6 ms·

IPhone 4: Who cares about pixel density? It's about interface definition.

60 points by sachinag 16y ago

zyb09 16y ago
Can't we just admit that the iPhone's 320x480 pixel display was getting kinda old and was due to an upgrade? Yes more pixels = things looks sharper. Other phones had better displays for a while, now the iPhone has a great one too. I think the display upgrade was kind of obvious for the iPhone4 and have been saying this since last year - it's cool and all but don't hype it into oblivion.
- dcurtis 16y ago
  Other phones have had better resolution, but they have never increased the definition of the interface elements themselves. Those "better" screens just made everything smaller and provided more room for stuff. -- Edit -- Apparently I was wrong on this point. Android does have some support for resolution independence, but most apps are not built for random pixel densities and therefor do not look stunning.
  - axod 16y ago
    Please point to some concrete examples of this... Screenshots?
  - moultano 16y ago
    Bullshit. Android does exactly the same thing.
    - rantfoil 16y ago
      This is the kind of lack of civility I'd like to see less of on Hacker News. Pointing out someone is wrong is probably enough. It feels good to shout bullshit at someone, but lowers the level of discourse and also makes it more acceptable for people to speak and behave trollishly.
      - moultano 16y ago
        This is a level of negligence that is beyond just being accidentally wrong. It would have taken less than 2 seconds for the author of the article to check whether Android has resolution independent ui. Instead they chose to mislead everyone who reads hackernews. I really don't have any patience for the 5 minute write -> post -> submit cycle that a lot of the crap submissions on hackernews have, and I think it warrants some vitriol.
  - wvenable 16y ago
    My current Windows Mobile (!!) phone has 4x the number of pixels of my previous WinMo phone and all the elements are the same physical size but rendered with more pixels. If Microsoft has done it, on their phones, you know it's as far from novel as you can get.
bradgessler 16y ago
I'd love to see res indie in OS 10.7, but bitmaps will probably prevent that from happening, though http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/2/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/2/ looks like a promising way of making bitmap scaling possible.
- rortian 16y ago
  Nah, unfortunately that algorithm does not magically make bitmaps scale. The image example they gave is grossly misleading. It works well on certain types of sparse information in Fourier space.
houseabsolute 16y ago
Is it really true that Android has not been scaling interface definition as pixel density increases? It's been a while since I used my G1, but I thought that my notification bar was taking up the same amount of physical space on that device as it does on my N1, which would make a lie of that claim. The number of icons on the home screen has not changed either even though the N1 is much higher resolution.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >Is it really true that Android has not been scaling interface definition as pixel density increases? Android has long been doing this (and it is hardly alone in doing this). To quote a Apple-friendly source that HN should like - http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/19/android-dips http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/19/android-dips In other words the linked blog entry is basically "my world only exists of the iPhone, therefore as it it adapts I can only assume that it is completely novel".
- moultano 16y ago
  Android does this. Even windows 7 has a configurable option for the size of all interface elements. (I recently got my mom a laptop with a small but very high resolution screen and was impressed with how well it handled it.) This article is a waste of space.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - coderdude 16y ago
    Since everyone seems to agree with you I find it odd that more people aren't flagging this article. I've said it many times, please stop up-voting all the Apple articles. They don't belong here and nearly every one of them is discovered to be crap or inaccurate. Even after someone points it out and gets up-voted for it the article still remains on the front page. Exercise your ability to clean up HN -- flag!
jbrennan 16y ago
While I believe Mac OS X has had some resolution independence since at least 10.5, I believe as of today it's still "not ready", and to say it's been there since the beginning is a bit of a misdirection. It's a work in progress. Having said that, I'm really glad iPhone 4 is taking this direction of clarity over "you can shove more stuff on screen". Imagine if you really had all the pixels for your interface: trying to read or (more importantly) tap on something would be nearly impossible unless it was blown up anyway. Looking forward to new screens like these in all devices.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  You're right. Mac OS X has the underpinnings of true resolution independence, but it is as of right now not accessible to most users (you have to hack a plist to get it, and there are some very glaring problems, which explains why it's not enabled by default). To claim that OS X is resolution independent is a bit disingenuous - for the lay user OS X less resolution independent than Win7.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    IIRC, the underpinnings of resolution independence were there since the time it was sold with black cubic computers. At that time, NeXT used DisplayPostscript. When Apple decided to base its new OS on NeXT technology, they replaced it with something more royalty-friendly (DPS licensing was quite expensive). Solaris also used DPS and had a couple demos with it (last time I played with them was on Solaris 2.5). NeWS was also based on PostScript, something that, legend says, made writing apps for it very... uncomfortable.
  - zokier 16y ago
    Kinda sad considering OSX's history
  - contextfree 16y ago
    FWIW, on Windows WPF, Silverlight, and I think Direct2D were designed from the ground up to be resolution independent, with everything vector-based and all dimensions expressed in "virtual pixels", but a lot of programs still use GDI, which is pixel-based. So it looks like the situation is roughly the same on Windows and OSX: new APIs are resolution independent, but until their use becomes more widespread people won't benefit much.
blehn 16y ago
I care about pixel density, because you can't improve interface definition without increasing pixel density. I think the improved interface definition is implied when people talk about pixel density, hence Apple's term,"retina display." The resolution independence of the OS is nice, but even if you use rasterized UI elements, you can still have better interface definition on the new iPhone (you just have to create a new set of elements).
deleted 16y ago
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yosho 16y ago
Personally, I think the pixel density doesn't really make that big of a difference. Who cares how slightly prettier the screen looks, most of the apps use overly large buttons and layouts anyway. I think Apple couldn't come up with anything revolutionary so everyone is trying to find stuff about the new phone to talk about.
- axod 16y ago
  Exactly. Wake me up when they come out with a rollup screen. Or a watch that projects a screen into midair. Or glasses that have inbuilt augmented reality etc but look exactly like normal glasses. Come on scientists!!! How hard can this stuff be???
  - abstractbill 16y ago
    Or a watch that projects a screen into midair. The Samsung Beam isn't far off that - it's an Android phone that has a miniature projector in it. I think it might need to be my next phone actually: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFY6hOVOzE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFY6hOVOzE
    - axod 16y ago
      Hah nice. But I'd bet the battery dies after much use :(
      - abstractbill 16y ago
        I would keep it plugged in and charging most of the day, add a bluetooth keyboard, and ditch my laptop :)
- rbanffy 16y ago
  You can use it to render readable information that takes less screen space. The prime example has been the NYT home that's completely readable on the new iPhone and only the headlines are "resolvable" on the older ones. I am not sure, however, how much one should push this. I bet I would only be able to read the small font of the NYT with a big magnifier.
saint-loup 16y ago
Just a link found on Wikipedia... : http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/GraphicsImaging/RN-ResolutionIndependentUI/ http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/G...
vsync 16y ago
I guess PalmOS automatically scaling UI elements when the screen size went from 160x160 to 320x320 (way back in the day) doesn't count in the author's world.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Any technical explanation for why iPhone apps just used straightforward pixel doubling on the iPad, even for text elements? How can iPhone apps seamlessly take advantage of the extra pixels on iPhone 4 but not iPad? On a related note, I think even iPhone 4 apps will still look a little bit odd on the iPad since your still taking a small, high-dpi interface and displaying it into a large, low-dpi device so it would still be worthwile to recode your interface. Android, it seems, lets you provide resources and layouts for both large devices and high-dpi devices independently.

