Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
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Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#2This is a very good post. One I've thought about in a different context before: How much bandwidth/resolution do we really need.
The human senses have an upper limit of resolution, once we reach that limit further progress is irrelevant. So once everyone is streaming netflix at limitx2, Where does further bandwidth/storage demand come from? Growing populations? There's a limit to that growth. "big data"? Hardly.
We're rapidly approaching the point where individuals' need for further storage is exhausted. I think it'll be somewhere in the 10-100PB range. Which is pretty damn close.
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#3This is a very good post. One I've thought about in a different context before: How much bandwidth/resolution do we really need. The human senses have an upper limit of resolution, once we reach that limit further progress is irrelevant. So once everyone is streaming netflix at limitx2, Where does further bandwidth/storage demand come from? Growing populations? There's a limit to that growth. "big data"? Hardly. We'r…
When a new product is created, companies compete initially on features. When all the essential features are there (take radios, for example: most radios have the basic features down), innovation starts. Innovation, such as portable radios, radios in your car, etc. push the industry forwards for a while.
Eventually though, innovation stops (I don't see many new radio sets today). When that happens, the product becomes almost a commodity, and another product improves so greatly upon it that the other product can be considered a new product.
Television, for example, replaced radio (two senses versus one sense). The internet, arguably, appeals to the same senses, but allows for user-created content, more freedom, etc.
When we reach the upper bound of innovation for television sets, it too will become a commodity. Perhaps it will eventually be replaced with a product that not only exceeds the capabilities of human sound and sight (for television to hit the bound for innovation, this must happen), but also incorporates something else: maybe it's another sense, maybe it's something more convenient (I guess the internet, could, to some extent, be considered as an evolution of television).
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#4This is a very good post. One I've thought about in a different context before: How much bandwidth/resolution do we really need. The human senses have an upper limit of resolution, once we reach that limit further progress is irrelevant. So once everyone is streaming netflix at limitx2, Where does further bandwidth/storage demand come from? Growing populations? There's a limit to that growth. "big data"? Hardly. We'r…
17 years ago, Jakob Nielsen predicted a maximum of "about four tera bits per second bandwidth without compression, or one Tbps with some compression": http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9511.html
Interestingly, he also predicted that "it will probably be about seventeen years before these perfect monitors are commonplace", though I think he was just looking at VRAM requirements.
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#5This is a very good post. One I've thought about in a different context before: How much bandwidth/resolution do we really need. The human senses have an upper limit of resolution, once we reach that limit further progress is irrelevant. So once everyone is streaming netflix at limitx2, Where does further bandwidth/storage demand come from? Growing populations? There's a limit to that growth. "big data"? Hardly. We'r…
How much data does a 2 hour immersive holographic "film" consume?
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#6This can't be correct when it comes to the larger screens. I found the text on the iPhone 3G to be fuzzy but not on the iPhone 4. I don't like Apple's antialiasing but on the iPhone 4 it doesn't matter anymore. Antialiasing becomes irrelevant. However, my 17 inch Macbook still has text that looks fuzzy to me and the antialiasing is still bothersome. I'm really hoping that there is some increase in resolution for the larger displays coming.
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#7This is a very good post. One I've thought about in a different context before: How much bandwidth/resolution do we really need. The human senses have an upper limit of resolution, once we reach that limit further progress is irrelevant. So once everyone is streaming netflix at limitx2, Where does further bandwidth/storage demand come from? Growing populations? There's a limit to that growth. "big data"? Hardly. We'r…
How much data does a 2 hour immersive holographic "film" consume?
Assuming the holographic system uses voxels, it would need to be capable of displaying 108,900 (330x330) voxels per cubic inch to allow the same level of resolution as an iPhone 4 if it produces a flat surface. This would allow Retina-quality images when viewed from at least 11 inches away.
Assuming also that one voxel is 32 bits and not compressed, then the hologram would be 435,600 bytes per frame per cubic inch. At 24fps (you did say "film") that's 10,454,400 bytes per second per cubic inch.
Let's say it projects a hologram to fill a room the dimensions of a Star Trek-style holodeck, a cube of maybe 10 metres on a side. That's about 400 inches on a side, or 64,000,000 cubic inches. That means that a holographic film would be 669,081,600,000,000 bytes (608.5 terabytes) per second.
So, to answer your question, a 2 hour holographic film would be 4,817,387,520,000,000,000 bytes (4.178 exabytes) in size.
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#8From OP: "makes a solid argument for why an iPad retina display must be pixel-doubled -- i.e. 2048×1536 -- and not some intermediate resolution (just as was the case for the iPhone 4 before it). Anything else means every single existing app either has to re-scale art assets -- resulting in a fuzzy display -- or let them appear at a different size on-screen -- resulting in usability problems as the tap targets are resized. This is because every single existing iPad app is hard-coded to run full screen in 1024×768."
Doesn't this suggest that Apple is getting bitten by backward compatibility to the mass of pre-existing apps, just like Microsoft got stuck with the mass of existing software running on Windows (and also actually users who get too used to existing UIs/UX)?
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#9This is a great post. If an iPad 3 has the "retina" display with resolution 2048×1536, I still think that a similarly high-resolution display will follow soon after for the soon-to-be-unified MacBook Pro/MacBook Air lines. If these high-resolutions screens are available at 9.7" for the iPad, it's hardly a stretch to manufacture them at 13" with a slightly reduced DPI.
Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
#10Mostly a good article and I agree with his main points, but I have two big disagreements.
- Viewing distances. I only sit about 16-18" away from my 13" MBP screen and only about 24" from my 24" display. This varies obviously as I don't sit in a locked position all day, but I think he's erring a bit too high on estimated view distance, which means his necessary resolution to reach "retina" level is too low.
- Screen size. Right now the 13" MBP I'm staring at has a very significant bezel that I would like to see mostly go away in an upcoming model refresh. The iPad's bezel makes sense since it's meant to be held in the hand. The MBP only needs enough bezel to fit the camera up top and needs none on the sides or bottom of the screen.
But yes, his overall point that Apple does not need to go so far as screen doubling on laptops and desktops to achieve pixels that are indistinguishable to the human eye is correct. I just think the resolution at which that point is reached on laptops and desktops is a bit higher than what he's calculated.