Generally apple picks the optimal ppi and they don’t market the ppi value, only that it’s “retina”. They will prefer odd resolutions over suboptimal ppi. For example, the m2 macbook air is 2560 by 1664 at 224 ppi. The maximum ppi you can get on an iphone is 460 ppi, so I assume in their testing they found that even people with perfect vision holding it really close had no use for sharper screens than that.

iPhone uses a pentile arrangement that requires higher densities to appear the same.

> Generally apple picks the optimal ppi and they don’t market the ppi value, only that it’s “retina”.

First world problem, but I hate when companies choose a one-size-fits-all value that is allegedly supposed to reach the limits of human perception, but that value still turns out not to be enough for me because (surprise) some people are naturally slightly better than average.

For example, the new Apple VR headset, despite having a resolution of around 4k*4k pixels per eye, would probably still have to make up for it in other ways, because I can still see significantly more pixels than that.

Apple actually seems to know this, and they know it so well that their entire marketing push is based on augmented reality and immersion. Blending things with the environment, moving around and interacting- basically things that can never really be disappointed by the screen resolution being insufficiently high.

The "human perception" crap is always marketing. Everything is supposedly at the limit of human perception, until the next generation of technology comes out, and then this time it's for real at the limit of human perception! I think the last 20 years of tech products I've bought were always marketed as at the limits of human perception.

Step aside 8 bit color, 16 bit color displays are here: 65536 colors! Nobody can perceive more than that! Then 32 bit color came along: 1+MILLION colors!! How can it get better than that? Humans can't perceive more! 30FPS gaming as the gold standard for what the eye can behold, then it became 60FPS, now it's 120FPS! The PPI arms race is the same thing.

Apple does not use a one-size-fits-all in ppi.

The phones are assumed to be held close to your eye and have a 460ppi.

The MacBooks are assumed to be seen from a medium distance and use around 225ppi.

The Studio display and Prod Display distance is a little longer and use 218ppi.

Retina is a property based on subtended angle from the viewer's perspective, not on a physical property of the device.

And none of those devices have a PPI that you can customize when you purchase the device, in contrast to many PC laptops that generally offer multiple options (say, either 1080p or 4K on the same device), meaning each device indeed has a one-size-fits-all PPI. I never said Apple uses the same PPI for all their devices.

The iPhone is still pretty much the same ~330PPi as before, only the OLED number are inflated. If you only count the smallest PPI within the sub pixel of OLED they are still, magical ~330 ppl on newer iPhone.

25cm is pretty bad viewing distance, a good way to mess up your eyes long term

Good to know. I meant that's where humans can discern smallest details.