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A Closer Look at the New MacBook Pro's Retina Display
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If anyone knew for a fact on this forum, that would be quite a big deal.
I'm sure Apple's idea is to eventually make all of their notebooks Retina. Obviously, they couldn't do it in one quick step, due to price limitations, as well as some people really wanting the hard drive, replaceable RAM and DVD drive, as well as the Ethernet and FW800 ports.
I'm sure that within a few years, all Apple notebooks will become Retina, and slimmer like the Next Gen MBP. I doubt this would happen this year though, there normally aren't such closely spaced major releases in the same product line.
It has two Thunderbolt ports, which in Apple applications serve as mini DisplayPorts as well.
Because I currently have the 17" MBP, I wonder if the new Retina display (on 15.4") will actually compensate for the loss of real estate when working with LR and PS. (I never work at home, so connecting a large display for specific detailed work isn't an option I'm afraid, and 17" was just big enough for me).
Hang on a minute?!
So if you screen capture whilst in the 'virtual' 1920X1200 mode, you don't get a grab at the screen's display resolution of 2880x1800 but instead get the pre-scaled 3840x2400 image??!!
It makes sense I guess. Slightly confusing, but yes, does make sense...
Not sure. There might be an API where you can force a certain view to always conform to the screen-pixel dimensions of the display area? Not sure though, I guess it depends on whether the scaling stuff is happening after the whole desktop is being composited (in the framebuffer) or if it's a little more subtle than that (within Quartz).
In what way does it make sense that a screen capture would not be at 1920x1200 if that's the resolution you have chosen
Different strokes for different folks. My close-up vision is fine (I wear corrective lenses for distance), but I find the 1920 x 1200 screen on the 17" MBP makes interface elements a little too smallnot in the general OS as much as in pro apps where interface text is much smaller. The default OS X interface sizes at 1920 x 1200 on a 15" screen would be far too small for me to view comfortably. Fortunately, because of HiDPI mode, the Retina display, and smart scaling, people have multiple options, ALL of which look better than what was available before. I'd imagine I will leave my 15" Retina MBP at its default setting most of the time for comfort's sake.
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In what way does it make sense that a screen capture would not be at 1920x1200 if that's the resolution you have chosen
They're not even listing dimensional measurements for this screen when you pick "resolutions," which I think is a good thing. Regular users really don't need to know or care what's going on. Simplifying it to "Larger Text" vs "Best" vs "More Space" was a good move on their parts.
In what way does it make sense that a screen capture would not be at 1920x1200 if that's the resolution you have chosen
What is being discussed here is not changing the resolution. It seems Apple provides you a 1920x1200 work area by rendering a 3840x2400 into 2880x1800 pixels.
So your LCD's resolution is still its native 2880x1800 and you get a 1920x1200 work area. The screen grab is grabbing the frame buffer which is a whopping 3840x2400 before being downscaled in realtime by the GPU.
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And that is why we can't have nice things and Apple sticks to ridiculously low resolutions on their MBP line-up
. Because some people just can't admit to poor eyesight.In what way does it make sense that a screen capture would not be at 1920x1200 if that's the resolution you have chosen
You don't actually choose a "1920x1200" display mode, you just choose "More Space".
This (behind the scenes) selects the mode that Apple has previously referred to as "1920x1200 (HiDPI)", which is a 3840x2400 mode with display elements that are twice as tall and wide as normal.
So, objects on the screen are the same physical size as they'd be on a 1920x1200 monitor, but rendered at 3840x2400. That's where the screenshot takes place.
Then it's scaled down from there to 2880x1800 to fit on the MBPR display.
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I understand how it's working, I just wonder how the average user is going to take to it when their screen capture files are huge.
And that is why we can't have nice things and Apple sticks to ridiculously low resolutions on their MBP line-up
Hardly just Apple, although Sony and now Asus have been pushing resolution limits recently on smaller machines.
