New iPad resolution gripe - Page 9

Ken you and I have been on the same side with our Andriod phones and I do agree the ipad2 is certainly fine for use and many may not see the need to upgrade to the 3.

Are you looking at the picture via your browser or avs app? Don't - save the png to your computer and have it rendered in a true image viewer at original size and it may not look as bad as you may see here.

such passion over os and screen displays

remember guys, to each their own. don't get so worked up about it.

Good advice.

It's a shame that iOS 5 removed the ability to view web pages/images at 100% in Safari with a two-finger double-tap to zoom.

Sorry buddy, when I read from my IPad 2 it looks NOTHING like what you posted. Who to believe, my eyes or your post. Again, nobody would put up with text that looked like that and people would have been screaming IF that's how it appeared to them. It didn't on the first or second IPad. Who could put with text that looked like that? Oh wait, it doesn't.

You can post this 1,000 times and it doesn't change what I see. I don't subscribe to revisionist history. Enough already, this is beyond looney tunes.

I'm looking at his picture on the AVS IPad app. Certainly the normal fonts I see on either the AVS IPad app or the safari browser don't even remotely resemble what he's posted. So i have no idea what he's trying to prove here other than an embellishment of near historic proportions.

I think posts like his are more than a bit misleading. Calling an honest sales person uninformed when I've personally seen the same thing with customers looking at both IPads, calling most Android users thieves and on and on. I have zero respect for posts like these. I see countless posts just like these from the Apple Kool Aid drinkers.

It's what makes some forums such a poor source of information to those that have no knowledge of these things.

Guys, not trying to pour 151 proof Puerto Rican Rum on the flames. The current Consumer Report issue has an article that "might" be of some interest to y'all. It's called "New iPad vs. rivals". The same issue proclaims Coors as the standout of 10 regular and light lagers. This might prove to be much more interesting than what y'all have been arguing about, he, he, he!

Please take a screenshot of Safari on your iPad and post it here then. I guarantee it looks exactly the same.

Those are direct uncompressed screenshots straight from the deviceexactly what you see when using it.


Claiming that zooming in on text as much as possible is a useful test to illustrate the differences between the two iPads is completely misinformed. It's the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

If yo actually bothered to read my post, that was NOT the sales person I was talking about and you labeled 'misinformed'. The sales person I called honest (and is actually very informed) was a VZW employee who told me that MANY people come in and have trouble seeing the difference. I've seen the same thing myself on multiple occasions at different retailers. Many people DO have trouble seeing significant differences. Another poster wrote how he was able to fool people in to thinking the 2 was a 3. The guy that zoomed on the font was a BB employee and if you read my post, I said to him 'you're kidding right?' I see a much bigger difference in color than 'readability', but for me it's still not worth it. And I do like a 16:9 AR on a tablet. You don't, but unlike you I can accept that. People are different.

So I have no need to go through these exercises to try to prove to myself that text, websites, books etc. that are perfectly readable (and whose 'flaws' were rarely discussed PRIOR to The 3) are in actuality 'fuzzy' and difficult to read. Your 'methodology' of making fonts look fuzzy is not what people do when actually reading an IPad. In fact, when people zoom, they are simply applying MORE Rez to the text (as you admitted). What you absolutely cannot understand is the fact that this IS the way people read an IPad and this IS why people don't have issues reading other IPads. They don't take screenshots of text and THEN enlarge it. Please.

Accept the fact that many people don't see this 'huge' difference. Accept the fact that many don't see this 'font' issue as you do. Accept the fact that for many people the prior IPads were absolutely 100% fine and 100% readable. Accept the fact that many professional reviews have said if you had an IPad 2 it's probably hard to justify the new one unless you really need LTE.

Can you do that? No? I didn't think so. Have another drink of that Apple Kool Aid. So very tasty.

100 percent correct!

Many of those same people may also not realize some benefits with these five minute looks though.

After long reading periods I do notice my eyes are less fatigued on the new iPad vs the older ones.

And chromo's pics do prove another difference. Taking screen snap shots produces a much better result on a new iPad. Now that also may not be important to the overwhelming majority.

in the end most would have to say the iPad 2 is perfectly fine and a quality display. I have to go back and read this thread to see where it was stated otherwise.