60 points by sachinag 16y ago

zyb09 16y ago

Can't we just admit that the iPhone's 320x480 pixel display was getting kinda old and was due to an upgrade? Yes more pixels = things looks sharper. Other phones had better displays for a while, now the iPhone has a great one too. I think the display upgrade was kind of obvious for the iPhone4 and have been saying this since last year - it's cool and all but don't hype it into oblivion.

dcurtis 16y ago
Other phones have had better resolution, but they have never increased the definition of the interface elements themselves. Those "better" screens just made everything smaller and provided more room for stuff. -- Edit -- Apparently I was wrong on this point. Android does have some support for resolution independence, but most apps are not built for random pixel densities and therefor do not look stunning.
- axod 16y ago
  Please point to some concrete examples of this... Screenshots?
- moultano 16y ago
  Bullshit. Android does exactly the same thing.
  - rantfoil 16y ago
    This is the kind of lack of civility I'd like to see less of on Hacker News. Pointing out someone is wrong is probably enough. It feels good to shout bullshit at someone, but lowers the level of discourse and also makes it more acceptable for people to speak and behave trollishly.
    - moultano 16y ago
      This is a level of negligence that is beyond just being accidentally wrong. It would have taken less than 2 seconds for the author of the article to check whether Android has resolution independent ui. Instead they chose to mislead everyone who reads hackernews. I really don't have any patience for the 5 minute write -> post -> submit cycle that a lot of the crap submissions on hackernews have, and I think it warrants some vitriol.
- wvenable 16y ago
  My current Windows Mobile (!!) phone has 4x the number of pixels of my previous WinMo phone and all the elements are the same physical size but rendered with more pixels. If Microsoft has done it, on their phones, you know it's as far from novel as you can get.

bradgessler 16y ago

I'd love to see res indie in OS 10.7, but bitmaps will probably prevent that from happening, though http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/2/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/2/ looks like a promising way of making bitmap scaling possible.

rortian 16y ago
Nah, unfortunately that algorithm does not magically make bitmaps scale. The image example they gave is grossly misleading. It works well on certain types of sparse information in Fourier space.

houseabsolute 16y ago

Is it really true that Android has not been scaling interface definition as pixel density increases? It's been a while since I used my G1, but I thought that my notification bar was taking up the same amount of physical space on that device as it does on my N1, which would make a lie of that claim. The number of icons on the home screen has not changed either even though the N1 is much higher resolution.

