Comment by falcor84
4 days ago
You can argue that Apple haven't achieved it, but it has a very clear technical meaning - a sufficiently high dpi such that pixels become imperceptible to the average healthy human eye from a typical viewing distance.
4 days ago
You can argue that Apple haven't achieved it, but it has a very clear technical meaning - a sufficiently high dpi such that pixels become imperceptible to the average healthy human eye from a typical viewing distance.
> [retina] it has a very clear technical meaning
Retina does not mean that, not even slightly or in connotation
Even today, no other meanings are listed: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retina
It comes from something that means "net-like tunic" (if you want to stretch possible things someone might understand from it): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/retina
They could have named it rods and cones, cells, eye, eyecandy, iris, ultra max, infinite, or just about anything else that isn't negative and you can still make this comment of "clearly this adjective before »screen« means it's high definition". Anything else is believing Apple marketing "on their blue eyes" as we say in Dutch
> imperceptible to the average healthy human eye from a typical viewing distance
That's most non-CRT (aquarium) displays. What's different about high DPI (why we need display scaling now) is that they're imperceptible even if you put your nose onto them: there's so many pixels that you can't see any of them at any distance, at least not with >100% vision or a water droplet or other magnifier on the screen
The term is ‘retina display’ not ‘retina’
> That’s most non-CRT (aquarium) displays. What’s different about high DPI (why we need display scaling now) is that they’re imperceptible even if you put your nose onto them
Neither of those claims is true.
Retina Display was 2x-3x higher PPI (and 4x-9x higher pixel area density) than the vast majority of displays at the time it was introduced, in 2010. The fact that many displays are today now as high DPI as Apple’s Retina display means that the competition caught up, that high DPI had a market and was temporarily a competitive advantage.
The rationale for Retina Display was, in fact, the DPI needed for pixels to be imperceptible at the typical viewing distance, not when touching your nose. It has been argued that the choice of 300DPI was not high enough at a distance of 12 inches to have pixels be imperceptible. That has been debated, and some people say it’s enough. But it was not argued that pixels should or will be imperceptible at a distance of less than 12 inches. And people with perfect vision can see pixels of a current Retina Display iPhone if held up to their nose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Rationale_and_d...