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

Michael French for Develop writes about his GDC experience in GDC and the death of the gods. He notes that the gaming gods of the industry—Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo—once offered keynotes that defined the future of the industry, but now the gods are dying, largely due to competition from newcomers. He makes one point that I find particularly interesting:

As journalists like me say, ‘the [blank] happened’. The Internet happened. Facebook happened. iPhone happened. The power shifted. And Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony—they all lost some relevance. They had to share power with platforms that were built, at a macro level at least, to not be so draconian. For better or worse, platforms like the App Store are free markets instead of walled gardens.

In case you didn’t catch that:

platforms like the App Store are free markets instead of walled gardens

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. At an EA event last year, I spoke to a few developers who’d created games for a number of platforms. They glumly told horror stories of their experiences on the ‘god’ platforms, before brightly saying what a breath of fresh air the relatively open iOS ecosystem is for gaming. Yet we most often only hear about the times when someone at Apple comes down with a bad case of the stupids, rejecting a game or app for spurious reasons, and not the many thousands of games that have ended up on the App Store that simply wouldn’t exist for any other mobile platform.

I’m not suggesting iOS is the most open of platforms, because it clearly isn’t, and it would be great to see the likes of OS X’s Gatekeeper arrive on iOS, providing a little extra freedom regarding apps that can be installed. But open and not-open isn’t black and white—instead there’s a diverse range as you move from one extreme to the other, and this is especially true when it comes to mobile gaming.

For The TechBlock, Abdel Ibrahim and Jon Dick write Microsoft poised for tablet resurgence, attempting to compare experiences offered by Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 and Apple’s OS X and iOS:

Windows 8 […] will roll out across desktops and tablets [and] although Apple’s forthcoming Mountain Lion, due out in late June, will look to blur the line that’s so far separated desktops from mobile devices, it won’t do it to the degree that Microsoft intends. That’s because the software company isn’t planning to simply share features between distinct operating systems, as will Apple. Rather, Microsoft hopes to introduce nearly identical experiences (or as close as the hardware will allow) to each.

If Microsoft pulls that off, and we have no reason to suspect it won’t, it’ll make a very powerful argument to embrace whatever tablets it simultaneously debuts. And it’ll do that for the same reason consumers have gone gaga for all things iOS: people like intuitiveness and familiarity; they like unwrapping a new product and not having to learn the ropes. And that’s precisely the sort of seamlessness Microsoft’s next tablets have in store for the hundreds of millions of consumers who are bound to line up for Windows 8 for desktop (if Windows 7’s reception is any indication).

This opinion is one I’m increasingly hearing, but there are two problems, which are intertwined. First, as Andy Ihnatko and Christian Cantrell (among others) have pointed out, Windows 8 effectively has split-personality disorder. Everyone seems to like Metro, but hates the jolt as you switch to the more typical Windows Desktop. And the gist is that Metro’s great for mobile but not suitable for desktops, while Desktop mode is, naturally, still a good fit for desktops but not so much for mobile devices.

Secondly, people misunderstand what Apple’s doing with its operating systems. They either think Apple’s turning OS X into iOS, or that not enough of OS X has been sent in the other direction. (Never mind that iOS includes apps for email, music playback, dealing with calendars, and so on, all taken from the desktop…). But what Apple’s really doing is creating a consistency of experience in terms of concepts; conversely, Microsoft’s attempting to provide literally the same experience on the desktop and mobile, regardless of suitability.

Apple’s stance is most obvious in Mountain Lion, which freaks out long-time Mac users with its ‘inspired by iPad’ headline. But what’s really happening here is unbundling workflows and making each app focussed. Instead of going to iCal for to-dos and your calendar, you’ll instead go to Calendar for your events and appointments, but use Reminders for your to-dos. And you do the same on iOS. The methods of interaction will not be identical, because touchscreens and desktop machines/laptops do not provide identical interaction experiences. But enough aspects of the operating systems will be similar that someone should be able to switch with reasonable ease between iOS and OS X because the fundamental concepts will be familiar in both.

Microsoft’s gamble is that Apple hasn’t gone far enough, and that the user should instead have the exact same interaction and conceptual model across all devices. But, as noted in the aforelinked articles, this is coming at the expense of a strong user experience, which is heavily compromised on every device the user interacts with. Years back, Microsoft might have gotten away with this, but the reason people have flocked towards iOS and are increasingly buying Macs is because they offer strong user experiences and seek to make things less complex. In seeking to solve one problem for the user—relearning interaction with an OS—Microsoft’s merely placed massive barriers throughout the entire experience, ending up with something that could be fantastic if logically separated into two operating systems, but that appears fundamentally flawed as one.

MacObserver lists Apple’s ‘top apps ever’ charts. Games dominate the paid lists, especially on the iPhone. But on the iPad, things are different. Pages leads the list, and the top 25 also includes Penultimate (note-taking), GarageBand (music-making), GoodReader (PDF reader, manager and annotator), Numbers (spreadsheets), Keynote (presentations), Quickoffice Pro HD (office suite), Notability (note-taking and PDF annotation), and Splashtop (remote desktop).

It’s arguable that there’s not a huge amount of variety here: most of the big apps are office- or student-oriented. But that’s also the case for traditional PCs, where the most popular apps are for creating Word documents and PDFs. What it does show, however, is that anyone arguing that iPads are only for consumption is deluded.

iMore has a great chart, pitting the Galaxy Note 10.1 against the new iPad. Samsung lists seven comparative features and then finishes off with four extra things that the iPad doesn’t do. On closer inspection, though, here’s what the list boils down to:

• If apps are optimised for simultaneous viewing, you can view two apps side-by-side on the Galaxy Note
• If iPad owners don’t buy a stylus, they won’t be able to “write as you would with pen/pencil and paper” nor precisely write/draw/edit photos.
• *I wish I was using a PC sadface*

That sound you hear is loads of people who’ve just ordered the new iPad not giving a flying shit, instead looking forward to their new tablet that will have:

• A Retina display
• Loads of apps that are actually worth a damn
• A workflow entirely divorced from PCs

Hat tip: Ben Brooks.