
Why the iPad 3 Retina display changes everything - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/121447-why-the-ipad-3-retina-display-changes-everything
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ryandvm
Changes everything, eh? No hyperbole here.

Let's get this straight: it will make a fantastic looking device look even
better.

I thought Gizmodo's example graphic was particularly telling yesterday,
because it's exactly the kind of image that springs to mind when I think of my
iPad.

[http://gizmodo.com/5890999/witness-the-amazing-difference-
be...](http://gizmodo.com/5890999/witness-the-amazing-difference-between-the-
ipad-and-ipad-hds-display)

So the cutesy games my kids play on it will now be even clearer. Wow - total
game changer.

~~~
mrsebastian
'This changes everything' was the iPhone 4 tagline (the first device that
introduced a Retina display).

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hahainternet
Is this really a 'retina' display? I was under the impression that 300 PPI has
been the border.

If not, then surely the original Droid (285 ppi) was the first retina display
device? I guess it's just hyperbole so I shouldn't be so picky.

~~~
mrsebastian
The whole Retina display thing is a) subjective, and b) down to the distance
you hold the device. The '300 PPI = Retina resolution' was for a device held
12 inches away (or something like that). The iPad is held further away, so the
resolution required for 'Retina resolution' is lower.

~~~
twiceaday
It isn't subjective. Apple precisely defined it.

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mrsebastian
FYI, this has now been confirmed at the Apple event. Seems the GPU has been
bumped up to a quad-core (from dual) to cope with the extra pixels.

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zokier
> You can find desktop monitors in the 20-inch range that sport resolutions of
> 2560×1600

really?

edit: on a related note, does anyone know where and when I could get monitors
like this 20" 4k2k monitor
[http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelD...](http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=664010&modelNo=Content01092012023841959&surfModel=Content01092012023841959)

~~~
rdl
I've only really seem them sold to equipment vendors as modules (or displays);
sometimes to radiology vendors. The monitor I personally want is a Barco 10MP
(<http://www.barco.com/en/product/2195/specs>), 30" 4096 x 2560), but I think
it's about $12k.

Until then, get the old version of the 4k2k from Amazon?

Viewsonic VP2290B-2 (discontinued) 22" 4k2k TFT. Basically an IBM T221.

[http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-VP2290B-2-22-2-LCD-
Monitor/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-VP2290B-2-22-2-LCD-
Monitor/dp/B00009016H)

~~~
zokier
Medical displays have one problem: they are in many cases grayscale only. So
is that Barco too. And I thought that those T22x displays were almost unusably
slow (both refresh rate and response time wise), and needed special purpose
hardware to drive them (instead of eg displayport). And there is the problem
of being discontinued.

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cmf028
there is also no way this ipad will have great gaming perf at that resolution.

you would have to run games at a less than native resolution then upscale it
to fit the screen which looks really bad.

Graphics perfomence on this machine will take a very large nosedive overall if
you use fullscreen apps at that native resolution. Mobile Gpus simply arnt up
to the task of filling that resolution at a good enough rate for anything
other than simple graphics.

~~~
tjoff
The solution is to render games at 1024x768, the same resolution as the ipad
2. Scaling it up to 2048x1536 is trivial if you just treat every pixel as four
pixels on the display and will look just as good/bad as the ipad 2 does.

Can't believe this article got upvoted, there is no information about anything
in it.

TLDR; iPad 3 has a resolution of 2048x1536.

~~~
posabsolute
Same here, reading the title I was already sure this was some kind of bad
mashed up article. I guess extremetech got a lot of "friends".

Give me a break with supercharging photoshop on ipad..

It kind of does not change anything, maybe it makes a big change in games for
antialiasing, but that's it. It remains ti be seen if it will really improve
reading on the device

Anyway..

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ilmare
It changed everything in a sense that Apple pushed display technology to a new
level so the others now could benefit(better notebook panels, displays).

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hollerith
>Unless Apple has somehow reinvented backlight or lithium-ion battery tech,
there’s no way the iPad HD will be comparable to the iPad 2 in terms of
weight, cost, or longevity.

Huh? How does increasing the resolution of the LCD increase the demands on the
backlight?

~~~
samstave
It needs to produce smaller photons.

~~~
hollerith
Very funny. Ha. Ha.