Found it! That 1 little sentence at the end of a long diatribe.

Chrono - Was it a fit of passion using the word "terrible"? In the pursuit of perfection I can understand the debate over what constitutes significant or marginal improvements however to call the ipad 2 text terrible is worthy of the backlash!

That's what drinking the Kool Aid does!

My apologies. I must have overlooked that.

Unless you're used to reading on an iPad, I don't think it's necessarily something you're going to notice in a two minute look at the device in a store. I've already said many times that it's a big improvement, but not one that "stands out" until you've used the device long enough to get used to how that looks, and then go back to the previous generation.


I have already posted the iPad screenshot at its original size, it doesn't fare any better. I did nothing to make the screenshot look fuzzy, that's just how the iPad is.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to get things to be an exact match, but here's a comparison at roughly the same font size on a 768x1024 screen:

• Safari for iPad, which does not use subpixel font rendering.
• Safari for Windows, which uses the same font rendering engine, with subpixel font rendering enabled.
• Firefox for Windows which uses its own font rendering engine tuned for legibility.

The iPad rendering engine has poor legibility at low resolutions, and while it looks good on the iPad 3, it could look considerably better than it does now if they implemented subpixel font rendering.

There were many times when using my iPad 2 (I bought one the day they came out, and used it every day since) when the paragraph of text was too wide to zoom in on in the portrait orientation to be clearly legible, and you had to switch the device to landscape and zoom in.

Constantly zooming in and out of text is a real nuisance on sites like The Verge, where their reviews change the position and width of text every few paragraphs, and Safari's Reader mode does not work. On the new iPad you don't need to zoom in at all to read an article, which is a far nicer experience.

Even when text is legible on the iPad 1/2, it looks a lot nicer on the new iPad. There just isn't enough resolution for good font rendering in the portrait orientation. (and I find that text is often too large in landscape, at the distance I hold the device)

Some comparison text examples here;
Apple's latest Lion update continues preparations for Retina display Macs

I've already said this and I'll say it one more time, my IPad 2 does NOT look fuzzy or anything like your 'screenshots'. The text is sharp, crisp and eminently readable. I feel no need to apologize for that, no need to try to explain why that should be. I never see my wife complaining about difficulty in reading from her antiquated IPad1. Not once. If you see fuzzy fonts on prior IPads or have difficulty reading text, may I suggest reading glasses?

If you don't buy that, I could frankly care less. I am very very familiar with display quality and have only owned top-notch displays. If my text with the material I read actually looked like what you posted without blowing it up, I would never have bought an IPad. Once again, reviews NEVER posted about 'fuzzy, difficult to read text' in prior IPads. As I've said, I've seen many people coming into the store comparing the two and seeing little difference. My friend at VZW sees the same thing. Live with it, acknowledge it, accept it. Everyone does not see things like you.

If it's one thing I've learned over the years relative to display quality, if a new display doesn't hit me at the beginning, then the change was subtle and not worth it. Remember, I OWNED the new Ipad for several days before returning it and STILL saw little difference. Why you can't accept that is beyond me, but it seems to be a common trait with the Kool Aid crowd. Please don't tell me I should have held on to it for that 3rd day or a week. If it takes that long then it is NOT worth it. That's a fact.

Your revisionist history continues and I have no use for it.

I'm sure you'll respond with more blown up screenshots, proclamations about how fuzzy all prior IPads were compared to the new one etc. etc. etc. And guess what? When the NEW Ipad 4 comes out with even greater resolution and smoother fonts, you'll be the first to talk about how fuzzy the IPad 3 was.

I think we've gone as far as we can go on this. I don't subscribe to your sales pitch and I don't drink the Apple Kool Aid. You may have the last word as I'm absolutely sure you will.

Prove it. Press the home button and sleep button on the iPad, and it will take a PNG (losslessly compressed) screenshot, saving it to your photo roll.
Post it here. I guarantee it looks no better than anything I have posted, because that is how the iPad 1 & 2 render text. 768x1024 is not a lot of resolution, the iPad is not fast enough for subpixel font rendering, and Apple's font rendering focuses on accuracy rather than legibility.

It's far easier to disprove me by posting factual evidence rather than going on a tirade about how wrong I am, or how I am somehow manipulating things.

