Apple faking 489 to 815 PPI on iPhone 4 ads
digitalsociety.org
digitalsociety.org
Models used in advertising have always been more attractive on average. Even the comparatively unattractive models are more photogenic on average. And what does this have to do with the topic?
Stop cluttering HN with petty complaints about Apple.
Hint: you are agreeing with the post you are replying to.
It's only obvious this is sarcasm after reading the last line of the OP. Without that context, it's indistinguishable from the petty complaints around here. Therefore, misdirected anger remains. Rargh.
I also don't think the OP is making a petty complaint (even if it probably got upvoted for petty reasons), as the representation IS potentially misleading, despite there being good reasons for it.
No one that sees these videos or ads on the web will be using a 300dpi screen so they need to overcompensate. A more interesting comparison will be what resolution they show in their print ads.
They are kind of weird samples. For example the big pixel side is highlighting 25 pixels, but you could easily draw a 16 pixel square and assert the light row should go in the next sample. Also, the big side is taken from a point with a -1 slope, but the little side is much steeper, maybe 5? It seems like you'd want to compare the same section of both letters.
Also, it's not really clear to me why each red box in the lower left sample has 2 or more colors. That seems like a good indicator that the red box != one pixel.
Of course it could be a misleading screen-grab and the slide was not purporting to show old iPhone resolution next to new iPhone resolution here. Maybe it's 'old' compared to 'perfect'.
(I should point out, my participation in this crucial discussion is dependent entirely on the slowness of my compiler).
The interactive examples further down appear to be realistic though.
No reason to overcompensate. What Apple shows is one enormously blown-up pixelated "before" screen compared to an "after" one displayed on the native best-possible resolution of the display people are seeing. They show much more than a 2x improvement (it's twice as high, not 4 times, because resolution is measured linearly, not by area)
1- Whether or not this is, in fact, the case is not relevant.
[1] http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html
edit: their side-by-side comparison shows the correct number of pixels between the two.
The loupe uses the image below. You can open them and verify that no cheating has been used. The 3GS image has 2*2 pixel blocks all over. The images don't have subpixel antialiasing (as they have to be viewable on all kinds of monitors), so I expect them to look a tiny bit better IRL.
iPhone 3GS: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu...
iPhone 4: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu...
Try view the images. A truly great difference.
Put them both on the screen and stand far enough back to equalize them with the size of an iPhone held up at a reasonable reading distance. They will both be equally unreadable.
It may just be me, but it appears that they are not much sharper than the DVDs (unlike the DVD vs VHS change) and most of it is marketing.
Hi-Def content has a higher resolution, but if you have average vision with an average size TV and you sit the average distance from the screen then you can't possibly see any difference.
When you're in the TV shop where they've carefully arranged the TVs so you can't stand more than a few feet back then there will be obvious differences.
Here's a nice graph to check whether you should be able to see a difference:
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
One interesting wrinkle is that if you're at the right distance for HD, then you're too close for any SD content you have and vice versa so unless you only watch one resolution then you either put up with the SD or the HD looking worse than it should.
It is very, very, very easy to put yourself in a situation where 1080 is useless. The cutoff for where your 1080 40" TV might as well be a 720 TV is 7 to 8 feet; further away than that and you can't tell the difference between 1080 and 720. At about 12 feet you've lost HD entirely. Many people have setups that fail these criteria. And this is a continuum, not a sharp cutoff, so if you're on the far side you may be able to tell a difference but not think it's worth it.
Now, all that said, well-upsampled DVDs are much closer to BluRay than people selling BluRay would like to admit. It isn't the same, but I couldn't call it "night and day", certainly.
As but one example, the parent's example transition at 7 to 8 feet would occur around 10 feet for me. Above-average vision is great on paper but translates into more expensive displays positioned farther away. :(
The "a" on the right is fine, it is there to represent the kind of image in which you no longer are able to detect pixillation, going above of the supposed 300dpi limit, like what would happen on the iPhone4. On the other hand, presenting on the left an "a" with half the quality of the one on the right would probably be too difficult for people to spot the difference.
If they were fair on that slide, it probably would be interesting to analyze if people would really notice the difference or if they would just pretend they did (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperors_New_Clothes). Sure thing, it would not have that much of an impact, at least until all of those people get the chance of having the new iPhone in their hands.
It's the best mobile device screen out there, hands down. They really don't need to do that.
But seriously, this is all to demonstrate the difference. It’s not a ‘claim’. After all, 815dpi will look the same to the human eye as 370dpi…
25x more pixels (5x the resolution, count the block) = 815 PPI.
Do you really need a phone? Marketers don't sell needs, they sell wants.
based on… Screenshots from compressed videos?"
unbelievably dumb blog post.