How does the new iPad stack up?

Posted by: Stefan, Filed under: General Chatter, Industry TrendsMarch 16th, 2012

So what’s new in the new iPad?

Well, two main things really…

• 4G connectivity
• Retina Display running at 2048 x 1536

So how much better is it?

Well, not a great deal.

4G Connectivity and the iPad

The 4G does not work in Australia, regardless of what the folks at the shop will tell you, the iPad will NOT run on the 4G network in Australia, and it won’t for a long time. The correct frequencies will not come available until 2015 in Australia, let’s be honest, by then you won’t have this year’s iPad.

So how does it perform? Well, it runs on Dual Channel 3G, so in layman’s terms that means ‘a bit faster’ than your current 3G connection, and much slower than an Android 4G tablet (which does happen to run on Australia’s 4G network).

As you can see from this image, the speeds are erratic at best, and not a great deal faster than the iPhone 4S, which consistently downloads data at around 5 or 6mb on the Telstra network.

If you need speed, you are better off getting the WiFi iPad, and using a Telstra 4G dongle thing. Cumbersome, but 3 or 4 times faster.

Retina Display

Well, for me the novelty of the Retina Display has worn off now, most new Android Phones run at ultra high resolutions making dots invisible, so this isn’t an amazing thing, although on a screen this large, it is quite a big deal. Images look crisp, text is super sharp and overall its far easier on your eyes. The pixel density is not quite has high as the iPhone, and as a result, if you look closely you can actually see the dots, contrary to the story Apple will tell you. Despite that, it’s still the best screen I’ve ever seen in my life, and I am eager for my Mac to now ‘go Retina’.

Browsing issues

Something no one has spoken about yet, but as a creative agency, is a big deal is website design for the new iPad.

Unless you have custom coded your website (read, Apple.com only at this stage), your website will look FAR WORSE on the new iPad.

Why? Well… your text will look ridiculously crisp, yet your existing images will appear non-retina (because they are just ‘normal’ images saved for standard web specs) which means that your eye perceives all images as blurry because they are displaying at half resolution. Usually this is not a problem because on your Mac, PC or old iPad, the pixels are the same density for both text or image, however with the new iPad, images are rendered at the ‘old’ pixel density, which when put next to text at the new retina density, quite frankly look terrible.

So what’s the solution, well we’ve found there are some code snippets that will check for retina display and stream double size images to the new retina display device, however think about this… Retina Display images are 4 times, yes FOUR TIMES more pixels than standard screen images, in real terms that means FAR bigger images, and with such a crisp screen you will want to make sure you compress your images far less to avoid JPEG artefacts which again means even bigger images.

In the real world that means a ‘nice’ quality full screen background image of medium complexity, could easily be over 1Mb, add to the mix a few transparent PNG’s for sprites or graphics and your website could really start to slow down on load, especially over a 3G/4G network. Later this year it is predicted that Apple will roll out the retina display to their line of Macs which means this dilemma is here to stay until we have a much faster internet and ALL users are on new retina screens, both Mac and PC users.

The beautiful retina display has created a new nightmare for web designers and coders. Just as we approach a time where we are rid of the ‘design 2 versions for IE and Firefox’, we are now faced with a new dilemma: saving images at two different sizes for regular screens and iPads. The scale of this problem is directly related to the number of images on your site, if you have a text only website you are safe, if you have a blog with thousands of images, well… you are screwed.

My prediction is that Apple will release a new version of Safari that checks the server for a double size version and automatically swaps out the low resolution image with the high resolution image, but thats purely speculation.

Until then, we are left having to manually code HTML to do the swapping process for us. In the process you can expect your new retina display website to take realistically 4 to 10 times longer to load on the new iPad because your images will need to be that much bigger to cater for the new screen.

If you have the new iPad and want to see an example of this, visit apple.com, you can see incredibly crisp text and blurry images, then wait about 10 to 20 seconds and slowly you will see the high resolution images swap in one by one.

Thanks Apple, you are now officially a web designers nightmare!

Is Pintrest taking over from Facebook?

