7 ms·

Apple faking 489 to 815 PPI on iPhone 4 ads

81 points by pmikal 16y ago

rbranson 16y ago
Isn't this obvious to anyone seeing the ads? I don't think people skiing are actually going to fly out of my TV when I see those ads, or that a humanoid rabbit is actually going to try to steal my Trix.
- rudyfink 16y ago
  I think a better example would be do people think they will experience similar changes to the people in the before and after photographs (beauty/weight loss/dental) or do they believe the examples of computer speed/performance improvement (download times or computing performance) products.
MarcusA 16y ago
Also, none of my friends are as attractive as the models used on the Facetime page. Stop faking my friends. Apple, please fix this.
- redstripe 16y ago
  As a side note, doesn't the guy talking to the woman with the baby look like a younger and chubbier steve jobs? You know iClone is coming soon. Everyone will get a hot model. Hell with Microsoft, I'm switching for sure when that happens.
  - goatforce5 16y ago
    I'm thinking that Jonathan Ives is turning in to Steve Jobs.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - lanstein 16y ago
      Ive, not Ives.
- dieterrams 16y ago
  What on earth are you expecting? Should Apple load pictures of your friends off Facebook or Flickr? 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.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Do you know what sarcasm is? If not, read up on that, then reread the post you replied to. Hint: you are agreeing with the post you are replying to.
    - dieterrams 16y ago
      Yeah, I know what sarcasm is. Famously known as being difficult to communicate on the Internet. You might want to read up on that. 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.
pchristensen 16y ago
I also posted this on the article: 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.
- confuzatron 16y ago
  Well, looking at the keynote slide, the samples are heavily zoomed in so 'old' pixels are depicted as tens of screen pixels high. For an honest portrayal, it's easy: 'new' pixels just need to be depicted as half-as-high. Sorry, but the '300dpi' blather is complete reality-distortion nonsense. :)
  - jfoutz 16y ago
    Do you have the slides? I just saw the image from the guy's site. I'm not sure how much the angle of the photo will compress the distant (high quality) letter. those displays are huge, so maybe the letters are 30' apart? it's not clear how far away the camera is. 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.
    - confuzatron 16y ago
      Sorry, no, when I say slide I'm looking at the photo of Steve Jobs with a big screen behind him showing two letter 'a's. One is heavily pixellated, and the other one is smooth in comparison - at the resolution of the slide display. Given the size of the old pixels, the new pixels should be easily visible but aren't. 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).
SandB0x 16y ago
I liked the old adverts that tried to show you how sharp DVDs were...on VHS.
- graywh 16y ago
  I seem to recall current ads doing the same thing comparing digital cable to analog....
  - malvim 16y ago
    Same with DVD vs Blu-Ray
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      Can you actually see the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray? 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.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - mehtastic 16y ago
        Planet Earth is the canonical example where the BD is instantly differentiable from the DVD.
      - arethuza 16y ago
        I was a bit of a skeptic about HD - but I suspect it all comes down to the quality of the production. I was watching the BBC "Wonders of the Solar System" last night and it looked awesome in HD.
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        Much like this current debate, it depends. 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 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.
not_an_alien 16y ago
Adding to that the fact that their clever semantics is making it sound better than it is (claiming '4x more pixels' - which is true, but it's just 2x the resolution)... It's the best mobile device screen out there, hands down. They really don't need to do that.
seanalltogether 16y ago
Is 300 really the max of the eye, I wonder how that is calculated. For instance, if you had a 1 pixel line at about a 15 degree angle, does that mean you would see no aliasing effects?
- bbatsell 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412296 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412296
smackfu 16y ago
I was wondering about that. It did look like the "after" image was just someone using the font at full resolution, rather than being properly scaled down.
hackermom 16y ago
This is a bit of sensationalist non-news, isn't it? I mean, we all know how exactly every single computer software/hardware manufacturer always use "resolution-less" photographs in their ads on computer screens, cellphone screens and so on.
- confuzatron 16y ago
  I think when you're specifically comparing resolutions, and you make one resolutionless and the other not... well, I'm sorry but it's not quite the same.
thenduks 16y ago
People always seem to forget that this is marketing. They're trying to show what the difference is like, they don't need to be exact.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  "I'm not lying about how big the fish was, just giving you the effect of what it was like to catch it."
  - jerf 16y ago
    And if the effect is the main point of the communication?
gaborcselle 16y ago
I don't understand how the author of this article gets his numbers of 489 to 815 PPI. Can someone explain this?
- sirn 16y ago
  Original iPhone = 163 PPI. 25x more pixels (5x the resolution, count the block) = 815 PPI.
Groxx 16y ago
Actually, I just realized... for the effect of what they're claiming (pixels smaller than you can see), this is a perfect comparison. Blocks to none. Sure, they're achieving it by bending the rules, but I got the impression that 300dpi played second fiddle to "your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels."[1] [1] http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html edit: their side-by-side comparison shows the correct number of pixels between the two.
- silvestrov 16y ago
  The side-by-side hover-loupe (under "In a word, resolutionary") is very very good at demonstrating the difference. 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-resolution-3gs-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... iPhone 4: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolution-4-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... Try view the images. A truly great difference.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    A truly great difference if your iPhone was the size of an iPad. 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.
miguelpais 16y ago
It was not the high-quality of the "a" on the right that was exaggerated, it was the low quality of the one on the left. 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 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.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  It's still a lie.
fleitz 16y ago
From the article: "Do you really need 300 PPI on a 3.5 inch phone?" Do you really need a phone? Marketers don't sell needs, they sell wants.
draper 16y ago
"So you’re calling Apple out on their supposed exaggeration of the pixel density based on… Screenshots from compressed videos?" unbelievably dumb blog post.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Oh right, because compressing video adds information...
alanh 16y ago
The ratios in the demo are correct if you compare them not to the iPhone 3G but to desktop monitors at 72dpi. 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…
- confuzatron 16y ago
  The graphics may not be honest, but they are indeed truthy.

