New iPad's flagship feature, its 2048-by-1536 pixel display, looks exquisite. The screen sports four times as many pixels as its predecessors, so for Retina display support apps need new images that are twice as wide and twice as tall as before. As already seen with the iPhone 4's release, a massive bump in screen resolution means that plenty of apps need to be updated to fully take advantage of all those extra pixels. And that means bigger apps. In fact, much bigger apps - and eventually the much improved screen may severely limit how you use the tablet.
How big are updated apps?
Some of Apple’s own and updated iPad apps give a clue. It’s not a perfect comparison, since Apple also added some features to the apps it updated with Retina compatibility, but it’s still informative:
Keynote went from 115MB to 327MB; Numbers increased from 109MB to 283MB, and Pages went from 95MB to 269MB.
In other words, these apps increased their file sizes by a factor between 2.5 and 3. A smaller app like Tweetbot, for example, will reportedly grow from 8.8MB to 24.6MB. Larger, graphically intense games that weigh in between 300MB and 500MB today will likely require 750MB to 1.5GB once they update their art assets.
Not only this is worrying for owners of new iPad 16GB model, but the most worrying effect of the new iPad’s Retina display is its impact on older owners of both iPads and iPhones. As apps are universal across iPad / iPhone space, your updated apps will become much larger even if you don’t own a Retina-display iPad. And we get no choice. Key take: forger to buy 16 GB iPhone / iPad. You'll run out of space.
See also related story at MacWorld.
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