Well respected sites like Anandtech have images like these of the displays:


And before you say anything, those were edited for clarity, removing the color casts and moire. (by using better downsampling methods and desaturating the images) Both images had exactly the same operations performed on them, I did nothing to exaggerate anything in the iPad 2 image.


Funny that you should say that, as I was just at the optician's earlier in the week. My near vision is perfect, and my distance vision remains unchanged, at +1.25 and +0.75.

I would suggest that if you aren't noticing the massive difference between the two displays, that you should be investigating your eyesight.

If you're happy with your iPad 1/2, then that's fine. But to say that there isn't a massive difference between the two when it comes to text rendering is factually incorrect.


Those are direct screenshots from the iPad. It is exactly as the image is rendered on-screen. I don't understand why you are still arguing this point.


Text quality was mentioned in many of the original iPad reviews and glossed over with the iPad 2 as it remained unchanged. (though some reviews complained about that fact)


I have already said that the iPad 3 doesn't have quite enough resolution to be optimal, and that going to 3072x2304 (396 PPI) would have been ideal.

If you look at the hash symbol in this image, you can see that even 1546x2048 is not quite enough resolution for certain symbols. (it's worse with Asian characters)

However, I can't see the iPad resolution changing again, because the only option they have now is 4096x3072 which is unrealistic, and at 264 PPI, it has enough resolution that text generally does not look "fuzzy".

Toshiba has shown off a prototype display with a 498 PPI density, which does still show clear improvements to text legibility with Asian characters:

The problem is Apple's fuzzy font rendering, which aims for correct representation at the cost of legibility on low-PPI screens. Some people (me included) can't stand it. Most don't care. The problem disappears with high-PPI screens (iPhone 4, New iPad).

http://www.atpm.com/12.01/paradigm.shtml

OK enough of this. It is utterly dishonest to try to represent the look of the actual 'live' screen by displaying the PNG screen shot.

The PNG capture is NOT as sharp as the 'live' screen. It is NOT as crisp as the 'live' screen. So what you are attempting to do here by representing the PNG screen shot as how the ACTUAL 'live' screen looks like is beyond me. Anyone can prove that to themselves by going through the inane exercise of taking their IPad, doing a screen capture and then comparing it to the 'live' screen they just shot. It's day & night.

Of course the PNG looks like poop. BUT the live screen does not. It is in fact sharp & crisp. Once again, do you REALLY think that people would be happy reading crap like that as depicted in the PNG? Do you REALLY think people would have bought any prior IPads if text looked like that? Do you REALLY think people would be reading E-Books with font clarity represented by the PNG?

C'mon, let's be intellectually honest here. Look, I've never said the IPad3 is not crisper, it obviously is. But that does NOT render all prior IPads instantly fuzzy and unreadable...and certainly not as depicted by a funny PNG. Trying to present a PNG as what the 'real' screen looks like is just a bit less than honest IMO.

OTOH, trying to read text on a tiny screen like the IPhone is nothing but frustrating for me. That's why I went to a 4.6" screen which is eminently more readable. So regardless of how well formed the fonts are on an IPhone, it's lost IMO by the tiny screen.

Why not? It's pixel-for-pixel identical, right?

Try it and see on the same device. Do a screen capture and then go back & forth between the capture and the 'live' screen you just captured. Big difference.

That's why the vast majority of people don't complain about their IPad's legibility.

As Nugget says, it's pixel-accurate to what is rendered on the screen. As long as you take the proper precautions when getting it off the device so that you get the original PNG rather than a compressed JPG—which I did—there is no difference between the “live” image and the screenshot whatsoever.

It's exactly the same as pressing the “Print Screen” key on your keyboard (Command + Shift + 3 on a Mac) to grab a screenshot.

Greetings Ken,
I own both iPad 1s and 3s. I can't tell any difference between a screen shot and "live". Seriously, the only way you could tell the screenshot wasn't actual is the links/tabs don't work etc. :-)

On the other hand, I don't have an issue with either screens resolution - and I go back and forth between devices quite often.

