The iPad Mini and the cost of Retina | Hacker News Reader

The iPad Mini and the cost of Retina

marco.org

41 pointsgoogletron52 comments

Wow, that was a very convoluted article to say something utterly simple that can be summarized in one sentence: "ipad mini does not have a Retina screen because of GPU and battery restrictions". Marco really knows how to fill pages with Nothing.

I am going to be that guy. The article may be well written, yet a complete waste of my time. It presents no insights, and most of us on HN will learn absolutely nothing from it. HN discussions shouldn't be the same as those on Engadget and Techcrunch.

Maybe there should be a checkbox which says "Yes, I think this is interesting for _hackers_."

I hate to burst your bubble, but "Hacker News" as the title of this community shouldn't be taken literally anymore (this has been the case for a long time now). PG himself often talks about how startups no longer need to launch on other tech blogs, because HN is a force of its own (and in many cases provides much better conversion rates during launches, assuming your target audience reads this site).

This community is comprised of founders (who happen to play other roles than just "hacker"), designers, developers, marketers, bloggers, risk-takers, and generally anyone who likes the idea of creating something from nothing in the tech industry. This includes reading about and discussing industry news, trends, and cult-like followings (Apple).

Regardless of the fact that this community was created with a focus on hackers is now irrelevant, it's become the beast that it now is.

I come to HN because I want to hear from programmers like you, many who are involved with startups or other interesting projects. Things that worked for you, things that went wrong.

I agree with what you said though, this is what it is now.

Well, I disagree.

I had the same realisations about the performance impact of Retina screens when the iPhone 4 was released, and how I expected a Retina iPad to be far into the future. (It took about 2 years.)

But I had forgot about that today.

"Its battery life, portability, or performance would suffer significantly. (Probably all three.)"

The existence of the Nexus 7 would seem to nullify the crux of Marco's argument. The Nexus 7 has a 216ppi display, 10 hour battery life and by most accounts it performs excellently.

iPad apps are designed for a screen pixel count of either 1024×768 pixels, or 2048×1536 pixels. An iPad Mini with a “retina” display would† therefore have a 326 ppi display, dramatically more pixels and therefore harder for the GPU to drive than the Nexus 7.

      retina iPad: 3.15 megapixels
          Nexus 7: 1.02 megapixels
  non-retina iPad: 0.79 megapixels

† unless the software was considerably revamped using a different approach than the one Apple has used for every other retina display, probably causing rewrites and an extra obnoxious target from all app authors across the board, as compared to literally zero extra work

Apple's hands are tied by decisions made long ago re display layout. Because elements are positioned absolutely and not via a layout manager, they can't go with an intemdiate resolution - they're tied to either 1024x768 or 2x that.

Cocoa Touch has a scale factor for handling retina displays, in the form of the UIView contentScaleFactor property. It is a float, so if there were the will, unusual scales could be handled, somehow, even with absolutely-positioned elements. The UI for my game is laid out based on a 320x480 screen, and yet we somehow manage to make it not look too horrendous on the full range of iOS devices. It's not impossible. Images would be more of an issue than the actual layout.

But the latest iOS has some kind of layout manager anyway. Perhaps the iOS device range is going to become even more fragmented in the future. I'm not sure that's a great idea from anybody's perspective, but as long as people keep buying the devices, developers will continue to suck it up.

Doubtful: the new iPhone shows they are willing to throw that out the window.

If you notice carefully the new iPhone is not a resolution change but a size change; they can letterbox old apps because the dimensions and resolution is identical to old iPhones that way.

There is no comparable solution if you simply increase the PPI of the iPad Mini by 50%. It's either 1x pixels or 4x pixels, there is no middle ground.

less like "thrown out the window" and more like "nudged slightly"

The iPhone 5 lengthens the screen by 176 pixels in 1 direction, leaving an old style layout with 88 pixels of banding (a bit over 6mm) on each edge.

For Apple to run with a sreen resolution similar to the Nexus, say 1200 x 900, we'd have banding of 88 and 66 pixels along each long and short side respectively, so it wouldn't be too bad.

