Silly question. But regarding images for iOS, I keep seeing the @2x identifier. Does that just mean the image is twice the size and therefore clearer as opposed to "@1x" image with the same dimensions? Or does the @2x actually mean something when compiling. What's the drawback to just using larger images and scaling them down inside xcode?
Clearly I don't understand something.
@2x is just the convention Apple chose for what image to use on a retina device vs a non-retina one—it has no meaning for compilation.
Using larger images and scaling them down doesn't look as good as using 1x images (you can try it yourself). Sometimes a designer might also e.g. remove details from a 1x image because at the lower resolution you can't make them out. Some things also don't scale down well, such as 1px lines. Scaling down images also adds overhead in I/O (opening a larger file) and at runtime (scaling algorithm).
Technically the @2x doesn't even need to be double the size of the 1x, though it's rare that you wouldn't want to do that (in one case for me, I was using resizable images and it was more convenient to have their cap-insets be exactly double even if the images themselves weren't).