Cheers

This simply isn't correct. I take screen captures all the time as a byproduct of my job when I'm finding and reporting bugs in our mobile apps. We often include screen shots in the bug report to the developers and those screenshots perfectly represent the image of the application as it's running -- pixel accuracy (which is often important for describing the bug).

In fact, at least once a week I stupidly try to use the app only to discover that I'm actually in the photo browser. Not my finest moments, that's for sure.

I use all generations of iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads when we're testing a new release. When I switched my personal iPad to the new iPad 3 I wasn't as amazed by the increased resolution as I thought I would be. The difference just didn't seem that dramatic. But now when I go back to using our iPad 1 or 2 it looks terrible to me and I'm bothered by the lower resolution.

As I said, the PNG I captured (and displayed on my IPad...no computer intervention and I don't use Macs, I use PCs) looks just like what you posted and displayed on my IPad. However the live shot on the IPad simply looks clearer and sharper. I showed the two to my wife and she agreed 100%.

What can I tell you, it is what it is. I'm 100% satisfied with the text on the IPad 2, my wife is happy with the same on her IPad 1 and that's the bottom line for us. You're not, but you're happy with the IPad 3 and that the bottom line for YOU. Again, my text does not look like the PNG I captured and displayed on the IPad and no amount of selling on your part will change that. They are different when displayed on the same IPad. Period.

My wife and I are not crazy. Live and let live my friend.

I think we're done...but I suspect you're not.

Honestly, if 1,000 people told me the same thing, my eyes and my wife's eyes clearly tell us something else. They are not the same, they really aren't. The PNG is simply not as clear or sharp as the live screen and the fonts themselves on the PNG are slightly thicker.

This is like the old 'who do you believe, what I tell you what your eyes see'. I fully understand 'pixel for pixel' rendering. What I am seeing is not that. I do professional editing, so I do recognized screen quality, screen captures etc. I don't know what the IPad is doing, but I surely don't see 'pixel for pixel' mapping in my screen captures.

Ken I think we all agree that the new iPad has better resolution, and likely to be perceivable if one has the correct NATIVE source and A/B comparison. Think the argument is whether it is significant enough.

Like the argument with cyan in Elite, it is a matter of threshold. First thing we have to understand is that Steve Job is a perfectionist. And Apple products are mainly made for perfectionist. He would probably notice the cyan problem in Elite and get Sharp to remedy it (taking into account that Sharp is probably the panel provider for their new IGZO iPad and Apple TV) How do we conclude that? That's because he once asked a google chief engineer to change the color of the icon in his iphone because he said the color is wrong!

I'm not perfectionist. I'm more pragmatist. But at a certain price point I would go for Apple simply because I know it is made for perfectionist making the best possible use of existing tech. Hence I can accept where the arguments from the Apple lovers come from.

I agree with some of what you say specuvestor, specifically the fact that the IPad does have better resolution but, as you say, how significant that is can be be debated.

However, being a perfectionist does not always imply that the products you design are designed ideally for everyone. For those looking for a 3.5" screen and a simple to use device, yes, the Iphone would be ideal for that crowd...even among the perfectionists in that crowd. And yes, for those that live, breathe and die Apple, Steve Jobs was indeed a perfectionist. However I didn't always buy into that. He was without a doubt, IMO, the consummate marketer...none better. But there is a difference between a perfectionist and superb marketer.

For those that do not believe that IOS or a 3.5" screen is 'ideal', they would not subscribe to the fact that the device was designed in a manner that appeals to the perfectionist in THEM. So whether or not the designer was a 'perfectionist' becomes very irrelevant to that person and even questionable.

Those that are looking for more flexibility in an OS, might also not subscribe to the 'perfectionist' argument either. One could rightly argue that if a perfectionist had developed a well designed OS, it would allow the user more flexibility, depth and at the same time be easy to use. So even though someone might be viewed as a perfectionist, it doesn't mean that their initiatives can't be viewed as 'misguided' by some.

Just as another example, to take on the argument about font rendering (which ironically I'm in a small minority here), would a 'perfectionist' have designed an OS that renders something as important as fonts in a manner that irks so many? Doesn't seem so to me and at the very least, it might rightly be viewed as the fruits of a 'misguided perfectionist'.

