More. Power.

The retina display is the second most touted feature of the new iPhone 4. What does a retina display exactly mean? No, its not a display made of rods and cones but a display that has four times the pixels. As a result, photos will be able to present more pixel data to the screen despite the same physical dimensions. Small text you might find when looking at an entire webpage in safari should appear crisper and legible. The 300+ dpi resolution is normally reserved for print material not computer displays. Certainly a higher resolution display is a pitch to make a screen appear more like a piece of paper. If you’ve followed any of the mac rumor fodder throughout the years, scaling the user interface was kicked around before iPhone publicly existed. During his recent interview at the All Things D conference, Steve Jobs talked about “biting the bullet” and starting from scratch when it came to developing a touched based device. It’s clear Apple was preparing resources and new technology intended for iOS years before the iPhone and iPad saw the light of day. With mac software ousted from the ADA (Apple Design Awards) and emphasis on the platform waning, who knows if macs will ever ship with higher resolution displays.

Retina display is a win for the iPad too
While the iPad doesn’t sport a retina display (yet), building applications that support twice the resolution means that iPhone applications run at twice the resolution won’t pixelate like they do now on the iPad. The one pixel drop shadows will still look awkward because they will be two pixels instead of one, but the text and images won’t look as jagged as the do now. Don’t get too excited though, the iPad doesn’t run pixel doubled iOS 4 apps yet but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it supported in the next software update.