

IPhone 4: Who cares about pixel density? It's about interface definition. - sachinag
http://blog.dustincurtis.com/iphone-4-who-cares-about-pixel-density-its-ab-0

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houseabsolute
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.

~~~
moultano
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.

~~~
coderdude
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!

~~~
dcurtis
While I seem to have negligently exaggerated on the exclusivity of the iPhone
4's resolution independence, the spirit of the article is still there and the
points are still valid. iOS's implementation of resolution independence is the
best and most standardized implementation that exists.

~~~
boucher
Not really. I don't know how much you know about how it actually works, but
it's a much bigger mess than what you are describing in the article. OS X
isn't really built from the ground up to be resolution independent, and
linking to articles about quartz is kind of misleading, given that a lot of
the graphics layer of iOS is completely different than the graphics layer of
Mac OS X.

It may be easier on OS X than other platforms, I don't really know, but Mac OS
X, despite a lot of talk over the last 4 years or so, remains not fully
resolution independent, and the new iOS approach is a pretty big departure
from what has been going on in Mac OS X.

~~~
yoden
It's actually far harder on OS X than any modern Windows or Gnome system
(don't know about KDE)

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zyb09
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
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.

~~~
moultano
Bullshit. Android does exactly the same thing.

~~~
rantfoil
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
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.

------
blehn
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).

------
yosho
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
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
_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>

~~~
axod
Hah nice. But I'd bet the battery dies after much use :(

~~~
abstractbill
I would keep it plugged in and charging most of the day, add a bluetooth
keyboard, and ditch my laptop :)

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jbrennan
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
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
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.

------
vsync
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.

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bradgessler
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/>
looks like a promising way of making bitmap scaling possible.

~~~
rortian
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.

------
saint-loup
Just a link found on Wikipedia... :
[http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/G...](http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/releasenotes/GraphicsImaging/RN-
ResolutionIndependentUI/)

------
ZeroGravitas
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.

