The math discussed in media stories and blog posts about the iPhone 4 was enough to give many of us brain cramps. Nonetheless, others were inspired to jump right in and wrestle with the numbers to extrapolate real-world usage data. Among them was Phil Plaits, a scientist who spent a few years calibrating a camera on board the Hubble Telescope and who now blogs for Discover Magazine.
“My first reaction to the announcement and the ensuing coverage was interest and curiosity. I figured [Jobs] wouldn't lie outright, so what really is the limit of human vision as far as pixel size? The math is simple, if you know it, so I did the calculations, and found that while his claim wasn't perfect, I thought in context it was fine,” said Plaits, who helpfully provides charts and graphs illustrating the central concepts in his blog post about the iPhone 4’s display.
But as usual, the devil is in the details.
“It's easy to make assumptions about pixel size and distance, but then you have to take into account human vision--which is complicated--how the pixels are laid out, whether there is space between them, how they're refreshed, and so on,” said Plaits, who adds that he opted not to worry about slicing the data that finely.
“I just wanted to see if, given some simple assumptions, you could make a smooth, continuous-looking display. The answer is yes, and the new iPhone display will be pretty close to that ideal.“
Some experts, however, say more accuracy is warranted. Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation, which produces video calibration, evaluation, and diagnostic products, said that exaggeration over display specifications has been “building for many years and has now become outlandishly unreliable, with many of the consumer specs being exaggerated by 1000 percent or more.”
Blame it on the snowball effect: Once one manufacturer exaggerates its exacting specs a tiny bit, all the competing companies do the same. The stakes are raised again and again, and pretty soon that little innocent snowball has morphed into an out-of-control abominable snowman.
Basically, what I'm getting from tihs article is that Steve did in fact lie... However, we're being told it's forgivable. While I appreciate the opinion of such a renowned mathmatician, shouldn't it be for the consumer to decide when the truth is stretched too much? I don't see any reason there needs to be conclusive, factual decission over whether Steve lied. After all, I find that to be an opinion. Who can say for sure how far the truth has been stretched? If it's stretched bad enough, the backlash will be great enough to warrent the assumption that it was a lie. The offenders will be open to be sued, and it's really just that simple.
My personal opinion though, is that I'm tired of being tricked with this "forgivable" argument. Have you ever bought a hard drive advertising a certain ammount of gigabytes only to find out it has somewhat less than it led you to believe? That's the kind of dirty marketing trick we're looking at here. It's not a very trust inspiring move. They say one thing, but they lead us to believe another. I don't know about others, but I call this lying.
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