I don't think the @2x thing is a hack at all. Seems like a really easy way to almost instantly make your app look perfect at both 480x320 and 960x640.
As pointed out, it's not reasonable to expect designers to ditch bitmap based resources in favor of vector resources. This would eliminate way too many designers. So given supporting bitmap graphics, there is no way to make your apps look perfect in a truly resolution independent way - especially if you support different aspect ratios. If you support many different resolutions, you will have to anti-alias bitmaps, which leads to some level of ugliness. The link Cedric posted showed a few examples of scaling bitmaps and claimed they look great (http://blog.yafla.com/Apples_Embarrassing_Predicamen<http://blog.yafla.com/Apples_Embarrassing_Predicament/>). They look OK, but great is an overstatement IMO. Apple wants great, preferably *perfect*. For another example, check this out: http://grab.by/8wGL The icon to the left is OS X Chrome, the one to the right is Chrome running in Parallels with a scaled up Windows icon. It's not horrible, but it's fuzzy and certainly not optimal. I know people who say they can't tell the difference between HD and SD TVs, so maybe the scaling bitmap approach is good enough for these types of people. As for the iPad. I don't know what apple is going to do, but I don't really get why the resolution has to be 2X (2048x1536). If they go to say 1600x1200, simply have another set of resources optimized for that resolution. Apps designed only for 1024x768 will have to scale up the bitmaps, but the developer can fix this by recompiling with new optimized resources, just like they did with the iPhone 4 Retina display came out. That being said, if they went 2048x1536 it would be amazing. BTW, do android apps support any aspect ratio? What if the app was designed for 4:3 and you display on 16:9? Does it letterbox or does it use layouts to align? I'm guessing it uses layouts. I'd like to see an app designed for a 4:3 phone shown full screen on a 16:9 galaxy tab. I have a this would be enlightening. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:46 AM, Chris Adamson <[email protected]>wrote: > Granted, most iOS developers I know think the @2x thing feels like an > atrocious kludge. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see it deprecated > a few years from now. > > The blog you link to points out that since the only problem is in the > places where you depend on bitmapped graphics, since shapes, strokes, > fills, and fonts scale up and down nicely. It calls out what seems > like an obvious solution: > > "In an ideal world icons would come in vector graphic form. That isn’t > the case on Android (the platform doesn’t support SVG, including in > the browser, which is a huge deficiency), but it is still shocking > that Apple, which usually takes the lead on such innovations, doesn’t > use them for iOS, as had been widely speculated as a given before the > iPhone OS was first released." > > That this is "ideal" is obvious, but is it "shocking" that Apple > hasn't followed suit? If we can't temporarily assume they're not > stupid, let me posit another possibility: they realize they magically > turn all the world's Photoshop wizards into Illustrator wizards > overnight. The Resolution Independence Guidelines for Mac (http:// > developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/ > Conceptual/HiDPIOverview/Introduction/Introduction.html ) do encourage > creating your original assets as vector art, but that's as hard as > they're pushing, for now anyways. > > --Chris > > On Jan 21, 10:00 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: > > Flexible layout managers are available everywhere, they are not what > makes > > Apple's position challenging. The real problem is pixel independence and > the > > fact that so far, they've been able to get away with using integer > multiples > > of resolutions. Unsurprisingly, they have already hit a wall and experts > > seem to agree that doubling the iPad's resolution on both axes is not > > technically feasible in 2011. > > > > Apple simply can't escape the fact that they will have to introduce > > fractional increases in resolutions and densities, something that Android > > decided to tackle since day one. > > > > Here is a great article giving more details about the whole thing, and > > calling BS in particular on people who say that fractional increases will > > produce crappy results (e.g. John Gruber): > > > > http://blog.yafla.com/Apples_Embarrassing_Predicament/ > > > > -- > > Cédric > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. 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