ergo98 16y ago
>Is it really true that Android has not been scaling interface definition as pixel density increases? Android has long been doing this (and it is hardly alone in doing this). To quote a Apple-friendly source that HN should like - http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/19/android-dips http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/19/android-dips In other words the linked blog entry is basically "my world only exists of the iPhone, therefore as it it adapts I can only assume that it is completely novel".
moultano 16y ago
Android does this. Even windows 7 has a configurable option for the size of all interface elements. (I recently got my mom a laptop with a small but very high resolution screen and was impressed with how well it handled it.) This article is a waste of space.
- deleted 16y ago
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  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- coderdude 16y ago
  Since everyone seems to agree with you I find it odd that more people aren't flagging this article. I've said it many times, please stop up-voting all the Apple articles. They don't belong here and nearly every one of them is discovered to be crap or inaccurate. Even after someone points it out and gets up-voted for it the article still remains on the front page. Exercise your ability to clean up HN -- flag!

jbrennan 16y ago

While I believe Mac OS X has had some resolution independence since at least 10.5, I believe as of today it's still "not ready", and to say it's been there since the beginning is a bit of a misdirection. It's a work in progress. Having said that, I'm really glad iPhone 4 is taking this direction of clarity over "you can shove more stuff on screen". Imagine if you really had all the pixels for your interface: trying to read or (more importantly) tap on something would be nearly impossible unless it was blown up anyway. Looking forward to new screens like these in all devices.

potatolicious 16y ago
You're right. Mac OS X has the underpinnings of true resolution independence, but it is as of right now not accessible to most users (you have to hack a plist to get it, and there are some very glaring problems, which explains why it's not enabled by default). To claim that OS X is resolution independent is a bit disingenuous - for the lay user OS X less resolution independent than Win7.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  IIRC, the underpinnings of resolution independence were there since the time it was sold with black cubic computers. At that time, NeXT used DisplayPostscript. When Apple decided to base its new OS on NeXT technology, they replaced it with something more royalty-friendly (DPS licensing was quite expensive). Solaris also used DPS and had a couple demos with it (last time I played with them was on Solaris 2.5). NeWS was also based on PostScript, something that, legend says, made writing apps for it very... uncomfortable.
- zokier 16y ago
  Kinda sad considering OSX's history
- contextfree 16y ago
  FWIW, on Windows WPF, Silverlight, and I think Direct2D were designed from the ground up to be resolution independent, with everything vector-based and all dimensions expressed in "virtual pixels", but a lot of programs still use GDI, which is pixel-based. So it looks like the situation is roughly the same on Windows and OSX: new APIs are resolution independent, but until their use becomes more widespread people won't benefit much.

blehn 16y ago

I care about pixel density, because you can't improve interface definition without increasing pixel density. I think the improved interface definition is implied when people talk about pixel density, hence Apple's term,"retina display." The resolution independence of the OS is nice, but even if you use rasterized UI elements, you can still have better interface definition on the new iPhone (you just have to create a new set of elements).

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

yosho 16y ago

Personally, I think the pixel density doesn't really make that big of a difference. Who cares how slightly prettier the screen looks, most of the apps use overly large buttons and layouts anyway. I think Apple couldn't come up with anything revolutionary so everyone is trying to find stuff about the new phone to talk about.

axod 16y ago
Exactly. Wake me up when they come out with a rollup screen. Or a watch that projects a screen into midair. Or glasses that have inbuilt augmented reality etc but look exactly like normal glasses. Come on scientists!!! How hard can this stuff be???
- abstractbill 16y ago
  Or a watch that projects a screen into midair. The Samsung Beam isn't far off that - it's an Android phone that has a miniature projector in it. I think it might need to be my next phone actually: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFY6hOVOzE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTFY6hOVOzE
  - axod 16y ago
    Hah nice. But I'd bet the battery dies after much use :(
    - abstractbill 16y ago
      I would keep it plugged in and charging most of the day, add a bluetooth keyboard, and ditch my laptop :)
rbanffy 16y ago
You can use it to render readable information that takes less screen space. The prime example has been the NYT home that's completely readable on the new iPhone and only the headlines are "resolvable" on the older ones. I am not sure, however, how much one should push this. I bet I would only be able to read the small font of the NYT with a big magnifier.

saint-loup 16y ago

Just a link found on Wikipedia... : http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/GraphicsImaging/RN-ResolutionIndependentUI/ http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/G...

vsync 16y ago

I guess PalmOS automatically scaling UI elements when the screen size went from 160x160 to 320x320 (way back in the day) doesn't count in the author's world.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

Any technical explanation for why iPhone apps just used straightforward pixel doubling on the iPad, even for text elements? How can iPhone apps seamlessly take advantage of the extra pixels on iPhone 4 but not iPad? On a related note, I think even iPhone 4 apps will still look a little bit odd on the iPad since your still taking a small, high-dpi interface and displaying it into a large, low-dpi device so it would still be worthwile to recode your interface. Android, it seems, lets you provide resources and layouts for both large devices and high-dpi devices independently.