The ‘Retina Is Overkill’ Argument

“RobbCab”, posting in The Verge forums, argues that “Surface Pro has a better retina display than the iPad”:

What Apple has done here is create a “density war”, much like the mega pixel war that raged in the digital camera world a few years ago. We all know there are 9MP cameras that take much better pictures than 21MP cameras. The same applies. Apple did what they always do. They took the path of least resistance and sold it as a “feature”. They chose 2048 × 1536 because it gave them an easy way to handle scaling of applications as they just doubled everything. It was not because it was the best resolution for viewing their devices.

It never ceases to amaze me the logical hoops Apple critics will jump through to paint the company’s decisions in a poor light. You can argue that the iPad (3)’s retina display is overkill, that the Surface Pro’s denser-than-the-old-iPad-but-not-as-dense-as-the-new-iPad display dot-pitch makes a better tradeoff between pixel size (smaller is better) and battery life and graphics performance (more pixels consume more energy and computation time). But to say that Apple went to 2048 × 1536 with the iPad (3) as the “path of least resistance”? That’s something. (Me, I disagree entirely. The point of Apple’s push toward “retina displays” across its product line is simply that they look so much better.)

Also, again with the “let’s judge the Surface before anyone outside Microsoft has actually used one”.

★ Monday, 13 August 2012