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The questions that I want to know the answers to: 1. Will the next iterations of the iPad and MacBook(s) have this sort of display (perhaps as an option), or w

by MaysonL 16y ago

The questions that I want to know the answers to: 1. Will the next iterations of the iPad and MacBook(s) have this sort of display (perhaps as an option), or will it be the iteration after that? 2. How much will they cost?

simonsquiff 16y ago
I think it's more likely that the iPad will do a similar x2 increase in resolution, i.e. go from 1024x768 to 2048x1536... You don't need the same level of DPI on the iPad and it would just take too much grunt to push the same DPI as the iPhone on that screen.
- zokier 16y ago
  iPad is partially marketed as a reading device, so larger resolutions are warranted. And doubling the resolution is quite clever trick as it makes scaling legacy apps much, much easier
baddox 16y ago
Display technology usually increases in cost exponentially with screen size.
- MaysonL 16y ago
  True, but it also decreases exponentially over time.
rimantas 16y ago
I'd be happy for a while if Apple follows the trend it set with iPad and iPhone 4 and starts shipping notebooks with IPS screen even if resolution is the same as it is now.
- yardie 16y ago
  I'd also be happy with this. Considering that Apple used to ship all their Powerbooks with IPS displays, but the market decided that TN would rule the day. Now the only places to find them are extremely highend workstation laptops (aka. heavy, desktop portables)
cheald 16y ago
1. Not likely on the iPad, because in order to get 326 PPI on a 9.7" diagonal device, you have to pack 2530 x 1898 pixels onto it, which is 610% increase over the currently shipping specs. That kind of display takes a lot of power to drive, and would perform extremely poorly compared to a similar device at 1024x768. The iPad already reportedly falls pretty flat under conditions that tax the GPU's fillrate. Sextupling the amount of work that the GPU has to do likely wouldn't do the device any favors for performance or battery life, both of which are key marketing points. Googling seems to indicate that the iPad has an A4 Mali GPU, which has a fillrate of about 100M pix/sec (by comparison, my desktop's Radeon 4850 has a fillrate of ~24 billion pix/sec). Each paint operation paints a certain number of pixels, and you'll do several of those per frame. At 1024x768 (786,432 pixels), the maximum fillrate-limited FPS to paint a one-pass single-color surface is about 127 FPS. Now, increase that to 2530x1898 (4801940 pixels) and your max FPS for the same operation drops to about 21 FPS - and that's just for painting a single color. Actually doing anything useful would utterly destroy the device. To compensate, they'd have to put in a beefier (more power-hungry) GPU. It's quite possible to build a device that would perform well at those specs, but it would be very expensive, and very difficult to fit into Apple's typical sexy form factors with any appreciable battery life. (It's been a few years since I've done high-performance graphics work, so if I'm off here, someone please correct me.)

by MaysonL 16y ago

simonsquiff 16y ago

I think it's more likely that the iPad will do a similar x2 increase in resolution, i.e. go from 1024x768 to 2048x1536... You don't need the same level of DPI on the iPad and it would just take too much grunt to push the same DPI as the iPhone on that screen.

zokier 16y ago
iPad is partially marketed as a reading device, so larger resolutions are warranted. And doubling the resolution is quite clever trick as it makes scaling legacy apps much, much easier

baddox 16y ago

Display technology usually increases in cost exponentially with screen size.

MaysonL 16y ago
True, but it also decreases exponentially over time.

rimantas 16y ago

I'd be happy for a while if Apple follows the trend it set with iPad and iPhone 4 and starts shipping notebooks with IPS screen even if resolution is the same as it is now.

yardie 16y ago
I'd also be happy with this. Considering that Apple used to ship all their Powerbooks with IPS displays, but the market decided that TN would rule the day. Now the only places to find them are extremely highend workstation laptops (aka. heavy, desktop portables)

cheald 16y ago

1. Not likely on the iPad, because in order to get 326 PPI on a 9.7" diagonal device, you have to pack 2530 x 1898 pixels onto it, which is 610% increase over the currently shipping specs. That kind of display takes a lot of power to drive, and would perform extremely poorly compared to a similar device at 1024x768. The iPad already reportedly falls pretty flat under conditions that tax the GPU's fillrate. Sextupling the amount of work that the GPU has to do likely wouldn't do the device any favors for performance or battery life, both of which are key marketing points. Googling seems to indicate that the iPad has an A4 Mali GPU, which has a fillrate of about 100M pix/sec (by comparison, my desktop's Radeon 4850 has a fillrate of ~24 billion pix/sec). Each paint operation paints a certain number of pixels, and you'll do several of those per frame. At 1024x768 (786,432 pixels), the maximum fillrate-limited FPS to paint a one-pass single-color surface is about 127 FPS. Now, increase that to 2530x1898 (4801940 pixels) and your max FPS for the same operation drops to about 21 FPS - and that's just for painting a single color. Actually doing anything useful would utterly destroy the device. To compensate, they'd have to put in a beefier (more power-hungry) GPU. It's quite possible to build a device that would perform well at those specs, but it would be very expensive, and very difficult to fit into Apple's typical sexy form factors with any appreciable battery life. (It's been a few years since I've done high-performance graphics work, so if I'm off here, someone please correct me.)