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A Closer Look at the New MacBook Pro's Retina Display
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Retina sounds fantastic, and the reduction in glare is great. But is the reduction enough?
It seems the reduction is due to removing one of the layers of glass, but other glass layers still remain. I hope they also add an anti-reflective treatment in the future. Apparently glass typically reflects 8% of light. Nippon Electric's "invisible glass" reduces that to 0.5%. Something like that would be most welcome. The best of glossy and matte combined.
Yes, it looks like the scaling is done completely in software, so it's always outputting a 2880x1800 image to the display, no matter which scaling mode you pick.
That's awesome - so its almost like having a few different kinds of displays available to you that you can change at will instead of having to pick up front when ordering.
But hard scaling algorithms that wouldn't result in any blending (thus no fuzzyness) are just atrocious. Remains to be seen, in person, what it actually looks like. This is not something you can see in screenshots properly. It's too bad he glances over it, and just says "it looks better!". Typical Anand, always pleasing the vendor to get more hardware to review (he's been like that since his site opened in the 90s).
Before AnandTech's article I thought the same thing. This higher pixel density is either too expensive, has too low a yields for that screen size, or Apple is just holding out to have something new for next year.
At least it's better than the 2011 hi res 15" MBP display, which is saying something something because that display is already excellent.
Cannot wait to see this sweet device. I think the screen would be a dream come true for video and photos. The SSD sounds nice too, going to wait until July to get one. Mountian Lion will be out then too.
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Considering that every other place OS X scales large images down it already uses blended interpolation, I don't think you have anything to worry about. There's no way they'd be using "nearest neighbor" to scale down. Will it look as hard-edged perfect as the native resolution in every case? No. Will it be easily distinguishable from actual 1920 x 1200 15.4" panels? Only in that it will look better, I'd imagine.
As to having to see it in person: nonsense. Just take one of the unscaled images from Anand's article and scale it down to 2880 x 1800 and see how it looks.
I'm eager to see it for myself.
As to having to see it in person: nonsense. Just take one of the unscaled images from Anand's article and scale it down to 2880 x 1800 and see how it looks.
I'm eager to see it for myself.
If you look at their photos of the different workspace options they posted you can see all of the images are still in the native resolution. Fuzziness should not be an issue like it is on typical monitors. The resolution on the screen is always the same with this new MacBook Pro, they just change the HiDPI mode.
This is a confusing subject, but people need to make an important distinction:
Given the "resolution" settings shown in this article, OS X will ALWAYS be outputting a 2880x1800 signal to the LCD. All that is happening is that the software is doing scaling to simulate the desktop size and feel of a traditional 1920x1200 monitor.
The real curious part is what the monitor will look like when you are NOT operating directly in OS X. An example would be a game like Diablo 3. When you select 1440xwhatever in the game, the signal being sent to the LCD will need to be UPSCALED. The argument is that the pixel density is so high that any traditional non-native resolution blurring will be unnoticeable.
What is unclear to me is during this entire process, I expect OS X is still running complex scaling in the background. I would expect there to be performance hits due to all this behind the scenes magic. I'm super excited about this transition to retina, but this change in tech will shake up the traditional notions of display resolutions considerably.
Given the "resolution" settings shown in this article, OS X will ALWAYS be outputting a 2880x1800 signal to the LCD. All that is happening is that the software is doing scaling to simulate the desktop size and feel of a traditional 1920x1200 monitor.
The real curious part is what the monitor will look like when you are NOT operating directly in OS X. An example would be a game like Diablo 3. When you select 1440xwhatever in the game, the signal being sent to the LCD will need to be UPSCALED. The argument is that the pixel density is so high that any traditional non-native resolution blurring will be unnoticeable.
What is unclear to me is during this entire process, I expect OS X is still running complex scaling in the background. I would expect there to be performance hits due to all this behind the scenes magic. I'm super excited about this transition to retina, but this change in tech will shake up the traditional notions of display resolutions considerably.
It doesn't really. The zenbook has more whites (is brighter) than the MBP Retina, but has less blacks. The contrast is higher, but that doesn't mean it's a better screen.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to have told the tech over at Annand. You will see in the screenshots that they are running Diablo3 at native res but has AA enabled.
F
Someone please do a test on FAN NOISE!
Also "Google Chrome currently uses its own text rendering engine and is thus unable to take advantage of the sharper text available in Safari"...
Again another bite at Google here.
Also "Google Chrome currently uses its own text rendering engine and is thus unable to take advantage of the sharper text available in Safari"...
Again another bite at Google here.
The Zenbook's overall contrast ratio is higher, yes. Is it a better display though? The Asus isn't a "retina" quality display, and it's black levels aren't as good as the new MacBook Pro. The Zenbook has brighter white levels, which is why it edges ahead in overall contrast.
Personally, I'd much rather have the deepest black levels, than the brighest white levels. I never turn my brightness levels up that high to begin with. Deep blacks and saturated colors make for the most pleasing viewing experience.... just like on the new iPad.
