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Challenge: Pixel perfect design

developer.apple.com

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Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#41

Post by solardev »

selykg wrote: post #38
richardw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my wife just wants a shuffle. No not some other thing that needs you to be connected to Spotify. Just music to run with.

Apple Watch kind of plays that part. https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/add-music-apd483798d11...

Sorry, dumb question, but does it let me listen to downloaded music on my earphones even when I don't have a phone with me? (Never had a proper smartwatch).

Like can I download music directly to the Watch (what about DRM?) and can it connect to Airpods or other bluetooth without a phone?

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#42

Post by grishka »

chrismorgan wrote: post #28
dmix wrote: post #20

This is a really good video about how Apple cares about being pixel perfect compared to Windows with something simple and obvious like the mouse cursor icon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg The improvements he made are also quite nice, Microsoft should take note...

You can’t tell me Apple cares about pixel perfection when they implement fractional scaling (which, last time I heard, was I think effectively the only choice on most of their laptops) with rendering at the next integer up and downscaling. Basically Apple have made it so that it’s literally impossible to be pixel perfect, even though they were in the best position by far to force developers to do it properly, in thos…

Actually no. The latest generation of MacBooks increases the screen dpi and the default setting is actual real 2x scaling. Though it doesn't help much because see my reply to the parent comment. It's noticeable on retina too, just not as much.

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#43

Post by solardev »

mas-ev wrote: post #15

I can't help but think this is linked to an Apple eink display prototype.

Would be cool to see an eink keyboard too, where each key can show something different, like:

https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/

(but with tactile feedback!! not one giant touch bar, lol)

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#45

Post by gabereiser »

grishka wrote: post #40
dmix wrote: post #20

This is a really good video about how Apple cares about being pixel perfect compared to Windows with something simple and obvious like the mouse cursor icon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg The improvements he made are also quite nice, Microsoft should take note...

Apple gives no shit about being pixel-perfect lately. Try using modern macOS on a non-retina display and your eyes will bleed because every single icon is drawn as if there's no pixel grid whatsoever. Everything is a blurry mess. Steve Jobs would've definitely fired someone over this, yet with Tim Cook it stays unfixed for more than 2 years — I'd guess because pixel-perfect icons don't affect the bottom line.

To be fair, if you are trying it on a non-retina display, you’re out of spec or running hackintosh. Aren’t all mac’s retina?

edit I totally forgot about plug-in external displays… in which case, ya need 1440p or better.

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#46

Post by solardev »

jws wrote: post #17

Problems with pixel perfect layout were what made me give SwiftUI a 12 month “wait for maturity” last year. I hope this and the new SwiftUI custom layout capabilities signal an interest in this at Apple. I was making strip charts of data at fairly high density and wanted my minor grid lines to be one pixel wide. You must make them line up with a physical screen pixel or they turn into a blurry anti aliased mess. As o…

How do you do "one pixel wide" when there are so many devices, viewports, LCD/LED types, zoom sizes for accessibility, etc.? It's all virtualized these days, no? A single pixel on something like a watch or 4k 27" display might not even be visible to the average person...

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#47

Post by hutattedonmyarm »

solardev wrote: post #41
selykg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Watch kind of plays that part. https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/add-music-apd483798d11...

Sorry, dumb question, but does it let me listen to downloaded music on my earphones even when I don't have a phone with me? (Never had a proper smartwatch). Like can I download music directly to the Watch (what about DRM?) and can it connect to Airpods or other bluetooth without a phone?

You can download music directly to the watch, at least with Apple Music. No idea if it works with a local library. However, other apps have the ability too, so chances are good that there are other apps as well.

It can connect to Bluetooth headphones just fine without an iPhone, I only carry the watch when I go for a run

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#48

Post by ziml77 »

solardev wrote: post #34
flowerbeater wrote: post #4

Pixel art is a fun retro hobby, but as the article acknowledges, "we create work for high-resolution HDR screens." Icons, logos, and illustrations in general should be vector-first, so they will show up cleanly on HiDPI and in the future, 4X or 8X DPI interfaces. Too many icons and logos (even the Y on the top left here in HN) look blurry on a simple 4K monitor with 200% scaling (which is not uncommon now).

Even in the vector age, though, one of the things we've learned from pixel icons is that different sizes would ideally have different levels of detail. For example, see this camera icon: https://useiconic.com/icons/camera-slr/ (in the left pane, click the "three squares" icon to render them all at the same size). All three are vectors (you can inspect them if you want), but they still show different levels of detail.…

This is what annoyed me the first time I saw vector icons used in Linux desktop environments. I appreciate the attempt at making something that scales to any size, but in practice you need to custom design the smallest versions of an icon.

Even at the larger sizes, a vector won't always look great. If the renderer doesn't fudge vector edges to snap to pixel edges, you'll end up with blurry edges instead of clean, sharp ones.

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#49

Post by deergomoo »

grishka wrote: post #40
dmix wrote: post #20

This is a really good video about how Apple cares about being pixel perfect compared to Windows with something simple and obvious like the mouse cursor icon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg The improvements he made are also quite nice, Microsoft should take note...

Apple gives no shit about being pixel-perfect lately. Try using modern macOS on a non-retina display and your eyes will bleed because every single icon is drawn as if there's no pixel grid whatsoever. Everything is a blurry mess. Steve Jobs would've definitely fired someone over this, yet with Tim Cook it stays unfixed for more than 2 years — I'd guess because pixel-perfect icons don't affect the bottom line.

It really is appalling. It’s not just icons; if you switch Finder to gallery view and look at some photos, the previews aren’t scaled properly. The only way I can describe it is that it looks like it was downsampled without any blending—as if they just picked every fourth pixel or something. Really jaggedy.

I fully appreciate that it’s never gonna look anywhere near as good as a display with 4x as many pixels, but it’s really, really bad. The same monitor on a Windows machine looks great!

Re: Challenge: Pixel perfect design

#50

Post by jansan »

cube00 wrote: post #2

I noticed the images looked a little blurred to me for pixel art. Digging further into it, they're oversized high resolution JPEG images scaled down by the browser rather then correctly sized PNGs. Putting quality aside and thinking about the poor internet pipes; each image is around 100kb in size and had it been a two bit black and white PNG would have been around 12kb. I know, I know, it's a probably an off the she…

Yes, using a lossy image format for pixel art or images with a small number of colors in general has always been a a bad idea. Many people do not see the artefacts, but they are there, and the fact that the file size is even bigger with lower quality does not make it better.

BTW, the images also contain a grid, so you would need at least three colors, which requires 2 bit per pixel before compression.

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