New iPad resolution gripe - Page 8

That's actually the reason I decided to return my IPad 3. There just wasn't enough difference in the screen text between it and my IPad 2 to justify the switch. People raved about how great it was to read text on the IPad 2 when it came out and then all of a sudden it became a bit 'fuzzy' with the IPad 3. I just love revisionist history, but I don't fall prey to it!

Windows has been extremely solid since XP. I use it on my editing computer as well as my other computers and can't remember the last time any of them crashed. Some people have very very dated views of windows. Windows 8 has gotten many great reviews.

There is life outside of the Apple universe, it's just that some refuse to accept it. Whatever.

No, it's definitely sharper. That being said, it felt like the color shifted at much smaller angles compared with the original iPad. So when scrolling text, it felt like "glinting", I don't know of any other way to describe it. That, and the yellowish overcast made me return it. For some reason none of the professional reviews mentioned it, proclaiming it the best screen ever. Must be me.

Well I'm not denying the new screen is sharper. What I am saying is the prior IPad was sharp enough for reading text that nobody with normal vision would declare it 'fuzzy'. I didn't read a single review when the IPad 2 came out that said 'Really nice device, but Apple needs to address fuzzy fonts while reading text'.

It's the revisionist history that gets me. Reading some posts now, you'd think that people are struggling to read text on prior iterations of IPad. Nonsense, they're perfectly sharp.

In actuality I thought the bigger improvement was color.

I suspect that Apple will be releasing a smaller IPad before too long. Even if that's released with a lower rez screen, people will 'marvel' at how sharp it is...at least until the next one comes out with higher rez causing the older one to now be 'fuzzy'. Gotta love this stuff.

When iPhone 5 is released with a 4" screen, it will be declared the new "perfect size". In all seriousness, PDFs are much more readable on the new iPad without zooming around. I supposed for things like Kindle novels, the difference is not that big.

My question was about the benefits of Android over iOS, which seems to equate to bigger screen? (hardly an OS issue) So thanks for the long post repeating over and over why you like the larger screen, I guess. The benefits of it (and the drawbacks) should be obvious.


Unless your need is to watch video on a 16:9 screen, or to save money, I can't think of a single reason to buy an Android tablet over an iPad. I say this as a power user who has his pick of what hardware to use. I have a Windows desktop, and the iPad for mobile use. (I miss OS X but the hardware just isn't updated often enough for my needsthe Mac Pro towers are using ancient tech at this point)



Personally I find the smaller tablets to be quite useless devices. They are too large to be pocketable (but then, so are a lot of Android phones these days) so I don't find them to be any more convenient than the iPad to transport, but their screens are too small to be useful for most tasks. I find that size is really only conducive to media consumption, and primarily video at that, as I dislike the 16:9 format for reading in portrait. The iPad on the other-hand has a wide selection of apps that allow for content creation, and the keyboard is large enough to allow for touch-typing. (I am over 100 WPM now)



For most people, tablets are primarily a reading device, so the quality of text is rather important.

One of the main benefits of the new screen, aside from how crisp text looks (print-quality) is that the pixel density is high enough that there's no longer any pixel grid over the screen, which eliminates the eyestrain problem traditionally associated with reading text on displays.

This is a major benefit.


A 16:9 tablet is only useful in the landscape orientation in my opinion. I don't find 16:9 to be an enjoyable reading experience at all. A 4:3 tablet on the other hand, works well in both orientations depending on the task.

Yes, 16:9 video will be better on a 16:9 display, but I would much rather that every other task worked better instead. Video on a tablet is at the very bottom of my list of priorities. And strangely, most video I have actually watched on it has been 4:3, with the exception of testing some Blu-ray rips which was really just to evaluate the quality of the display.

If you're watching video on a tablet, it's already a compromised experience (streaming video and/or highly compressed rips) so I have no issue with more letterboxing.


It's interesting, as I know a lot of programmers that say the same, but I actually find that to be very straining on the eyes in a dark room. I much prefer inverted sepia tones. (in the accessibility options on the iPad, you can set up a triple-click of the home button to invert the screenOS X has a similar feature too)

This gives you a darker screen, but keeps it at a more comfortable contrast ratio for reading. (printed text is *very* low contrast relative to computer displays for example)

I will agree that reading white text on black isn't great on the iPad in a dark room though. It's not so much the contrast, as it is the viewing angle that bothers me though.