Posted by: Stefan, Filed under: Industry TrendsMarch 12th, 2012

No matter what website you are on, the standard priority of ‘shares’ generally goes like this:

1. Likes
2. Tweets
3. LinkedIn
4. The rest

Facebook’s open-graph technology has made it really simple for anyone to add a ‘like’ button to their website and as a result, everyone seems to ‘like’ stuff these days… Until this morning, when I started to notice something rather strange.

Pin it buttons had a higher number of ‘pins’ than Facebook, not just on one article, or one site, but on a number of sites.

Now I’m not saying there is a global shift towards Pinning, however the relatively new Pinterest has overshot Twitter and LinkedIn as a means of sharing content online.

Should Facebook be worried? We think Yes.

Social Media vs the Warlord

Posted by: rodney, Filed under: General Chatter, Opinions & CommentsMarch 8th, 2012

KONY. It’s the word on everyone’s lips, and their facebook pages as well. It’s the latest social media phenomenon that has exploded over the last few days. The documentary is pretty powerful stuff based on Joseph Kony – a warlord in Uganda responsible for the enslavement of more than 30,000 children and the efforts of Invisible Children (a not-for-profit organisation) trying to harness the power of social media to garner attention and make a change, namely having Kony arrested and brought to justice.

Aside from the subject matter, what is interesting is how social media has been implemented to make the voice of a few the voice of millions in such a short space of time. News programs have jumped on this to try and capitalise on the interest and not matter where you look you can’t escape it. Another predictable side effect is that although social media has been used to great effect to generate this massive amount of exposure, it is the same format that could ultimately be this causes downfall, with many coming out against the campaign and the people behind it – Invisible Children.

And to think that all this has occurred in less then 48 hours, amazing. How long can this message of change be kept front of mind before the next big social media phenomenon hits and takes all the headlines away, oh it’s happening already, the next ipad was just announced.

Check out the site, watch the documentary and make up your own minds.

www.kony2012.com

 

Facebook comes to Windows

Posted by: Stefan, Filed under: General ChatterMarch 5th, 2012

In a slightly ironic move, Facebook today officially launched their Facebook Messenger for Windows app. A decade has passed since the likes of ICQ and MSN Messenger ruled the world of internet communications, then along came sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook which caused a massive shift in how people ‘quickly’ communicate. Now it looks like Facebook want us to go old school again with their new Messenger app (which is also due for release on OS X too). It’s a confusing move for Facebook, the app doesn’t have any ads (yet!), so basically, its MSN Messenger, but with your Facebook friends, so that’s just Adium or Trellian then… with a Facebook badge.

Try it out by downloading it from here

The Audi Visions Project

Posted by: Stefan, Filed under: FunMarch 5th, 2012

Audi’s “Visions” project brings the OLEDs we know and love to the outside of the not-so-humble automobile. Like something out of Tron, the fancy light array in the concept we see here hints at how external lighting on cars might look in the near future. Stephan Berlitz, Head of Lighting Electronics for the car maker, states that we’re still some way out from OLED surfaces replacing front and brake lights, due to low currents and the temperature ranges the diodes can presently operate under.

Windows 8 changes everything.

Posted by: Stefan, Filed under: Industry Trends, Opinions & CommentsMarch 5th, 2012

With the release of Windows 8 consumer preview, we’ve all been able to try the overhauled Windows 8′s new ‘Metro’ interface. It’s different alright, in fact it’s such a radical shift in design, that it would appear that Microsoft, not unlike Apple, are hedging all their bets on touchscreen computers being more popular than desktops in the coming years. It makes sense, unless you are a content creator, having a keyboard and mouse is rapidly becoming a little pointless for most general users. Microsoft has not talked much about how long it plans to keep the classic Windows desktop around. It could well be another decade or more.

Microsoft has hinted, for example, that the next version of Office will represent the biggest transition in its history; it would not be surprising if Redmond created a Metro version optimized for Windows 8, and led the Windows developer community by example — not unlike how Apple built iPad versions of iMovie, iWork and GarageBand. The future of Windows is Metro.