[ianlevesque]

I know it's dangerous to armchair speculate about Apple's moves, but it really seems like they should have held out for a true 3x screen instead of compromising on a 1080p. I certainly would never buy the 6+ after reading about their cheesy resolution hack. It feels rushed and short term.

[bla2]

Keep in mind that it's resampling a 3x image. Display scaling already looks acceptable on retina MacBook Pros [1], and the 6+'s screen is much more high-resolution than that. I agree that this sounds like a terrible idea on paper, but it might not be so bad in practice.

1: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-ma...

[rayiner]

I think it's actually pretty clever. Developers clearly have trouble writing apps to support arbitrary scale factors. Resolution independence was supposed to be a feature of Windows since Vista was codenamed "Longhorn" (before 2004), and Windows is still a mess on higher-DPI screens 10 years later. Making it so developers only have to think about 1x and 2x and 3x makes the task easier.

Also, look at it this way: with the diminishing returns of resolutions above 300 dpi, is it really a big deal that you won't get the absolute best use of the iPhone 6+'s 400 dpi? Seems like a pretty reasonable trade-off to use that extra resolution in a way that makes resolution-independence easier for developers.

[jarek]

I'm imagining the commentariat's reaction to such a "pretty reasonable trade-off" on a Nexus 5 or a Galaxy S4

[rayiner]

Aren't the commentariat always asking "what's the point of going to 1080p or 4k on a 5" display?"

[jarek]

We were until Android phones got higher DPI than retina iPhones ;)

[ianlevesque]

1x 2x 3x is great as developer, but downscaling the result to save a few bucks on the display panel? Not so much.

[rayiner]

Its not the cost, its the power usage. The 1080p LG G2 had incredible battery life, while the G3 (according to all the reviews) with 2K screen was a big step backward in battery life.

[jjcm]

Normally I'd be right there with you, but at this DPI there shouldn't be any visible scaling artifacts. Normally scaling looks terrible because you're upscaling low res components to a higher res version, but since their source is higher resolution and they're downscaling to an already extremely high DPI screen, you'll probably be hard pressed to find aliasing artifacts without a magnifying glass.

The other reason why I think this might be a good thing is since 1080p is more of a standard than the other resolutions they're playing with, which might help unify things moving forward.

[pdpi]

I'll withhold judgment until I see it live, but they did make it work with the MBP Retina (E.g. the 13" will fake 1680x1050 by rendering to a 3360x2100 frambebuffer and downscaling to the 2560x1600 display)

[MCRed]

Do you realize that every Retina Macbook Pro out there uses this "cheesy" resolution "hack"?

Tying the size and density of your display to software needs-- especially points that are arbitrary to begin with (as they are based on the original iPhone) seems silly and outdated.

[astrocat]

Actually no. Or maybe: yes, but...

My first MPB was one of the "high resolution" ones that ran at 1680x1050 and I loved it. So when I first got my 15" retina MBP was miffed that now it felt like I was running a 1440x900, just with double (well, quadruple) pixel density. So I opened scaling preferences and set it so the retina screen would "emulate" a 1680x1050 display. It was terrible. Blurry and SLOW. Good lord it was slow. And impossible to do any design work on. I went back to normal 2x scale.

So sure, this kind of scaling has been available for a long time but the reality is most people don't scale their MPB retina displays to anything other than 2x.

[parasubvert]

Eh? I've run my rMBP at 1680x1050 for over two years. It's not blurry or (appreciably) slow, though I'll admit I'm using it more for development work more than heavy design work.

[astrocat]

I guess YMMV... I also had to get my screen replaced because it was one of the small number of screens that had severe burn-in issues.