Yes, even though most Android advocates seem to argue against the fact, I dislike Pentile even at very high resolutions. (though they're really about ⅔ of the reported resolution)


This is the problem that Apple faces with the new retina displays. They are a very big increase when you look at them on paper but to most people, the difference will not blow you away immediately, even when doing a direct comparison.

For me, the difference came after using the device for a week or two, and then going back to using any other computer/tablet display. I can't help but notice this huge grid over anything that's being shown onscreen. (not to mention the poor colour and gamma of the old iPad 2 displays)



Windows 7 and XP have been great. Vista was terrible (ran badly on any PC I ever used it with, even high end hardware) and Windows 8 seems like a huge misstep to me. I've been using the preview for months now, and Metro is not right for the desktop at all. And for tablets, the Metro UI seems terribly limiting. Most apps seem nothing more than glorified phone apps, which is something the streamlined Metro UI guidelines are pushing developers towards.

I think it's going to fail on the desktop, and I think it's also going to fail as a tablet OS. I was very excited when I first heard about the idea, but I just don't think Microsoft as a company is capable of pulling off something like that successfully.



Viewing angles could definitely be better, though I don't notice that these days unless I'm specifically looking for it. (something most people on here probably did, consciously or not, when they first got their device)

As for the yellow cast though, my iPad 3 is very close to D65and so are most of them. This does look more yellow than most mobile displays though, which tend to focus on brightness (bluer screens appear brighter) rather than colour accuracy. Any properly calibrated display will also have a yellow cast if you aren't used to it. Unlike TVs though, you don't have a choice.

My iPad 3 display is more accurate than pretty much any television out of the box, and even a lot of screens I've used after calibration. (and by calibration, I mean using a spectrophotometer, not a DVD disc)

+100. Take it to the bank.

Says the owner of an ipad3.

James

No, but a lot of reviews for the original iPad did. It hadn't changed, and no other tablets had improved upon it by the time the iPad 2 was out, so it wasn't something of note.

I have never liked how the iPad 1 or 2 rendered text, and people have been complaining about the OS X-style of font rendering since its inception.

It is only now that we have high resolution devices that the OS X style of font rendering looks good. (much better than the Windows style, which focuses on sharp text rather than accurate font rendering)


It depends how you define "sharp". Being a fixed-pixel device, you are always going to have perfect "sharpness".

However, OS X-style font rendering uses a lot of anti-aliasing and attempts to preserve accurate font shapes, which does result in "fuzzy" text on-screen.

Here are a couple of comparisons:


Note that those comparisons are done at large font sizes, OS X font rendering is considerably harder to read at small sizes where the letters just start to blur together.



Notice how Windows (on the left) scales the font to match up with pixels (vertically) and subpixels (horizontally) for clarity, whereas OS X renders fonts accurately, but it gets fuzzy at small sizes.


I'm unsure about this. I agree that there is demand for smaller tablets, but I question their usefulness for much more than watching video (too small for my liking) or reading a book. (horrible in the 16:9 format, better on a Kindle at a fraction of the price)

People seem to think that all Apple needs to do is release a smaller iPad and everything will be fine. In reality, there are only two options.

1. Release a small tablet that either runs at 960x640, or 1920x1280 which primarily runs iPhone apps at a larger size. In this scenario, all apps have oversized UI elements, and if they go with 1920x1280, it's yet another resolution developers have to create assets for. (though with the iPad 3 resolution, I'm sure a lot of assets could be shared, and smart developers have a vector copy of their UI elements)
   
   It wouldn't be as bad as running phone apps on the current iPad as it is now, but phone apps are not a good fit for a device of that size as far as usability is concerned.
2. Release a small tablet that uses the original 1024x768 resolution of the iPad 1/2. In this scenario, it can run full iPad apps, but UI elements are now far too small for adult human fingers.
   
   While the resolution is the same as the original iPad, the reality is that it would need an entirely new UI, and would essentially be a third form-factor developers have to start creating apps for.

Even today, we have apps that are either iPad or iPhone exclusive, and apps which do not have native retina graphics. (though fortunately text is rendered natively in most cases)

Adding a third device for developers to support seems like a mistake.


And as for resolution, you seem to only be thinking of it in terms of numbers. What matters with resolution is pixel density, rather than the actual numbers. If you had 1024x768 on a 7" tablet, you would have 182 PPI, which is quite a bit better than the original iPad (132 PPI) though not up there with the iPhone (330 PPI) or iPad 3. (264 PPI) You really want to have 200+ PPI resolution for text though, and 300+ is ideal.

