

Apple faking 489 to 815 PPI on iPhone 4 ads - pmikal
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/06/apple-using-fake-489-to-815-ppi-on-iphone-4-ads/

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MarcusA
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
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
I'm thinking that Jonathan Ives is turning in to Steve Jobs.

~~~
lanstein
Ive, not Ives.

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rbranson
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
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.

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pchristensen
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
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
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.

~~~
DougBTX
The second, black and white, example is a screen shot from the Apple website:
<http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html>

The interactive examples further down appear to be realistic though.

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Groxx
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>

edit: their side-by-side comparison shows the correct number of pixels between
the two.

~~~
silvestrov
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-
resolu...](http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-
resolution-3gs-20100607.jpg)

iPhone 4: [http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-
resolu...](http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-
resolution-4-20100607.jpg)

Try view the images. A truly great difference.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
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.

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SandB0x
I liked the old adverts that tried to show you how sharp DVDs were...on VHS.

~~~
graywh
I seem to recall current ads doing the same thing comparing digital cable to
analog....

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malvim
Same with DVD vs Blu-Ray

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tomjen3
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.

~~~
jerf
Be sure to check this chart: [http://hd.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-
viewing-dist...](http://hd.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-viewing-
distance-to-screen-size/) and compare that to the viewing set up you had.

It is very, very, very easy to put yourself in a situation where 1080 is
useless. The cutoff for where your 1080 40" TV might as well be a 720 TV is 7
to 8 feet; further away than that and you can't tell the difference between
1080 and 720. At about 12 feet you've lost HD entirely. Many people have
setups that fail these criteria. And this is a continuum, not a sharp cutoff,
so if you're on the far side you may be able to tell a difference but not
think it's worth it.

Now, all that said, well-upsampled DVDs are much closer to BluRay than people
selling BluRay would like to admit. It isn't the same, but I couldn't call it
"night and day", certainly.

~~~
tpz
All true, but worth a brief addition: these viewing distance / screen size /
resolution models all assume average adult vision, so if you are one of the
folks both lucky and unlucky enough to have above-average vision (or below,
for that matter) you should take that into account.

As but one example, the parent's example transition at 7 to 8 feet would occur
around 10 feet for me. Above-average vision is great on paper but translates
into more expensive displays positioned farther away. :(

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miguelpais
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>). 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
It's still a lie.

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not_an_alien
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.

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thenduks
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
"I'm not lying about how big the fish was, just giving you the effect of what
it was like to catch it."

~~~
jerf
And if the _effect_ is the main point of the communication?

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smackfu
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.

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alanh
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
The graphics may not be honest, but they are indeed truthy.

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seanalltogether
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?

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bbatsell
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412296>

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

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sirn
Original iPhone = 163 PPI.

25x more pixels (5x the resolution, count the block) = 815 PPI.

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fleitz
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.

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hackermom
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.

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confuzatron
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.

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draper
"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
Oh right, because compressing video _adds_ information...

