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Running the Retina MacBook Pro at Full 2880x1800 Resolution
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The spirited defenses of Apple's failure to enable a 2880x1800 unscaled resolution (even as an advanced setting) annoy me. They smack of Apple-worship/blaming the victims of their bias toward lowest-common-denominator software design.
I switched from Windows to the rmbp solely for the increased screen real estate of the hacked 1800p mode - it's fantastic and has greatly improved my mobile productivity. I am pretty nearsighted and am corrected to 20/15 or so, and after a few days of use am completely comfortable with the smaller icons. In the absence of the hack, I simply wouldn't own the device. In its presence, I'd be willing to pay $5k for the machine. Some of the comments here make it seem like a desire for more screen real estate is like bestiality or satanic rites - I really just want to get work done faster.
I switched from Windows to the rmbp solely for the increased screen real estate of the hacked 1800p mode - it's fantastic and has greatly improved my mobile productivity. I am pretty nearsighted and am corrected to 20/15 or so, and after a few days of use am completely comfortable with the smaller icons. In the absence of the hack, I simply wouldn't own the device. In its presence, I'd be willing to pay $5k for the machine. Some of the comments here make it seem like a desire for more screen real estate is like bestiality or satanic rites - I really just want to get work done faster.
How are you guys getting by on 2880x1800? I can read the OS menus just fine, but text in programs is really hard to make out.
I up font sizes in most things... I also use screen zooming a lot, but I'm already used to that, I've done that for years.
Until Apple will redesign the whole UI to be scalable there is no point to write apps for this resolution, there would not be a problems for 3D games but this rMBP was made for games?
The system UI should be fully vector based and scalable. Fonts is vector based that is why Apple show that fonts looks cool but the whole MacOS X UI should be redesigned.
Because it's not driving the same amount of pixels. It's driving more pixels when you pick the higher options. OS X renders the screen's usable pixel area at twice the value. i.e. 1440x900 doubled is 2880x1800, the native resolution. But when you use the higher versions, like 1920x1200, you're actually telling the video card to render at 3840x2400, which the OS then scales down to 2880x1800. That's why it's a bit laggier. It's literally almost twice the amount of pixels at the highest "usable area".
The 1680x1050 option is probably not as laggy since it's only about 120% as many pixels being rendered.
Don't you get it, the iPad is running a resolution of 2880X1800, does that look horrible to you? No it's beautiful. "If it's too small on my biggish monitor, I can't imagine how horrible it would be on a 15" screen." Well, your biggish monitor isn't a retina display, so it doesn't scale the text, when it makes it sharper, it just makes it sharper, the retina display, looks the same size-wise, but is sharper and have more detail. This is a Shot of a 800x525 HIDPI resolution http://postimage.org/image/shdnvjbf9/
And this is a shot of a normal higher resolution 800x600 resolution http://postimage.org/image/4ffo32xjv/Which looks better, the lower resolution with HIDPI (it may look grainy up close, but that's just the detail)! But they are both the same size, and one looks better.
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For the record, the retina iPad has a resolution of 2048x1536 (quad 1024x768 - the resolution of the previous generation iPads).
I'm not talking about the physical resolution, rather the size of the UI elements on the monitor. The iPad 3 has the exactly same sized icons and text as the iPad 2 despite having double the resolution on X and Y. If Apple just upped the resolution of the screen without making the icons higher res alongside it, you'd have buttons that were a quarter of the size, and would be much more difficult to hit with your finger.
Higher screen resolution gives you a shaper, clearer and more vivid image, but a half centimeter sized icon is difficult to hit easily and consistently no matter how sharp, clear, or vivid it is. The default pre rMBP Mac sized icons and text at 2880x1800 on a 15" monitor is just way too damn small.
And those two pictures? The elements are the same size "physically", as in they're all the same resolution, but the higher res screen pic has smaller icons from a usage standpoint.
QuickRes is my favorite app to change resolution on the retina MacBook Pro. It lets you change your resolution with just one click and you can set it all the way to 3840x2400! You can download it here: http://gravidrop.com/QuickRes/
Are you sure this is the way it works? I can't imagine they are having to render the whole screen at 3840x2400... Surely there's some clever algorithm that speeds this up?
That's right, it's rendering it at 3840x2400 and then downscaling to 1920x1200 for a sharp picture, rather than rendering it at 1920x1200 (no scaling) and then upscaling to 2880x1800.
wow... does this slow it down much? I had no idea...
I was planning on using the machine mainly in 1680x1050 mode but if it's going to affect performance, perhaps I should reconsider the hi-res 15" MBP?
I don't know, I don't own one. You could probably ask in the MBP forum and get some answers about it. I don't really think it slows it down, but I can't say for sure.
Both OS's have their advantages and disadvantages.
Is there a setting like this in OS X?
![fyR57.jpg]()
Display settings in OSX is very limiting.. hope Apple implement that in the future.
Setres dead
Terrible news. With the latest 10.8.2, SetRes app is now DEAD.
NO more 2880x1800.
I'm now going to backup my data and return this MacBook Retina. I only bought it because of the 2880x1800 resolution.
First they take away our rights to make films, then freedom of 2880 resolution, next freedom of speech
Terrible news. With the latest 10.8.2, SetRes app is now DEAD.
NO more 2880x1800.
I'm now going to backup my data and return this MacBook Retina. I only bought it because of the 2880x1800 resolution.
First they take away our rights to make films, then freedom of 2880 resolution, next freedom of speech
What methods have you used? I'm going to upgrade mine tonight, but they really cannot block people from running non-HiDPI modes like that... if they did something that killed that one app I could understand, but should still be doable.Terrible news. With the latest 10.8.2, SetRes app is now DEAD.
NO more 2880x1800.
I'm now going to backup my data and return this MacBook Retina. I only bought it because of the 2880x1800 resolution.
First they take away our rights to make films, then freedom of 2880 resolution, next freedom of speech
Until Apple will redesign the whole UI to be scalable there is no point to write apps for this resolution, there would not be a problems for 3D games but this rMBP was made for games?
The system UI should be fully vector based and scalable. Fonts is vector based that is why Apple show that fonts looks cool but the whole MacOS X UI should be redesigned.
The problem isn't the system UI, that works out of the box. The problem is (non vector) graphical elements that have been added to the application, they need to be of high enough quality to be shown at a native size on a 2880x1800 display or they will be scaled up which doesn't look good.