Too bad the tech didn't exist for a 3072x2304 iPad 3 (396 PPI) as 4096x3072 is never going to happen (has to be at least 2x previous generation) so we're stuck at 264 PPI, which isn't quite enough resolution for small text and asian characters.

Text is largely going to be the same size on any of these three devices for legibility purposes though, so a 1024x768 "mini iPad" would have much clearer/sharper text than an iPad 1/2 at 9.7"


We'll see. Going to 4" would drop the iPhone from 330 PPI to 288 PPI, and app UIs will now be oversized, which would require additional work from developers. It would essentially be a new form-factor, as the new UI would be far too small on existing iPhone/iPod devices.

The only thing that could change that, is if iOS 6 implements dynamic UI scaling so that they are no longer constrained to the size and resolution choices they made originally, but it still leaves out all currently existing apps, and unlike most hardware vendors, Apple did a lot of research and development on screen sizes, resolutions, aspect ratios etc. It's not like they just went with whatever screen size they could get for a phone, they specifically chose the 3.5" 3:2 form factor. And look at how UI scaling turned out with Android. (well, depending on the device you own, it might be OK for you)

I've never heard any of the people I know with iPhones—even those that own an iPhone and an Android device—complain about the screen being too small. Usually it's only people in the market for a new phone (often those that have never previously owned an iPhone) that seem concerned with it.

Chrono you sir are full of it!!!!!

You asked about the Iphone being the perfect size for one handed operation and the benefits of the larger screen. It had little to do with Andriod over IOS. Read the post!

If you read the posts you would also see the widgets are a major reason. And lets not forget the whole usb debate you bowed out of. And your incorrect sta5temnt of the 4.5" devices not being pockatble when they are more so that the iphone. 3 strikes you are OUT.


If that list qualifies you as a power user then I must be Steve Jobs.

It's not that the old ones were fuzzy.

It's that the sharpness on the new one is so ridiculously good, it's the single best screen to read on ever. And that's not hyperbole. I've owned active-matrix LCDs for 20 years -- dozens of them.

Does that mean you can't read on a Galaxy Tab or previous generation iPad? Of course not! It's just that much more pleasurable on a current iPad. That's a selling point. And quite frankly, buyers seem to agree.

I agree. Whoever brought and keeps bringing up widgets, screen size of phones, and USB in the "New iPad resolution gripe" thread must leave!

Hmmmm. I think you just brought them up... SO....

Chrono, we shall agree to disagree. I disagree with too many of your points to even bother. I have stated my rationale as have others. You either ignore those, discount them or decide that your counters render other opinions irrelevant. I won't convince you nor will you convince me.

This is why BOTH the Android market and IPhone market flourish. I can see both sides, but you seem to see only one. Each to his own. Frankly I don't find this important enough to go on endlessly and if I did, we'd still be back to square one.

I don't know Mark, it just didn't do it for me. But as you say it obviously does for people that buy it and keep it. You know me very well, I'm always into display quality. But I didn't see enough of a difference to warrant keeping the new one. I never had an issue reading with the old one and never found myself 'wanting' for either greater resolution or screen density. Did I see a difference in the new one? Yes, but too often I had to look for it and thus it just wasn't worth it. I saw a bigger difference in color performance than screen clarity.

The guy that I often buy from at a Corporate VZW store (and I've found to be that very rare breed of honest sales people), agreed with me that he too was disappointed with the differences. He acknowledged that many coming in to compare the two just don't see much of a difference. I actually laughed when I went to a BB store and the sales guy enlarged a 'g' to a huge size so that he could point out the smoother structure of the letter. I said "you're kidding right?". But that's just my perception and obviously others feel differently.

The other thing I didn't appreciate was the added weight of the new one vs my IPad 2 (not often talked about). The new one seemed to regress to the weight of the first gen IPad, which my wife still uses. In that respect that's not progress in my book. Everyone else is going lighter, but again Apple marches to its own beat.

As I said, one of my motivations for getting the 7.7 Tab, was the much lighter weight and smaller, easier to pack size. To my eyes the 7.7 screen outshines any IPad screen in overall quality, but as I've said, we all perceive things differently.