So when Apple designs a product that meets MY needs, I give it serious consideration. But if my needs call for a 16:9 AR, a larger screen, a deeper OS, an AMOLED screen, the ability to use Flash etc., it makes not a whit of difference whether Steve Jobs was a perfectionist or not, his product did not meet my needs and therefore it was not the best product on the market for me.

What I see with many in the Apple crowd is that no matter what Apple designs, they are utterly convinced that not only is it the only product for them (which is fine), but it should be the only product of its type for ANYONE. And trust me, I've gone head to head with many people that think just that. It's almost comical to watch. Apple can do no wrong in their eyes. I see these Apple guys who have such dated views of the PC, it's like they've lived in a cave for the last several years.

This is where the perfectionist argument is lost on me. Once one loses their objectivity, there is no point in continuing the discussion.

How are you taking screen shots? Because there's no way you're doing it correctly if you're getting this result.

yes he is certainly a perfectionist AND marketer. And also a visionary, eloquent speaker (reality distortion field) , charismatic leader (despite the harsh things), artist... the amazing thing is he is able to crystalises all these ideals into products and indeed into the company's culture and aura. And we both know this not from some writeups in wikipedia but from observing and experiencing Apple in the past 30 years or so.

His product was NOT meant for everyone, but he wants everyone to yearn for it because they are cool. It is an art to Apple, not just a hardware. Even when they were at brink of collapse and they launched the iMac, there were so many obstacles including colored passive components. Who the crap makes colorful capacitors? Even up to today the often discarded Sim card removal pin is actually a sophisticated liquid metal !! To digress, we see open architecture under Wintel triumphing closed Apple architecture and now the opposite happened. It is something for the pro-freedom of choice, non-intrusive crowd to ponder what makes Apple the largest market cap company in the world. It all buoys down to what works rather than ideals. For those who like to tinkle with their devices, probably Apple is not for them, because that's how it was designed to be... a closed architecture.

Perfectionism has no room for "flexibility" It's either perfect (within the constraints of the tools available) or it is not. For them and many others, the iPad is the best in terms of usability. As a PC user, I had my fair share of bells and whistles winning over usability in the past 2 decades, and the amazing part is some of the vendors (including Steve Balmer) still don't get it.

As to font rendering, you know more than I do that Apple's niche in the past was for graphic designers and they established many standards for fonts and WYSIWYG. Chronoptimist has explained it in detail (though I'm not knowledgeable enough to verify the accuracy). Simplistically speaking, that Apple managed to dominate the graphics space even when it was going bankrupt is not something to be lightly dismissed.

Placebo effect. The PNG captures are exactly what the iPad is displaying on the screen.
If you're seeing anything different, you are either doing something wrong (though I can't imagine what) or you are imagining it.


I think it's funny that you assume I blindly follow whatever Apple says, because the reality is that I was completely against the idea of the original iPad and skipped a generation until they actually had a good App ecosystem and addressed the speed and memory limitations of the device.

There was a time a few years ago when I used Macs as my main computers, but now I have shifted to a Windows desktop because they don't offer the hardware flexibility and performance that I require. The Mac Pros have not been updated in almost two years at this pointPC hardware is two generations ahead of them now, and yet the most equivalent spec comparable to my current machine (4.5GHz 2500K, 16GB RAM, 8TB storage, GTX570) costs literally over three times what I paid a year ago and is considerably slower.

I think Apple has made a lot of poor UI decisions in recent years as wellat least from a "power user's" perspective. Spaces was far better than Mission Control is, and changing Expose to put all windows in an ordered grid rather than keeping them relative to their size & position on-screen was a terrible idea.

Their mice have been universally awful since the very beginning. It's amazing that they still haven't figured that out.

I think the MacBook Air is a terrible purchase for most people that would have any interest in it, because the CPU is incredibly slow, the display is poor (twice the price of an iPad and no IPS panel) and the battery life is terrible. Maybe Sandy Bridge-based MBAs will fare better, but as it is now, they're notebooks that are amazingly portable, but need to be plugged in to actually use them for more than a couple of hours. (compared to the 10 hours or so the iPad gets)


Overall though, I think you would be hard-pressed to find better thought out or designed hardware from anyone else, in just about any category of products they make. PC manufacturers still haven't managed to figure out laptop trackpads yet.