alt Hacker NewsHistorically, raster graphics won out because they used less resources. Perhaps that's changed. If so, it would make sense for various OS's to start working on native support. Irix did it in the 90's. It can be done now.
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andrekandre • last Wednesday at 2:42 AM
we've been able to "preserve vector data" with pdf and svg image resources on ios for a long while now... compile-time rasterization is the default though...
Yeah but I would argue that they just used cheaper ressources since historically has been cheaper than compute.
It's not clear if compute can be cheaper than storage still today.
On one hand you can afford to use less storage but you have to use GPU power everytime to draw graphics, if the chip can support the compute requirement you can save on storage, but you pay with higher power draw at every interraction.
On the other hand you can just put more storage, chip assest that are rendered for the device they'll be used on and be ok.
Outside of crisis like now, storage should be cheaper in the long term I think. I doubt there is that much benefit in having assets being able to resize to any arbitrary resolution. The definition used in phones isn't that far away than what is used in laptops, monitors and now even TVs.
Something to think about is that icons/assets often need to change shape slightly as they become smaller or bigger for optical reasons. So even if you manage a fully vector scaled UI, you might still need to have difference depending on DPI to reading distance ratio. Rasterized assests might still be the real answer for a very long time.
Considering how bad is the iOS 26 release on performance, because of its dynamically computed interface, I'm not sure it's worth pursuing vector UIs, it doesn't make a lot of sense to make a more powerfull chip just to draw prettier or more "pure" interfaces...