For Normals, Jobs' "Retina Display" Claim May Be Fair After All 386
The Bad Astronomer writes "AT WWDC, Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4's display has about the same resolution as the human eye — held at one foot away, the iPhone 4's pixels are too small to see. After reading an earlier Slashdot post about an expert disputing Jobs' claim, I decided to run the numbers myself. I found that Jobs is correct for people with normal vision, and the expert was using numbers for theoretically perfect vision. So to most people, the iPhone 4 display will look unpixellated."
So It's catching my droid then? (Score:4, Interesting)
i'm holding my droid at 1 foot distance and I can't distinguish any single pixel. I have to get it to about 3-4 inches to do so convincingly.
Granted, anti-aliased fonts help a ton.
Wrong or right (Score:2, Interesting)
It's still marketing drivel along the lines of "blast processing". Wholly unnecessary...just tell us the resolution, Jobsy. No need to spice it up, the specs should speak for themselves.
Anti-Aliasing (Score:5, Interesting)
One must not forget about Anti aliasing or the fact that each pixel contains 3 RGB sub pixels. This increases the effect PPI significantly.
Marketing (Score:3, Interesting)
To claim any display has the same resolution as the human eye when what they really mean is that it looks "less pixelly" is misleading at best.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the Android phones have been having quite an impact in the market recently. The big benefit of "being able to run the software you want rather than what Steve Jobs says you can run" seems to speak to people, since that's the major thing Android has going for it that the iPhone doesn't.
Re:So It's catching my droid then? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're taking it too far with this statement.
I'd say it's more of case of letting people know that Android phones do apps too. Joe or Jane Average could care less that the apps aren't "curated" in the "walled garden." They just want to know if the phone does apps, and how easy is it to get them.
Re:Print Resolution (Score:3, Interesting)
As printers, we do CT images at 300dpi or higher, but we don't print at 300dpi.
150lpi AM screening does fine for images, but try rasterizing your fonts at 300dpi and run them through a 150lpi AM screen. It will be visibly poor quality.
Even 300dpi rasterized fonts into a stochastic FM system are going to look fairly poor by print standards.
In reality, we print text at much higher raster resolutions, more like 1200dpi or 2400dpi in the final post-screening plate render at most shops.
If you handle 1-bit TIFFs, you'll see this as well, none of them are going to be 300dpi, because that's just not enough resolution for text.
Re:Anti-Aliasing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong or right (Score:2, Interesting)
For me, it was the fact that android isn't tied to that software catastrophe iTunes. I switched from AT&T to Verizon for the Motorola Droid.
Bad Astronomer, Worse Opthamologist (Score:2, Interesting)
1. There is no such thing as "perfect" vision. There is normal vision that requires no correction. Typically that comes down to 20/20 vision. There are some people with better vision. Very good eyes are measured as 20/10. There is no limit, physiological or theoretical, hence no "perfect".
2. Resolving things at any distance requires far more than static placement of object with X size and retina of Y resolving power. The visual system (NOTE the retina does not resolve ANYTHING. The visual system as a whole does.) resolves things by a complex interplay between what's presented at any given point in time, what's presented at other times but is cognitively determined to be the same target, the speed at which the boundaries of images cross the same point in the visual field, and calculations that occur in the visual cortex on these things, which result in a VISUAL ACUITY (that's the term they were addressing, or should have been) that is often far greater than can be conceived of when one considers the components of the eye as though they were parts of a camera or other device. They are not, and the terms used for those don't apply.
3. Please tell me no one has bothered to test this empirically. I'm always looking for things my undergrad labs can do real science on, especially when it punctures some overinflated gas bag.
Plait, there's more than running numbers, there's knowing what to run numbers on. There's also knowing when to STFU. There's still also acting like a professional and not confusing people who'll believe you because you've made a name in the entertainment field. This last is something a real scientist/educator, not a blogger who happened to hold some science jobs and now makes a living getting attention for talking about science stuff like he knows it, would understand -- so we can expect your next spew in what, 600 words of 4 letters each is 2400 letters, and 40 cps is, an hour?
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Interesting)
It is called marketing.
Tell you what. Show me where their is a turbine on an Intel I7 and how it speeds up the CPU when you use Intel's Turbo Boost technology and I will all bent out of shape over Apple's Retina display.
It is market speak and it is everywhere. It usually only bugs you if you don't like the product, the company, or know how stuff really works.
Frankly I just tune it all out and don't let it bother me anymore.
Re:retina display (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe that's exactly what they have. That's why you can "see" the screen.
