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Comment by bostonpete | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I buy it, or at least that reasoning doesn't match Apple's apparent position on this. For example, at the iPhone 4 launch, the retinal display was the big topic. It would seem hard for them to then turn around and say that the better resolution of the XOOM is irrelevant.

This is the first product version launch I can remember where Apple wasn't on the leading edge in terms of specs. If they launched months after the XOOM and are as far behind spec-wise as the article suggests, that seems like a big win for the XOOM (even though specs obviously probably aren't the most important factor for most potential customers).

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Except that we know why the iPad resolution hasn't changed:

1. There are 65,000 apps tuned to work with it, so a minor bump to 'compete' on specs would make the user experience worse.

2. We know they are going to double it to 'retina' levels when they can. If motorola want to follow that approach, it's going to be longer before a double size panel is available.

3. The Xoom has an aspect ration that is better for playing a small subset of HD videos, but is worse for using in portrait 'magazine' orientation. It's not actually better for a lot of users.

I'm not even sure where the idea that they are behind the Xoom spec-wise is coming from.

> I'm not even sure where the idea that they are behind the Xoom spec-wise is coming from.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's another side to this argument, but the article explicitly lists where the XOOM exceeds to ipad2:

- higher resolution

- superior cameras (w/flash)

- stereo speakers

- upgradeable to 4G

- micro-USB/SD Card reader

- probably more RAM (author suggests it may be double)

We know they are going to double it to 'retina' levels when they can. If motorola want to follow that approach

They don't need to. The iOS development environment encourages you to use absolute pixel layouts, so a minor resolution increase would break lots of apps. Android uses layout managers that scale better to arbitrary screen sizes. Most existing Android apps will run fine on the Xoom, although certainly many can be improved with tablet-specific interfaces.

The Xoom has an aspect ration that is better for playing a small subset of HD videos, but is worse for using in portrait 'magazine' orientation. It's not actually better for a lot of users.

It still has more vertical pixels than the iPad. Completely agreed on the aspect ratio in general, it's ridiculous that it's almost impossible to find a laptop without a 16:9 display other than from Apple.

the retinal display was the big topic. It would seem hard for them to then turn around and say that the better resolution of the XOOM is irrelevant.

They had no trouble changing from "number of applications is irrelevant" when it came to the Mac and games on the Mac to "iPhone has the most apps".

Did they ever say that? (The first part, not the second.)

But the better resolution of the XOOM is irrelevant. The core value of a tablet device to the user is delivered through apps. Users tend not to care or notice how many pixels the device has, as long as there is a variety of good and inexpensive apps.

Not changing the iPad 2 resolution ensures there are still 65k and counting fully compatible apps. Android tablet makers continually "one-upping" each other on specs effectively ensure that much fewer quality and compatible apps will be available for their devices.

The smallish difference is irrelevant unless you care about 720p movies. Double dpi would not be irrelevant as the results are much more obvious to the eye in most situations.

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