iPhone Bad Astronomy on the iPhone's Retina Display

[kjk]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...ne-resolution/

Let me make this clear: if you have perfect eyesight, then at one foot away the iPhone 4’s pixels are resolved. The picture will look pixellated. If you have average eyesight, the picture will look just fine.
So in a sense, both Jobs and Soneira are correct. At the very worst, you could claim Jobs exaggerated; his claim is not true if you have perfect vision. But for a lot of people, I would even say most people, you’ll never tell the difference. And if you hold the phone a few inches farther away it’ll look better.
So in my opinion, what Jobs said was fine. Soneira, while technically correct, was being picky. So I mildly disagree with him about that.

Still, the headline used by Wired.com was clearly incorrect; Jobs wasn’t falsely advertising the iPhone’s capabilities at all. I’ll note that I like Wired magazine quite a bit, and what we have here is most likely just an overzealous editor. But a lot of people read the headlines and it taints their view; someone reading that article may be more likely to think Jobs, once again, has overblown a product to excite people. He didn’t.

One of my favorite science bloggers.

[dorino]

I love Phil. Great blogger. Great book, too. Bad Astronomy. It's a very nice read.

His old site was good, too. He's all around well educated, but generally average. Brings things down to levels even my 67 year old dad could understand.


Though, he has sort of trailed out of the "Astronomy" bit a lot recently.

[scottjl]

great article. thanks for passing it along!