Scaled at 1680x1050:
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(Click to enlarge)
Scaled at 1920x1200 :
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(Click to enlarge)
The downscaled elements themselves are not fuzzy at all as you can see. Now we just need to see how they look when displayed on the higher resolution Retina Display, but with such a high PPI I imagine it can't be that bad.
EDIT: Just noticed the bottom left corner of the Dock looks weird at 1680x1050. That's probably just a display bug that will be fixed though as all the rest is smooth and it's fine at 1920x1200.
EDIT2: As KnightWRX pointed out, the scaled images are actually rendered at twice their linear resolution (4 times the pixels) by OS X and then downscaled to 2880x1800 when displayed, so for example instead of simply being upscaled from 1680x1050 to 2880x1800, it's rendered at 3360x2100 and then downscaled to 2880x1800 to be displayed. This should allow to display more details than if you were simply using a 1680x1050 display, but the downscaling process (from 3360x2100 to 2880x1800) will still make you lose a bit of sharpness when compared to native 2880x1800 or 1440x900 HiDPI.
(Click to enlarge)
Scaled at 1920x1200 :
(Click to enlarge)
The downscaled elements themselves are not fuzzy at all as you can see. Now we just need to see how they look when displayed on the higher resolution Retina Display, but with such a high PPI I imagine it can't be that bad.
EDIT: Just noticed the bottom left corner of the Dock looks weird at 1680x1050. That's probably just a display bug that will be fixed though as all the rest is smooth and it's fine at 1920x1200.
EDIT2: As KnightWRX pointed out, the scaled images are actually rendered at twice their linear resolution (4 times the pixels) by OS X and then downscaled to 2880x1800 when displayed, so for example instead of simply being upscaled from 1680x1050 to 2880x1800, it's rendered at 3360x2100 and then downscaled to 2880x1800 to be displayed. This should allow to display more details than if you were simply using a 1680x1050 display, but the downscaling process (from 3360x2100 to 2880x1800) will still make you lose a bit of sharpness when compared to native 2880x1800 or 1440x900 HiDPI.
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Anand is smart enough to know that. It's still useful for testing/benching purposes.
thanks for posting
I was glad I didn't pull the trigger yesterday. I appreciated the mention of the discrepancies between the clarity and the actual resolution in many threads here at Macrumors. Folks have been amazing here, but it's helpeful to read a real world field test.
My vision isn't great, but it's been pretty steady over the past six years despite all the web design and writing/classes I slogged through. I don't see much of a difference between the Retina in the new iPad and iPad 2, but then again, I'm not reading much beyond comicbooks and I limit myself to about an hour or two a week at most.
For something as important as a computer where I will be using it day-to-day, I'll keep my eyes peeled for more field reports and test when I actually need a machine.
I was glad I didn't pull the trigger yesterday. I appreciated the mention of the discrepancies between the clarity and the actual resolution in many threads here at Macrumors. Folks have been amazing here, but it's helpeful to read a real world field test.
My vision isn't great, but it's been pretty steady over the past six years despite all the web design and writing/classes I slogged through. I don't see much of a difference between the Retina in the new iPad and iPad 2, but then again, I'm not reading much beyond comicbooks and I limit myself to about an hour or two a week at most.
For something as important as a computer where I will be using it day-to-day, I'll keep my eyes peeled for more field reports and test when I actually need a machine.
OS X is crappy regarding configurability
I just can't help the feeling that OS X is incredibly crappy and backward, even on the later versions of Amiga OS, in particular with MUI-based applications, it was possible to change the font size of ... basically everything.
I could change the font size of the meny bar that, like on Mac OS, had its fixed place at the top of the screen, and I could change the font size of nearly everything, and the layout would automatically adapt.
Why is the same level of configuration of the GUI parameters not even remotely possible on OS X? I'd love to run the Retina MacBook at its full native resolution, without pixel-doubling games, just with slightly larger fonts...
But I can't, because Mac OS X is on the level of Amiga OS 1.3, not 3.1.
I just can't help the feeling that OS X is incredibly crappy and backward, even on the later versions of Amiga OS, in particular with MUI-based applications, it was possible to change the font size of ... basically everything.
I could change the font size of the meny bar that, like on Mac OS, had its fixed place at the top of the screen, and I could change the font size of nearly everything, and the layout would automatically adapt.
Why is the same level of configuration of the GUI parameters not even remotely possible on OS X? I'd love to run the Retina MacBook at its full native resolution, without pixel-doubling games, just with slightly larger fonts...
But I can't, because Mac OS X is on the level of Amiga OS 1.3, not 3.1.
I think it's almost inevitable that this new MacBook Pro will pave the way for the next iMac lineup. By removing that large optical drive and HDD, they could easily shave more meat off the chassis and use the new fan system to cool the machine even better. Combine that with the new way to fit the LED panel and you have one very attractive iMac...