My iPad – Post 8 – The Screen

Been a bit since I blogged about the iPad. That’s what satisfaction (and a busy travel schedule) will do for you. Takes the edge off of blogging.

Having completed my third laptop-free business trip with Flatland important, and more subtle, strengths are becoming clear. Today’s strength: the screen.

In the store, I had a sense that it was like nothing I’d ever held. Hard to describe. But my layman’s terms might be responsiveness, brightnesss, and clear color. And, I find the screen delivers clarity from a much wider set of viewing angles than a typical laptop.

When you play a movie, you’ll be impressed. But then, rotate it while the movie is playing. The movie rotates smoothly and crisply, automatically resizing for the difference between wide screen and portrait dimensions. And it does this without hesitation and without losing even a single frame of video.

How do they do that? Tech magic.

What’s nice is this magic keeps technology out of the way. When you have to change your actions to wait for screen responsiveness, then technology is in the way. When your viewing is interrupted while the screen adjusts, technology is in the way.

Curmudgeons might suggest I’m making a lot out of nothing. But as a TV pro, I know how amazingly subtle human senses are. We regularly find that changing a scene by as little as one or two frames can make a a big change in the way it feels – that’s a change of a fifteenth to a thirtieth of a second.

The lesson others should learn is that when turning technology into consumer goods, it’s the details that deliver. And to see this screen perform for yourself, I highly recommend the Pinball HD app. I bought it for my sons. Really, for my sons.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett