright sunshine - for reading you are much better off with a nice e-ink display.
The Ipad 2's resolution combined with the form factor was not particular good for watching films - a friend of mine who is a happy owner of an Ipad 2 showed me with pride that it does show videos in fullscreen, but only by cropping them. The same video on my Samsung Galaxy 8.9 is fullscreen with no cropping and crisper but pretty much the same physical size.
Apple would have needed to bump the pixel density of the next release by at least 25 % to keep up with the competition. Having started the whole "pixel density race" on the phones they needed to catch up on the tablet. But HD (1080p) is probably all you need for gorgeous media consumption but then again, the 16:10 or 16:9 is what's required.
It is fascinating how Apple manage to dictate the terms of the debate and convince people that whichever technical feature they have mastered is the reason for buying the device. A good screen is not just one with the highest resolution - colour gamut, contrast and viewing angles are equally important but, as we saw with digital cameras, more difficult to market. Personally, I'm sold on the OLED colour gamut and contrast values over notional resolution. But that is beside the point. As Mr Orlowski pointed out years ago: Apple has become the master of encouraging people to sell their devices to themselves: I-Tunes promised to make it easy to buy digital music (as long as you had an I-pod) and the app store promise to make it easy to buy apps, films and books (as long as you have an I-pad).
Apple, as the article's author notes at the end of his piece, probably has done it again with the I-pad 3 - people will buy them because of the screen but I think his criticism should be noted: it does feel a bit like Nokia's N95 - technically brilliant at the time but still flawed; the nimbus is still there if somewhat dimmer.
If you watch Apple's presentation about the new iPad, you will see that they DO advertise the new screen as having a wider color gamut, better contrast, etc. It's not all about the resolution, you just assume it is.
As for Apple steering the conversation re: which features people get excited about, that's just good marketing. Which do you prefer, Apple giving a semi-technical presentation about how great their new screen is, or Nokia paying a fortune to some pop star to put on a concert that is not related to Nokia, Microsoft, cell phones, or technology in any way?
For as much crap as Apple gets for being a poseur technology company selling shiny status symbols to fashionistas, they seem to be the only company who is actually trying to get people excited about technical things. How many "regular" people were excited about DPI and number of graphics cores before the new iPad...?
I can get photos or videos off my my iDevices the same way I get them off any digital camera. Literally. I plug it into a USB port on any computer, the device comes up as a digital camera (in Windows and OS X) and from there I can drag-and-drop. Don't know how anyone could possibly have a problem with that. And that's not counting all the other ways to get videos off of the devices, e.g., email.
there is no reason to go higher resolution than the IP3's, so it means that it is reasonably safe to develop for that.
The odds are that all the MacBookPro and Air screens will use the same (+/- widescreen) resolution, which will settle things down again, as this will become the main standard in the same way that 1024x768 has been for about 15 years.
We reduced it by changing our GL code to rasterize SVG files, Be-OS/Haiku style.
Now they're more fun, easier to create and scalable on any platform. Who needs Scaleform and Flash eh.
Only problem we have with iPad 3, is an unexpected reluctance among staff to use 30" monitors. Guys, bigger IS better!!
the problem, then, is that these digital magazines are trying to cash in on the lucrative tablet user market, without putting any effort into their apps.
I've downloaded a few issues of Edge and guess what, they look rubbish on the old iPad too. Pages are forced to the same size and shape as the printed magazine. You have to zoom in on the text anyway to be able to read it. And then have to scroll around. It doesn't remember which page i was reading before. They include the contents page, but i can't tap on the article descriptions to get to them.
In short, these magazines are not better than a pdf scan. And for that, why bother paying for them, why not just torrent them?
If the publishers are serious about this new medium for their product, they should put some effort into leveraging the strengths of the medium, instead of just giving us a carbon copy of the printed version.
I have a digital Edge magazine subscription but I use Zinio rather than the Apple default reader because I want to be able to access the magazine on my Andriod phone as well as my iPad. The magazine is delivered as a pdf which remembers where I last was, has clickable links, and gives me the option to view just the text so no need to pan and zoom. I had no idea these options weren't available for other readers.
1. Rasterised typography? WTF?
2. It's not an iPad 3. It's an update. Everyone but you seems to know this.
3. Improved graphics ARE an improvement. However, no-one is forcing you to upgrade your Apple product every time Apple issues an updated or redesigned model. If you genuinely believe you are required to do this then you need counselling.
Apple has updated last year's iPad 2 with a new screen type which offers higher resolution. That's an improvement. They've also improved the performance of their SoCs GPU. That's an improvement.
Only the mentally ill could find these facts a cause for writing an article like yours.
I like the new fondleslab, screen is improved, and viewing very small text is definitely improved........ But that's where the problem is, I don't want to read small text.
In every situation that I could see I would zoom rather than make use of the extra pixels.
As such I will be keeping my lighter, cheaper, better battery, jailbroken iPad 2
Fanboi's are great! Bitching, fighting, name calling, ignoring statements and facts you don't like!
I love this thread. I may even flame on it later to keep it going. Love the idea that I haphazardly write something derogatory about some price of apple technology, and across the pond there are heaps of fanboi's sitting at their computers, stewing with rage, their evening now ruined as someone out there dissed apple, ready to wage war on me and my blasphemous comments.
Long live fanboi's!
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Has anyone considered they might be using something like a PenTile matrix to achieve the resolution/pixel density of the "new iPad"? That would certainly explain why an image could look worse when compared to the iPad 2 since the pixel quality on the new iPad would not be equal to that of the iPad 2.
If not then Apple has only it's own programming to blame, since it should just be a simple case of drawing what was one larger pixel on the iPad 2 over four of the pixels on the new iPad which is the simplest method of image up-sampling possible surely?
They're not using pentile, it's RGB triplets like the older iPads, just four times as many.
The display only looks worse when showing old-res stuff because you've seen new-res stuff on it - often on the same page, as the OS renders type at the new res but buttons etc at the resolution the app supplies. Sharp text makes the iPad1/2 res old graphics elements look bad *in comparison*.
Putting an iPad2 and 3 side by side, running an old-res app, shows they look identical.
Given that there are several comments here about how not to do an electronic version of a magazine, it's worth looking at Sound on Sound magazine (music technology) who have just released an app (with a free trial issue). They are the perfect example of how, if thought and skill is put in, a modern magazine can look on an iPad - absolute class and not just a PDF of the printed version. I have no affiliation with the magazine, just wanted to share.
As you were.
I arose this morning thinking, "What this day needs is some self-indulgent whinging about nothing much." After that, it was inevitable that my fingers would tap out "reghardware.com" without conscious intervention on my part.
"So what we've got in the iPad 3 is a product that is fatter and heavier."
.6 mm or 1/32" fatter, 55 grams or 1.75 oz heavier. Who but a carrier pigeon would notice, much less care?
"offers less battery life between recharges"
I experience better battery life than my partner's 2.
"risks running out of storage space four times more quickly"
You're on drugs. The wrong drugs. I'd invite you to visit reality, but then I'd worry about running into you there.
"and makes some of your existing apps look worse."
Also know as showing your poor design for what it is.
Please, dear Register. If I want to be subjected to the twee snark of narcissists, I'll read Wired.
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