Please, give me a break. Any font that's so small that it can't be read on a previous gen IPad is simply too small anyway and one would probably need a magnifying glass on ANY IPad to read comfortably. The only time I've ever seen that is on some spam ads where there is teeny weeny printing at the bottom which would probably be tough to read on a high rez PC monitor. This is not an issue and a real stretch to make your 'case'.

The Android market is hardly flourishing. There is rampant piracy, and most of the big mobile developers are exclusively on iOS.

It's a well-known fact in the mobile development industry that Android users don't pay for apps. (either they steal them, or simply refuse to pay for most)

Here's a couple of examples:
Football Manager on Android piracy almost double the rate of PC piracy.
Flipboard for Android, a Galaxy S III exclusive application, leaked before the phone is even on sale.


Sounds like an uninformed salesperson. Large text renders perfectly fine on the old iPad screen, it's medium-to-small text where the difference is mainly visible, and the fact that there is no longer a "grid" placed over the entire display.


Sorry, this is factually incorrect. Even at perfectly legible font sizes, text looks terrible on the older iPads compared to the new one.

iPad 2 and iPad 3 screenshots:


iPad 2 PNG, iPad 3 PNG.

And an ipad 1 as well.
I agree with Chrono & Rogo on the improved text. I will also say the whole screen capture / upload/render in browser does not replicate the screen perfectly. The screen is clearer than the pic but its gives a good example since we all just took snapshots of the avs app.

Looks like your screenshot was compressed. Here's the iPad 2 shot at native resolution.

The reason I didn't post that, is because it doesn't make for a good comparison due to the smaller size, when in person, both displays are the same size, and look like the larger comparison image I posted. (though there's a grid over the iPad 2 screen caused by the larger gaps between the pixels, which you don't see in screenshots, so it actually looks worse in person)

If you want to avoid the compression, emailing a screenshot will send the original uncompressed PNG. Exporting it from the photo roll via another app tends to save/upload the screenshot as a compressed JPEG.

hilarious "screen-shot comparo" post above.

Yep, that's exactly what my ipad2 looks like against my ipad3 at 16". lmao.


The difference is marginal at the typical user distance. I've already fooled a handful into thinking the 2 was the 3 (again, at a distance they would actually read/use the devices) by simply upping the brightness on the 2 a step.

go figure.

There is so much hyperbolic bull$hit in this threat that I agree with Ross, there's no point in sifting through it anymore.

It's akin to reaching into a toilet and pulling out the "best" turd.

Have a great weekend!

James

I Chose to add it as an attachment so people dont have to see the large imbeded pics, Its called courtesy . When you do that AVS converts it to a jpg.

I wrote it is not as bad as the pics above but you chose to ignore that part?

How does fooling people prove anything except that they were satisfied with the ipad2's readability (I know I think that as well since I still use my 1 & 2). The 3 is better - period. It approaches acceptable print res which is a goal.
If that is marginal to you great but to others it may me more meaningful.

So enlighten me as to the other Hyperbole that you rant about.

Hilarious? Those are direct screenshots from the devices. And yes, that is how they look when I compare the two in person, though the iPad has that "grid" over the image in addition to being low resolution.

I can take photographs of the devices that will show you the same thing, but I suppose those wouldn't be "good" comparisons either.

I have always found it difficult to read this site (light text on a dark background seems to fare worse at low resolutions) or anything that does not support Safari's "reader" view in the portrait orientation. I've always had to zoom in and often use the landscape orientation for good legibility. Now with the iPad 3 I can use it in portrait and often don't even need to double-tap to zoom in when reading.

It's a massive difference in clarity compared to the old screen, even if you ignore the "grid" over the screen. (something that I noticed when I first got the device, but was not distracted by until I had used my iPad 3 for a week or two)

1. Did it occur to you that I wasn't referring to YOU but to how something was portrayed by another poster (actually had no clue from the start it was an example you posted)? Imagine what the duplication of ipad screenshots looks like on typical 17+" computer monitors that many/most are viewing this thread on. Think about it.

2. Right. "Fooling" someone into thinking an "inferior" device is actually superior to it's replacement by simply notching the brightness up a step or two proves nothing. You're also free to believe in unicorns because I certainly cannot prove they do not exist.

3. No, I won't "enlighten' you as to the hyperbole littered throughout this thread. And please don't use unnecessarily capitalize words...it just looks dumb. Grab a co-worker, friend, or family member if you need help. I'm off to enjoy the weekend...and my ipad 2 and 3. Which look nearly identical to my 20/20 eyeballs from the distance I use them.