How does the GPU of the Nexus 7 compare to the iPad's? Ie. do graphics heavy games such as Infinity Blade run as smoothly? (genuinely asking, never used a Nexus 7 for more than a few minutes)

fwiw Infinity Blade II and Asphalt 7 both run silky smooth on the iPad Mini. My wife bought one because it fits in her handbag and I've since discovered it makes an awesome gamining machine :) Haven't used a Nexus 7 but it should be similar if not a bit faster. Can't go wrong with either I'd think

[Edit: on the subject of games, don't buy the latest Need For Speed game - it's a simplistic, samey, cynical cash grab from EA. But it's biggest sin is it's just plain not fun]

I wonder how they'll fix these issues in the next version? What's possible next fall, is possible this fall. It's an artificial hold back on those Retina devices. Also, i doubt that there is ANY problem, manufacturing batteries that can achieve everything that is needed next year, today, for the same price as next year.

Tell me what you want, but that's how this market works. People upgrading every year to the next so "innovative" product are just plain stupid.

I have no problem with spending the money, but i will not let me become such and stupid all-buying monkey.

  > What's possible next fall, is possible this fall.

If that were the case, I'd be writing this on a hover board. Alas, I'm not. Market conditions change.

I was particularly talking about the display and battery hardware of the current iPad mini.

Honestly I think Apple kind of gypped people by not putting in the retina display. The competitors in the 7" tablet market have the retina displays already, and for cheaper. They seem to be banking off the idea that they sell enough iOS devices that people will buy the mini no matter what. What sucks is you know the next update (which based on their new release schedules probably isn't that far away) will sport the retina as the big new feature without many other changes.

This is all coming from a huge Apple person. A tad disappointing.

Remember, you don't have to buy it. If you're confident that a Retina mini will be in the next iteration then just hold off until then.

Unless you think they could have shipped the exact same product (battery, price, weight, thickness) and included a retina display, but didnt just to make you upgrade, then sure that's disappointing. But Marco is arguing they couldn't have done this, and I agree.

Of course. Don't get me wrong, as a whole the thing is amazing especially for those accustomed to iOS. It's merely that given everything else that apple already has out (and now the competition), putting anything below retina when we are now all used to it will only hurt the iPad Mini market.

Honestly everything on the market is so much better and cheaper than what we had even 2 years ago, that I don't have the energy to be disappointed.

Remember when a portable computer was $600 - $100+ and weighed 5+ lbs, or was a 320x720 netbook, and that was AMAZING? It wasn't long ago...

I'm pretty sure most computers are still >= $600.

Did you even read this article before posting a comment?

Just wait a year for the GPU and battery improvement and no doubt they will introduce one then

Of course I did... did you even read my comment that you are replying to where i said "the next update will have it"? They already have the power to do a retina now... That is why the Kindle Fire HD can do it at the same size (ok fine not EXACTLY retina but still pretty close given that size of a device).

its not close to the same battery power as the number of pixels is far greater for retina than HD on Fire HD

Resolution: 1920 x 1200 vs 2048 x 1536, thats a fair chunk more power

2304000 vs 3145728 pixels = 27% more battery drain

The competitors have higher resolution displays than the iPad mini, but probably not what Apple would call "retina" - the Nexus 7 has 216 ppi, which is less than the iPad's 264 ppi, and significantly less than the 326 ppi that a pixel-doubled iPad mini would end up with - which, considering the niceness of the iPhone at the same DPI, is probably worth it.

Got to hand it to Apple's marketing team. This HTC phone has a 1080 display with 440 ppi, but customers will still be asking if the phone is "Retina".

http://androidcommunity.com/htc-j-butterfly-features-a-5-inc...

What's the point ? After about 300 PPI you're not going to tell any difference. Just puts a strain on the battery, GPU, and CPU. Looks great on the spec sheet, but then I guess that is the primary point rather than how it actually performs.

