With the release of Lion, users can now see some of the groundwork that Apple has laid down in OS X for ultra high resolution displays. We covered Apple's support of these new "HiDPI" modes while OS X Lion was still in beta.
For those who have downloaded Apple's Xcode for Lion, you can enable "HiDPI" mode in the Quartz Debug application found in the Developer directory. Once enabled, OS X's Displays control panel offers additional 1/4 (and lower) resolution sizes as shown here on a 30" Cinema Display with a native resolution of 2560x1600:
Unfortunately, there's not much to see yet. The 1280x800 HiDPI resolution shown here represents exactly 1/4 of the area of the native resolution of the 30" Cinema Display and simply offers you a zoomed in view on present day monitors.
The reasoning is that when displays do reach ultra high resolutions and dots per inch (DPI), simply drawing the OS X interface as-is would result in very small interface elements. Apple's solution is to scale all on-screen elements automatically by a factor of two (in each direction).
So, in the future, we might be using 2560x1600 (HiDPI) mode on a theoretical 30" 5120x3200 pixel display. All user interface elements would stay the same size as today's 30" Cinema Display, but when available, higher resolution textures would be used to render the graphics. This is the same way that it worked when Apple transitioned from the original iPhone resolution to the iPhone 4's retina display.
Arstechnica offers a good example screenshot showing this in effect. Fonts already render in the higher resolution while bitmapped graphics demonstrate a blocky effect as they have not yet been replaced with high resolution ("Retina") graphics.
The groundwork is there now, so when technology catches up, we could see double-DPI Retina displays in our future.
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why.
In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro.
The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup.
If you skipped the iPhone...
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta.
Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device.
The revised beta addresses an...
Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March.
As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year.
Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...
So, maybe you'd care to enlighten us ? Maybe I'm just nostalgic for the 80s and 90s, back when vector graphics were a possibility. Now that we have much more powerful CPUs and GPUs, it seems that vector graphics have become way too hard to handle... :rolleyes:
Only stuff that's required to scale. IE : the UI.
And games have been using vector graphics since the 80s and 90s, at least, games made with a little known technology called Flash. Or the above Sierra game, Conquest of Camelot ;) In fact, isn't that screenshot from a game that uses vector graphics ? (Plants vs Zombies ?).
Obviously, not all UI elements are needed to scale. The desktop wallpaper can remain a bitmap image, but things like icons, buttons, fonts and all UI controls would need to be scaled.
Think man, think.
Sure, I'll help enlighten. ;) Here are just a few points (some of which Arn has already pointed out):
* Photorealistic graphics. As stated multiple times, you can't use vector for this.
* Pixel-perfect designs. When you see a gorgeous iPhone or iPad app, it's because of this. You can't just resize a vector icon and expect it to look great at any size. It simply doesn't work like that.
* Processing power. Load a complicated piece of vector artwork in Illustrator. It takes time to process all the math in a vector illustration.
* File size. Making the assumption that vector is always smaller is wildly incorrect. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
* Textures. Wood, cloth, stone, grunge. Those detailed, fantastic textures aren't vector -- they're raster. Can you use vector for them? Yes, the simple ones. But to get the same depth of detail (and you never will, because textures are often photorealistic), you get back to hurting processing power.
* Effects rendering. Rasterizing an effect is much simpler than combining it with vector art. It's simple for the designer, prevents a developer from having to code the effect (which is no small task), and saves processing power.
* Development time. Coding for vector in everything can increase development time due to the shortcomings of vector-based art. Often it's just faster to use rasterized artwork. Keep in mind this doesn't mean a designer doesn't use vector in his workflow, it just means that he saves it to raster at the end.
These are just a few things off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more, but I don't have time to write a short story. ;)
That's funny, I could have sworn you originally said:
Man up and admit you were wrong for goodness sakes.
I was replying to a generalisation of the fact. Someone stated they are bigger. I said they are not, in response to their generalisation. I could of gone all boring and started stating static vector filesizes and variable bitmap sizes for scaled images of each format but I didn't.
What is your problem anyway? I asked a question 'why cant vectors be used?'. Someone, maybe you, responded and I then asked a further question regarding the response? Are we not allowed to ask questions on forums these days without people looking for a fight? Why do I have to 'man up' when I have already stated I dont fully understand the concept?
I'm asking questions because I don't understand something. I don't pretend to understand things either unlike some people around here.
