Visualizing Comics on the iPad

Steve Jobs didn’t specifically talk about comics and other visually-intensive ebooks on the iPad, but it does fix many of the graphics and usability issues that severely limited the comics-reading utility of the monochrome e-readers and bulky tablet PCs that came before.

With its large color screen, slim form factor and long battery life, it may well be the reading device that comics fans have been waiting for.

While we await the iPad’s arrival, I wanted to visualize just how the iPad might work as a comics-reading machine. I fired up Photoshop and plugged in a couple of screens from the Witchblade books on WOWIO. What do you think?

OLPC XO and the Magic Sunshine Screen

XO display in sunlight.

Much has been written about the OLPC XO’s remarkable display, given its specifications:

higher resolution than 95% of the laptop displays on the market today [i.e., 200dpi color, which is theoretically higher than that on the iPhone — gm]; approximately 1/7th the power consumption; 1/3rd the price; sunlight readability; and room-light readability with the backlight off

Whatever other difficulties the OLPC organization may be suffering, the display is seemingly a singular achievement that could result in better handhelds, ebook readers and laptops at significantly lower cost.

But how good is the display, really?

In my earlier first look at the XO, I was quite surprised by the display’s high quality, given the low cost of the machine. With the backlight turned on and the screen displaying full color, I found it to be fairly crisp and bright, far better than the murky displays I’ve seen on some low-end laptops.

The XO (in Tablet Mode, Portrait Orientation) and a MacBook Pro Display a PDF Ebook

In bright daylight where ordinary laptop screens are often barely usable, if at all, the XO performed brilliantly. I loaded a pdf of my current read, Pisstown Chaos, to test the XO display’s mettle with the backlight turned off in reflective monochrome mode. A MacBook Pro in the same environment had me running for shade, since the display was barely legible. The XO text display, on the other hand, was highly readable with good contrast. It was completely suitable for reading in bright daylight (see photo at the top of this post). While the satiny surface of the screen could cause some glare issues (below), slight shifts in position were enough to alleviate the problem.

All in all, the XO display quality and daylight performance were delivered as promised. Since the technology behind the display is slated for commercialization beyond OLPC, we can perhaps look forward to a new generation of capable and lower-cost machines with the XO in their lineage.

The XO’s display in bright sun — some glare, but very usable.