When I wrote about the new Apple Pro tablet yesterday, I had to look up the screen resolution, which is amazing.
Today, I have read six reviews on the new tablets and checked out the overview on Apple’s site, and none of them ever mention the screen resolution—did I mention it is amazing?
So why is that? Are we to assume that the people who write about Apple products, including Apple, think the readers are stupid or tech shy and that some numbers about horizontal and vertical pixel resolution would confuse or frighten them? I would make the resolution, which, by the way, is A-mazing, the leading part of the story. But they don’t.
It’s like a new skyscraper being opened, and the owners never say how many stories it is. But Apple and its acolyte websites are very proud to tell readers how thick (or thin) the new tablet is, and that involves numbers, albeit only two—5.1 mm. Spelling out the amazingly high resolution would involve using eight numbers and an ×. And how Apple accomplished the creation of the screen is also an amazingly ignored discussion.
However, elsewhere on Apple’s iPad Pro overview page, you can find numbers, nits, contrast ratio, and refresh rate. You can learn that the iPad Pro (with its M4 chip, amazing super high resolution, and ray tracing) is 4× faster than an M2 at rendering and 1.5× faster than an M2 CPU—numbers, right? You can find out that it has a 12MP camera capable of 4K videos (more numbers) and that it can do data transfers up to 40 Gb/sec, has Wi-Fi 6E, 5G, and drives an external display up to 6K—a bowl full of numbers. There are, of course, numbers with dollar signs and storage devices expressed in numbers like 1TB and 2TB, or a CPU with 10 cores, and of course, the device’s dimensions. There are 13 footnotes at the end of the page, and the amazing resolution isn’t mentioned anywhere in them either.
Apple does reference its “Ultra Retina XDR display,” but searching for that does not yield the iPad’s resolution and lists the 32-inch monitor’s resolution. However, if you search for “resolution of Apple iPad Ultra Retina XDR display,” you can find it is 2752×2064 (for the 13-inch version). And, if you happen to find your way to About the Liquid Retina XDR display on iPad Pro – Apple Support (IN), you will discover the screen resolution of the 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display (5th and 6th generation) has an IPS LCD panel and not an OLED as one might expect.
So, we don’t know why Apple is timid about talking about its amazing screen resolution, and we are looking for an online self-help group to aid them in overcoming it. We envision having some T-shirts made for them. Resolution—be proud.
Epilogue
One of my colleagues, Karen, who pays attention to things, noticed that as you scroll down Apple’s artistically designed website, an options bar appears at the top. And, above the options in small but readable print is Tech Specs. Guess what you’ll find if you click on it and then scroll down—yep, the screen resolutions, expressed in pixels. Still, it’s difficult to understand why Apple doesn’t feature it more prominently, when they manage to weave in all other kinds of tech specs onto the main page.