John Gruber of Daring Fireball responded to claims of a potential "Retina Display" on the next iPad, as reports have suggested the device could have a 2048-by-1536-pixel resolution, quadruple that of the current iPad. But, he said, sources have told him those rumors are "too good to be true."
He said it's likely that the next iPad will retain a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution, though the display may be improved in other ways, such as brighter with less power consumption.
"Maybe it uses the new manufacturing technique Apple introduced with the iPhone 4 display, which brings the LCD closer to the surface of the touchscreen glass — making it look more like pixels on glass rather than pixels under glass," he wrote. "But my sources are pretty sure that it's not 2048 x 1536 or any other 'super high resolution.'"
Evidence of that high resolution came through the iPad's official iBooks application, which includes images designed for a higher resolution screen. Gruber speculated that those files could be the work of a user interface designer who is "thinking ahead," as sooner or later the iPad will get a higher resolution display.
"From what I've gathered about the iPad 2, it's more analogous to the iPhone 3GS than the 3G," he said. "Spec-wise, the iPhone 3G differed from the original iPhone in one significant way: the 3G networking support. The iPad 2 is more like the 3GS: faster support, more RAM, better graphics performance — but, like the 3GS, still the same display resolution as the original model."
As first reported by AppleInsider, the iPad 2 is expected to have improved graphics in the form of a dual-core SGX543 processor included on a new, custom processor from Apple. Regardless of whether the iPad 2 has a Retina Display, the successor to the A4 chip found in the iPad and iPhone 4 will likely be powerful enough to display at that resolution.
The SGX543 can push 35 million polygons per second at 200 Mhz and 1 billion pixels per second, and is capable of handling Apple's OpenCL standard. And the GPU supports multi-core configurations, which will allegedly allow Apple to utilize two cores in its next-generation mobile processor.
97 Comments
Of course too good. Apple priority is to make iPad available (as in cost and good production numbers). High res not hapening in 2011.
A couple of months ago we all thought any type of near-Retina display was impossible because of cost.
Yesterday we all allowed for the possibility that it might actually be true.
Now we're all going to be disappointed if it's not.
We spend too much time guessing, don't you think?
Wouldn't doubling the dimensions in each dimension mean 4 times the pixels on screen - and with the same screen size mean that each pixel is one fourth the size? meaning anything that is not scaled vectors would appear to be one-quarter the size on screen - meaning that almost everything on the device would have to be updated to accommodate the change. Unless there is something in the OS that scales everything automatically unless it specifically calls the higher rez. And the iPhone app emulator thing would have to get a 4x option.
Seems to me that as suggested just about everything else about the device could be improved and result in a much greater impact before the screen needs more pixels.
Wouldn't doubling the dimensions in each dimension mean 4 times the pixels on screen - and with the same screen size mean that each pixel is one fourth the size? meaning anything that is not scaled vectors would appear to be one-quarter the size on screen - meaning that almost everything on the device would have to be updated to accommodate the change. Unless there is something in the OS that scales everything automatically unless it specifically calls the higher rez. And the iPhone app emulator thing would have to get a 4x option.
Seems to me that as suggested just about everything else about the device could be improved and result in a much greater impact before the screen needs more pixels.
You're presumably not an iPhone developer - that is exactly what happened with the transition from iPhone 3GS to 4 - the pixels on the iPhone 4 are 1/4 the size of the ones on the 3GS and the same apps run just fine. The OS automatically scales the bitmaps from old apps so that each pixel in the bitmap uses 4 pixels on the screen. The OS automatically upscales any image in an app unless it's named with @2x in the filename - it's pretty clever.
Basically iOS4 supports resolution independence, but because the dimensions on the iPhone 4 are exactly 2x those of the previous models, it can scale bitmaps just as gracefully as it scales vectors, with no blurry edges where the bitmap pixels span two physical pixels.
And yeah, the iOS simulator does have a setting to simulate the iPhone 4 screen. It's in the Hardware menu under Device/iPhone (retina), and it makes the iPhone appear at twice the size on screen so you can see all the pixels.
This is the reason why the retina display for the iPad, when it arrives will have to be exactly double the resolution in both axes that the current model is - they can't go for an intermediate resolution, or everyone will have to update their apps with new graphics immediately to prevent them looking blurry on the new device.
And because a screen with that many pixels in such a small space is beyond anything currently on the market, it's very unlikely that Apple have managed to do it for iPad 2 whilst retaining the same price point. So in all probability the new iPad will have exactly the same res as the current gen, and iPad version 3 or 4 will add the double-res feature once the component costs make it feasible.
Damn - that guy usually knows what he's talking about. Or perhaps they will double it in one dimension only.