Marc Palmer on the iPad Retina display:

If you don’t agree with the statement “the retina display on the new iPad is a game changer” you need to consider this:

When you cannot see the individual pixels, on a screen of this size, it will no longer seem like you are looking at a screen. This has a massive effect on the way the user feels and perceives the product and the software that runs on it. If you don’t believe this, throw away your laser printer and get a 100 dpi dot matrix from the 1980s. While you don’t normally think about it your brain and perception is aware of the tiny black grid separating the pixels and the “unnatural” jagged edges on things.

The massive jump in screen technology since my early Apple computing days has been astonishing. I used my first Mac with what was then a hugely expensive 17-inch Trinitron monitor. It was impossible to entirely lose yourself in the display, because the thing flickered like crazy, with the refresh rate on the optimum resolution being 75 Hz. This dropped to an eye-kicking 67 Hz on one of the alternative resolutions.

The first big jump for me was when flat-screens became the norm. No headaches. No flickering. Just lovely, solid imagery. But then came the iPhone, which crammed about twice as many pixels into every inch than my Mac’s monitor did. It made the Mac display, when viewed a bit too close up, look a bit rubbish. The thing is, none of these things prepared me for my first encounter with an iPhone 4.

I held the thing in my hands and had an instant reaction to peel off the sticker, only it didn’t have a sticker. My brain could not comprehend how sharp this display was. As someone who’d sat there in front of several CRT disasters, this new iPhone was quietly laughing at my display history. It had also, in one fell swoop, made everything before it look like crap. I’d thought the iPhone 3GS display was pretty good, but now it looked awful. My iPad’s display, too, felt sub-optimal for reading tasks, due to having a clear case of the jaggies.

Palmer’s right. The new iPad screen is a game changer, because it’s about immersion. In having clear, print-like text, you’re not constantly reminded that you’re looking at a computer display. The device will, when apps are fully optimised, feel even more like it turns into the app you’re running than ever before. Apple’s rivals that cannot compete will claim otherwise, yelling that, sure, the new iPad has a Retina display, but they have a stylus, or an SD card slot, or can run a discontinued version of Flash. Most people don’t care about those things—the display is what you watch and interact with, and it’s, bar perhaps the software ecosystem, the most important thing about this rapidly evolving field of computing. Anyone who doesn’t believe the new iPad is a game-changer in that regard is just kidding themselves.

Hat tip: Keith Martin