81 points by pmikal 16y ago

Isn't this obvious to anyone seeing the ads? I don't think people skiing are actually going to fly out of my TV when I see those ads, or that a humanoid rabbit is actually going to try to steal my Trix.

rudyfink 16y ago
I think a better example would be do people think they will experience similar changes to the people in the before and after photographs (beauty/weight loss/dental) or do they believe the examples of computer speed/performance improvement (download times or computing performance) products.

MarcusA 16y ago

Also, none of my friends are as attractive as the models used on the Facetime page. Stop faking my friends. Apple, please fix this.

redstripe 16y ago
As a side note, doesn't the guy talking to the woman with the baby look like a younger and chubbier steve jobs? You know iClone is coming soon. Everyone will get a hot model. Hell with Microsoft, I'm switching for sure when that happens.
- goatforce5 16y ago
  I'm thinking that Jonathan Ives is turning in to Steve Jobs.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - lanstein 16y ago
    Ive, not Ives.
dieterrams 16y ago
What on earth are you expecting? Should Apple load pictures of your friends off Facebook or Flickr? 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.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Do you know what sarcasm is? If not, read up on that, then reread the post you replied to. Hint: you are agreeing with the post you are replying to.
  - dieterrams 16y ago
    Yeah, I know what sarcasm is. Famously known as being difficult to communicate on the Internet. You might want to read up on that. 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.

pchristensen 16y ago

I also posted this on the article: 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.

confuzatron 16y ago
Well, looking at the keynote slide, the samples are heavily zoomed in so 'old' pixels are depicted as tens of screen pixels high. For an honest portrayal, it's easy: 'new' pixels just need to be depicted as half-as-high. Sorry, but the '300dpi' blather is complete reality-distortion nonsense. :)
- jfoutz 16y ago
  Do you have the slides? I just saw the image from the guy's site. I'm not sure how much the angle of the photo will compress the distant (high quality) letter. those displays are huge, so maybe the letters are 30' apart? it's not clear how far away the camera is. 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.
  - confuzatron 16y ago
    Sorry, no, when I say slide I'm looking at the photo of Steve Jobs with a big screen behind him showing two letter 'a's. One is heavily pixellated, and the other one is smooth in comparison - at the resolution of the slide display. Given the size of the old pixels, the new pixels should be easily visible but aren't. 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).

