Too cool for school

Brian Chen has a Bits article in The New York Times:

Apps, games, and e-books may look great on the new iPad’s high-resolution “retina” display, but it’s unclear whether websites will get the same treatment.

Pick up a new iPad and load a website, and you’ll often see crisp, clear text next to not-so-sharp photos. That’s because most web developers are still considering whether they want to upgrade their sites to deliver higher-resolution images and videos for the new iPad, which has a 2,048-by-1,536-pixel display. This may involve more bandwidth and storage costs, and the programming work required to keep track of different image sizes and deliver them to the right screens.
Keep in mind that the new iPad is just one device out of the many computers, smartphones, and tablets out there with less “resolutionary” screens. The costs of scaling up just for the new iPad could be substantial, especially for big web companies that host a lot of images.
Springbox, a digital design agency that makes both websites and apps for clients, is optimizing its iPad apps to suit the new retina display, but holding off on upgrading its web sites, according to Tom Hudson, director of technology at the company. He said Springbox probably would not consider scaling up its websites for higher-resolution iPads unless they made up at least twenty percent of the overall market.
Other than the costs of upgrading, another obstacle is the time that a website takes to load. “Even though we’ve upgraded the quality of resolution on the iPad, our Internet connections are still the same,” Hudson said. That means websites with images and videos optimized for the new iPad could take longer to load, which isn’t ideal for many companies running websites. This isn’t a problem for iPad apps, where images can be stored locally to reduce loading times, he said. (On its own site, Apple is loading the lower-resolution images and then replacing them with higher-resolution versions on the new iPad. )
Blue Fountain Media, another design firm, said the majority of its clients were not planning to upgrade their images in light of the new iPad. Gabriel Shaoolian, chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, said that, for most of its clients, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to upgrade.
Of course, that doesn’t mean websites aren’t going to suit up for the new iPad at all. Some website owners will make beautiful photography and video priorities; they will choose to incur the extra costs of upgrading just to look good on the new iPad. Take for instance, companies that use photography to sell their products, like the beauty industry, Shaoolian said. “If I change my images, will my visitors get more value out of it?” Shaoolian said. “That’s a big question to ask.” However, Shaoolian said that, more importantly, the iPad in general has redefined web design standards, and many of his clients ask that their web designs snugly fit the width of the iPad screen. He said that maybe in two or three years, the iPad screen will set a new standard for higher-resolution images, and more websites will upgrade. “It’s like an HDTV. We’re just stepping into a new era,” he said, comparing the release of the new iPad to when the first high-definition televisions hit the market, and suddenly DVDs didn’t look so good. “It just came out, so a lot of companies will be slow to just take immediate action.”

Rico says he'll step up his imagery once he acquires his new iPad...