Always good to see you comex :D. I agree it's not really officially "retina", which going off of Linus Torvald's words, is really overused. But still, I've also become very accustomed to looking at a retina display and downgrading to a resolution even less than that of Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD is a bit disappointing. I do really love the weight of it and feel of it, but nowadays the screen is a huge factor.

OT: Just so you are aware, "gypped" is a racial slur against gypsies.

What sucks is you know the next update will sport the retina as the big new feature without many other changes

That was literally my first thought. The new Mini will probably then be hailed as "ground-breaking".

Then wait for the new Mini. Problem solved!

"Apple didn’t make an arbitrary decision to withhold Retina on the Mini to save money, upsell more buyers to the iPad 4, or “force” the first generation of iPad Mini owners to upgrade next year. They chose not to ship a Retina iPad Mini because it would be significantly worse than the previous iPads in very important factors."

Er, Apple Maps?

That Google Maps asked for a lot of money and gave them less functionality (turn by turn navigation etc).

Agreed they messed up the launch, but it had to be done eventually.

Every business makes mistakes, the fact that people are upset most by apple maps being crap and having to use a browser instead is actually not too bad considering how many things they are doing at the moment!

Apple Maps was a software decision, the iPad Mini Retina decision was hardware. These decisions were made by two different people; Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive.

Hopefully I don't have to explain further.

Er, Maps is irrelevant to this point.

No, it's a perfectly valid example of a case where Apple shipped something that was worse than what it had been shipping.

Also, it's a good example of how Apple's management is still able to recognize mistakes and try new ways, even if that means slaughtering an employee who significantly contributed to their top position in the market (Forstall).

Microsoft's fallout with Sinofsky is an interesting parallel to say the least.

So what, this should have influenced their decisions on the iPad Mini ?

Even if there were some issues with Apple Maps, I don't see why that would have an impact on the feature set of the iPad mini.

Predictable Marco predictably defending whatever Apple has decided to do for whatever "reasonable" reasons he can conjur.

Also: predictably trollbait.

I would rather they keep reducing the price and weight. Retina? 163ppi is already pretty good.

So basically what he is saying is that Apple was unable to build a iPad Mini with a retina display and good battery life. But in a defensive move they decided to enter the 7.9" market anyway.

Good lord some of the commenters on here hate Marco posts. It's a reasonable and balanced response, and longer than 140 characters. That's not a bad thing.

"I stop noticing after I start doing something with it, of course, but those first few seconds are a rough reminder every time.", people are looking for it. Honestly. I've had a Retina iPhone since the 4 and an iPad 2, which when I bought it I was convinced I could see the pixels. Give it 2 weeks and your eyes adjust for it.

Also, iPad Mini display in the flesh is very readable, very sharp. Just not Retina resolution, and if the trade off is for a lighter, thinner, and less compromised design then it's well worth it.

I don't buy Apple products anymore but when I did I always waited until at least the 2nd generation of a new product or significant product redesign. The first release is essentially just a public beta and best avoided completely.

Can we stop repeating Apple's marketing bullshit and drop "Retina"?

What do you propose we use ?

Retina is actually a fairly useful term, it implies a certain pixel density at a certain point size.

By now using PPI should be the same as using GB for the RAM or GHz for the CPU (pre several cores, now it's a little bit more complex). 300 PPI is classified as not retina but you wouldn't notice it anyway, that's why we need to drop the retina classification.

"Let's stop that crap and call our Pentiums 'x86 thingies with vector thingies on top'!"

Maybe it's time they tried a low power amoled display?

I doubt its about size. They can ship the iphone with retina but not the ipad mini.

960x1136 vs 2048x1536 is a significant jump. It's 2,055,168 more pixels, which itself is almost 2x as many as the iPhone.

One big issue is the higher the density in pixels the larger and brighter the backlight needs to be and in turn means a larger battery, more weight and thickness.

Ironically in the other tab, I'm hitting refresh:

The Nexus 10 will be available for purchase on Tuesday, Nov. 13th.

for $400.

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