SandB0x 16y ago

I liked the old adverts that tried to show you how sharp DVDs were...on VHS.

graywh 16y ago
I seem to recall current ads doing the same thing comparing digital cable to analog....
- malvim 16y ago
  Same with DVD vs Blu-Ray
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Can you actually see the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray? 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.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - mehtastic 16y ago
      Planet Earth is the canonical example where the BD is instantly differentiable from the DVD.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      I was a bit of a skeptic about HD - but I suspect it all comes down to the quality of the production. I was watching the BBC "Wonders of the Solar System" last night and it looked awesome in HD.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Much like this current debate, it depends. 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 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.

not_an_alien 16y ago

Adding to that the fact that their clever semantics is making it sound better than it is (claiming '4x more pixels' - which is true, but it's just 2x the resolution)... It's the best mobile device screen out there, hands down. They really don't need to do that.

seanalltogether 16y ago

Is 300 really the max of the eye, I wonder how that is calculated. For instance, if you had a 1 pixel line at about a 15 degree angle, does that mean you would see no aliasing effects?

bbatsell 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412296 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412296

smackfu 16y ago

I was wondering about that. It did look like the "after" image was just someone using the font at full resolution, rather than being properly scaled down.

hackermom 16y ago

This is a bit of sensationalist non-news, isn't it? I mean, we all know how exactly every single computer software/hardware manufacturer always use "resolution-less" photographs in their ads on computer screens, cellphone screens and so on.

confuzatron 16y ago
I think when you're specifically comparing resolutions, and you make one resolutionless and the other not... well, I'm sorry but it's not quite the same.

thenduks 16y ago

People always seem to forget that this is marketing. They're trying to show what the difference is like, they don't need to be exact.

nooneelse 16y ago
"I'm not lying about how big the fish was, just giving you the effect of what it was like to catch it."
- jerf 16y ago
  And if the effect is the main point of the communication?

gaborcselle 16y ago

I don't understand how the author of this article gets his numbers of 489 to 815 PPI. Can someone explain this?

sirn 16y ago
Original iPhone = 163 PPI. 25x more pixels (5x the resolution, count the block) = 815 PPI.

Groxx 16y ago

Actually, I just realized... for the effect of what they're claiming (pixels smaller than you can see), this is a perfect comparison. Blocks to none. Sure, they're achieving it by bending the rules, but I got the impression that 300dpi played second fiddle to "your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels."[1] [1] http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html edit: their side-by-side comparison shows the correct number of pixels between the two.

silvestrov 16y ago
The side-by-side hover-loupe (under "In a word, resolutionary") is very very good at demonstrating the difference. 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-resolution-3gs-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... iPhone 4: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolution-4-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... Try view the images. A truly great difference.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  A truly great difference if your iPhone was the size of an iPad. 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.

miguelpais 16y ago

It was not the high-quality of the "a" on the right that was exaggerated, it was the low quality of the one on the left. 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 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.

not_an_alien 16y ago
It's still a lie.

fleitz 16y ago

From the article: "Do you really need 300 PPI on a 3.5 inch phone?" Do you really need a phone? Marketers don't sell needs, they sell wants.

draper 16y ago

"So you’re calling Apple out on their supposed exaggeration of the pixel density based on… Screenshots from compressed videos?" unbelievably dumb blog post.

jrockway 16y ago
Oh right, because compressing video adds information...

alanh 16y ago

The ratios in the demo are correct if you compare them not to the iPhone 3G but to desktop monitors at 72dpi. 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…

confuzatron 16y ago
The graphics may not be honest, but they are indeed truthy.