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The most important question involved with increasing the screen size is what the story for developers is. Increasing the screen size from 3.5" to 4+ inches woul

by macrael 15y ago

The most important question involved with increasing the screen size is what the story for developers is. Increasing the screen size from 3.5" to 4+ inches would cause many many apps to be rewritten. Yes, you could just scale apps up and they would work a lot better than they do scaled up on the iPad, but even scaling them a little would change the physical size of buttons and text etc. that were all designed to be a different physical size. That means definitely doing new artwork for this third physical size, but in some cases, it probably means doing a slightly different design! With a bigger screen, maybe you could squeeze an extra button on your toolbar. That means that an app developer has to manage three different versions of their app (iPhone, iPhone+, iPad) with two of them being very similar. That adds complexity and the possibility for bugs. Why would Apple want to impose that extra workload on itself and its developers?

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MatthewPhillips 15y ago
How is it different than on various sized Mac products?
- ugh 15y ago
  OS X != iOS Simple as that.
- shaunkoh 15y ago
  That's because OS X apps don't run full screen by default. The bigger screen doesn't meant that the app looks bigger – it just means that you can accommodate more things on screen at once.
jsz0 15y ago
Why would Apple want to impose that extra workload on itself and its developers? Maybe they won't but it seems to me they can't stay (only) at 3.5" or 960x640 forever. I think it might be quite sometime before we see a 1920x1280 display to allow for the clever pixel doubling trick again. 1152x768 @ 3.5" / 395 DPI 1152x768 @ 4.3" / 321 DPI
- dusing 15y ago
  Yeah but everything would physically be bigger, like it was zoomed. Would be very odd and seem like it was too big. You wouldn't gain any real estate.
  - jsz0 15y ago
    I think that's part of the allure of larger screens. Most of the 4-4.5" Android phones don't even match the resolution of the iPhone 4's display at this point. Things are just physically larger and easier to see and tap.
CamperBob 15y ago
The other possibility is to acknowledge that the Retina display's dot pitch is actually quite a bit better than it has to be. I wouldn't mind 15% larger pixel dimensions if it means a 15% larger screen.

by macrael 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

How is it different than on various sized Mac products?

ugh 15y ago
OS X != iOS Simple as that.
shaunkoh 15y ago
That's because OS X apps don't run full screen by default. The bigger screen doesn't meant that the app looks bigger – it just means that you can accommodate more things on screen at once.

jsz0 15y ago

Why would Apple want to impose that extra workload on itself and its developers? Maybe they won't but it seems to me they can't stay (only) at 3.5" or 960x640 forever. I think it might be quite sometime before we see a 1920x1280 display to allow for the clever pixel doubling trick again. 1152x768 @ 3.5" / 395 DPI 1152x768 @ 4.3" / 321 DPI

dusing 15y ago
Yeah but everything would physically be bigger, like it was zoomed. Would be very odd and seem like it was too big. You wouldn't gain any real estate.
- jsz0 15y ago
  I think that's part of the allure of larger screens. Most of the 4-4.5" Android phones don't even match the resolution of the iPhone 4's display at this point. Things are just physically larger and easier to see and tap.

CamperBob 15y ago

The other possibility is to acknowledge that the Retina display's dot pitch is actually quite a bit better than it has to be. I wouldn't mind 15% larger pixel dimensions if it means a 15% larger screen.