But yep, increased resolution isn't the worst thing in the world.

Now- for real- have a great weekend!

James

Don't need your photos. I own both a 2 and 3, thanks.

But again, whatever helps you sleep at night.


James

Oh Little Jimmie.....

Perhaps just perhaps there are those people who don't rely in browser rendering when trying to maximize image fidelity. That way it does not matter what size screen we view it on (think about it it may be hard I have faith in you - hint Chrono's pics are PNG which is a bitmap file type - hmmmm).

If they thought it was "superior" then your "handful" of people are not very impressive and we all know .. "birds of a feather........."

Talk about hilarious. You criticize a capital but then write "And please don't use unnecessarily capitalize words." - lol- maybe you should read it again and see the IRONY.

mastermaybe it just may be many others do not own both and maybe they may be interested in peoples opinion & experiences regarding the differences in ipad resolution and maybe just maybe they search the internet and maybe just maybe the end up at avs. Get it mastermaybe? Or is it may be? Since you have deemed that this is obviously a graded site on the proper use of the english (opps English) language.

+1000.

I should have learned by now there's no arguing in a rationale manner with Apple over-the-toppers. I have nothing against Apple having owned 3 IPhones and 2 IPads. BUT, I don't fall for the BS either. Because Steve Jobs told me I was holding the phone wrong when the antenna issue caused me to drop calls and signal strength, did I believe him? Of course not. I've been holding phones the same way for my entire life. Now all of a sudden I'm holding it the wrong way because of a design defect? Please.

Because Steve Jobs told me the IPhone had the perfect size screen, did I believe him? Of course not, I have the ability to think for myself. For some it is and...hold on now...for some it isn't.

Because Steve Jobs told me the IPad's AR was perfect as was its screen size, did I believe him? Of course not, I have the ability to think for myself and determine my own needs.

But man oh man, I can't tell you how many fall for everything Apple says hook line & sinker. I can easily spot the difference between marketing hype and reality.

Chrono, if my IPad looked that bad, I would have trouble reading the text. I don't. I can read virtually any website I go to perfectly including this and other forums. Not the slightest issue whatsoever. None. Zilch. But I'm sure you'll tell me I do and that I just haven't noticed it.

I think it's unfair to call the salesguy 'uninformed'. Is he a mind-numbed Apple robot? He is not. Does he recognize the pros & cons of the IPad? Yes he does. Can he acknowledge differences between the two even if they don't conform to your observations? Yes he can. Did he accurately state his observations of many coming into the store to observe the differences? I'm sure he did. I've seen it myself.

You love your IPad and that's great, but really you're so over the top at times. I never stole an app nor do I know any Android user that has. Please, this is really getting absurd and detracting from whatever legitimate points you've made.

You love Apple and hate Android, we got it. I don't feel that way. Fortunately I'm a bit more open minded than you appear to be.

I'm pretty much done responding to over-the-top posts here.

Your iPad is no differentthose are direct screenshots from both my iPads. (press Home & Sleep at the same time to save an image to your photo roll) Open up any page on this site in Safari using the Dark theme, and it will look the same.

The only thing I did was make an animated image for easier comparison, and cover up the titles of the tabs on the iPad 2 image. (someone else had left a lot of Facebook stuff open with names on them)


Zooming in on text is exactly the opposite of what you should do to illustrate the benefits of a high resolution display. The larger you make the text, the more resolution you are giving each character on-screen. 1024x768 is perfectly sufficient for the display of large characters. (though I dislike the pixel grid over the image that is there regardless)

If that's how they chose to demonstrate the new iPad resolution, they were clearly misinformed. One of the largest benefits of the new iPad's resolution is that you don't have to zoom in on everything now to be able to read it clearly.


That's great, but piracy is a major problem with Android whether you personally engage in it or not, and it is widely acknowledged that is hurting the development community. It's why a lot of the bigger mobile developers are abandoning the system, or avoiding it altogether. At this point it's safe to say that any big-budget Android development is unlikely to happen unless they do something major to curb piracy.

Considering that the OS itself is in breach of copyright law, the way they have handled the situation is hardly surprising though.

It's part of the reason that companies such as Samsung and Intel are working on Tizen devices due out later this year.


I don't hate Android, but I think it's a poor user experience for the majority of people that are not programmers/developers, especially on tablets.