New iPad. New way of thinking?

The new iPad 3 is packed with some amazing features but by far the cherry on the top is the new 2048 x 1536 retina display. This will enable the tablet to compete directly with regular desktops and even HD TV's. This is all great news for the user but what does it mean for designers?

Well, dealing with 2048 x 1536 pixels portrait and 1536 x 2008 landscape (double the 1024 x 768 iPad & iPad2) means assets and designs will have to be, for want of a better word, huge! It is, in a way, reverting back to the old days of print when 300dpi was the minimum you could work with. Hopefully this won't slow down production but it goes without saying it will have some effect.

The hero for developers is vector. No matter what the size, the the quality is perfect and not to mention easier on our hardware. It seems a funny twist of fate that Adobe Flash was the perfect tool for this once upon a time but as we all know this is a dying platform... or is it? It also seems as though we've gone from optimising websites for quick download to now having to ramp them up for the retina display, I'm guessing that's why Apple had to add 4G (not available in the UK) wireless capabilities.

To sum up the iPad 3 looks amazing and seems a great piece of technology and of course I'll probably get one, along with most of you. It just means us designers need to start designing in print terms rather than the online low res we've become accustomed to. It will also be interesting to see what impact this has on a mobile-first approach to application design and development. Either way, we'll be sure to share our thoughts when we finally get our hands on one.

Tags:  Mobile, Design