In that case, that's hardly anything new. Even my keyboard has "retina display" technology, I mean, that's why I can "see" it, right?
66dpi? Yes, if it's compared to 3000dpi it's nowt (Score:1, Interesting)
66dpi? Yes, if it's compared to 3000dpi it's nowt. It's very little against 300dpi.
But it's not even 66dpi.
N900: 267dpi.
iPhone: 326dpi.
Difference: 59dpi.
How old is the 900?
The screen of the much older Nokia N770 had 225, with a much larger screen.
Jobs hyped it and so a hyped rebuttal is appropriate.
Woz would probably have gone on about WHY they picked that resolution and what cool tech they used for it. E.g. "We picked double the resolution and made sure that this display would be AS sharp at least as your current iPhone with all your current apps, but with apps that know about resolution, show them to even greater detail!".
The N900 resolution was probably picked because that's the resolution of some standard Widscreen display for video purposes. If Apple had picked the same, then there would HAVE to be some antialiasing to fit the app to the screen, making it more blurred.
Re:Very well said (Score:2, Interesting)
Excellent point, and as a corollary to that it's worth noting that the plethora of Android devices are available on all of the Big Four networks, while iPhone continues to be available only on AT&T. It says something about the popularity of the iPhone that it's available only on arguably the worst of the major networks yet is stll No. 2 behind only Blackberry.
Much has been made of the fact that the Android platform outsold the iPhone in the 1st Quarter, but the Apple-haters crowing that this somehow signals the ascendancy of Android and the end for the iPhone's supremacy are bound to be bitterly disappointed when the iPhone becomes available on othe networks. Not "if", "when". The general consensus is that it will be available on Verizon sometime in 2011, and according to Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., it may be on T-Mobile as early as fall of this year. In my opinion, the rapid sales of Android devices have as much to do with Verizon's aggressive promotion, as well as the reluctance of people to switch from their existing providers to AT&T, as the merits of the platform itself. That calculus will change dramatically when the iPhone throws off the AT&T shackles. Android outselling iPhone in the 1st Quarter of 2010 may well come to be looked on as an anomaly
Apple gets a big kickback from AT&T on the monthly bill that iPhone users pay. That's the real reason for exclusivity despite the shitty AT&T network. The lack of choice is purely due to Apple's greed. No wonder they're making money head over heels while many iPhone suffer with poor voice coverage and clamber for choice. However, you will find that many Apple lovers love to ignore this fact or are ignorant of it.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because phone tech specs aren't a person's field of expertise, doesn't mean they shouldn't be helped to understand why they should care about something. There are plenty of things you don't understand the technical details about, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't try to put it in terms you understand before expecting you to make an informed decision.
When you hear "over 300ppi" you understand the benefit without having it put into more simple terms. Why not give someone, who might enjoy the product as much (or more) than you, the same chance to understand what they're buying without doing hours of research?
Re:Print Resolution (Score:3, Interesting)
>... it's a bold leap forward in display technology that deserves to be highlighted.
No it's not. It's a slight increase in pixel density over existing displays, but it's not in any way bold or a leap. The only way this is even notable is because the iphone got by with a substandard display for so long, so of course compared that, this is a noticeable increase.
Re:pixels and dots per inch are different (Score:1, Interesting)
Let me point out something that you've missed in your rambling (and mistaken) explanation about why laser printers went beyond 300dpi. It's not because typical people can see individual dots in a typical use-case. It's because 300dpi with 256-tone gray-scale printing on a monochrome printer is the equivalent of 37.5ppi on a monochrome computer display. You see, each individual *dot* a printer can spit out is not equivalent of a pixel on screen. You see the dots in a 300dpi gray-scale image, not because one dot is distinguishable from the one next to it, but because some of those dots are 'turned off' in order to produce partial tones. (Actually, it's more common that you see gaps even in solid black areas simply because of defects in the paper's surface, but that's another discussion entirely.) This is called dithering, and printer manufacturers have done all sorts of research into what dithering patterns reproduce what shades while still looking as 'solid' as possible.
To turn the comparison on its head, if you look at a reasonably typical 100dpi LCD display, you'll find that each pixel actually contains a whole series of sub-pixels, each much smaller than the single pixel 'unit'. It's not uncommon to find 8 or more sub-pixels of each color, though there are usually more of certain colors because the human eye is not equally sensitive to all colors. Assuming for a moment that we have sub-pixels arranged in a 6x6 grid within each pixel (in order to provide a square pixel with an equal number of each color sub-pixel), you'll find that the 100ppi 'typical' LCD has about 600 sub-pixels per inch.