As far as total pixel area, before Monday, the best laptop display was DISCONTINUED in 2005, and only three laptops used that display from the factory - NEC Versa Pro NX VA20S/AE in 2002, a rare medical configuration (IIRC the OPTION was $1400) of the ThinkPad R50p in 2004, and the NEC LaVie G Type C with the optional QXGA display in 2005. I don't have exact pricing on the base config of the latter two machines, but in 2012 US dollars, you were looking at nearly $5000 for the first in a base config (with a P4, woo!), and around $3500-6300 for the others ($3865.32 for a "typical" config, $6266.06 in today's money for the newer NEC in a maxed out config).
The problems cited there were related to cost and user comfort, IIRC. (NEC actually wanted a HiDPI-like approach to be used, so you had the desktop area of a 1024x768 display, but with better font rendering for Kanji, but IIRC they couldn't get Microsoft to do it.) Didn't help that the cost of that thing as well as the T221 put the IDTech joint venture out of business.
Although, I have one of those panels in my current ThinkPad from when warehouses were dumping them, and I can use it comfortably without assistance with 20/20 vision on my left eye, without using any of the Windows scaling functions. However, I need assistance for my right eye, and correcting one eye requires correcting the other to not break depth perception, so I have bifocals on top of the left eye, which means I can use crazy high resolution displays. I can still see the pixels on a retina display at recommended viewing distances.
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They should be pleased even! Bigger is better eh
Anyway, you're always going to downscale your screenshots, even if they were 1920x1200. Thumbnails were invented in the 90s. We still use them today.
I'd be more concerned with finding wallpapers. Already tough enough finding decent wallpapers for 2560x1600 30" monitors.
There's a surprising amount of 3840x2400 wallpapers already out there. (They're kinda needed for an IBM T221.)
Quite a lot of it is astronomy images, though.
Quite a lot of it is astronomy images, though.
Yeah, try finding it for Anime wallpapers. 1280x800 seems to be about the standard resolution those guys use.
No.
Your options are Windows scaling, which sucks the big one in practice (it was a good idea, but convincing software developers to make their stuff compatible with it never happened due to the challenges in doing so - hence Apple's more primitive approach to scaling), and running at a lower resolution, which is a sub-optimal answer.
Or, having everything on-screen be tiny, which is actually what I want.
performance
Hi, it would be interesting to know, what the up and downscaling costs ( processor power ). Has a regular MacBook Pro without retina better performance for photoshop or Finalcut work or is it insignificant?
Sorry, if this question has already been treated... didn't find it.
thanks for the replies.
Hi, it would be interesting to know, what the up and downscaling costs ( processor power ). Has a regular MacBook Pro without retina better performance for photoshop or Finalcut work or is it insignificant?
Sorry, if this question has already been treated... didn't find it.
thanks for the replies.
How long before we get an actual 2,880x1,800 desktop?
I don't know why Apple doesn't allow us to access the full desktop resolution with the normal APIs - I would kill for that. Sure, maybe they thought the menus were unusably small, but can't you make them larger?
I can only hope that soon enough, people will figure out how to edit configuration files to enable full resolution workspaces. And think how much faster and crisper everything will be rather than rendering 4x the desktop and interpolating it down - think of the power savings...
Not that 1,920 x 1,200 is bad - it's what I use now on my 17". But it doesn't seem like much of an upgrade if you can't go higher...
I don't know why Apple doesn't allow us to access the full desktop resolution with the normal APIs - I would kill for that. Sure, maybe they thought the menus were unusably small, but can't you make them larger?
I can only hope that soon enough, people will figure out how to edit configuration files to enable full resolution workspaces. And think how much faster and crisper everything will be rather than rendering 4x the desktop and interpolating it down - think of the power savings...
Not that 1,920 x 1,200 is bad - it's what I use now on my 17". But it doesn't seem like much of an upgrade if you can't go higher...
You can only make them 2x as tall and 2x as wide, which is the default.
Basically, the MBPR has five video modes available and exposed to OS X users:
2048x1280
2560x1600
2880x1800 (native)
3360x2100
3840x2400
All of these modes are being used in HiDPI mode, which halves both horizontal and vertical working space (so that it's back to the ballpark that it was at in the non-Retina machines, at least for the 2880x1800 and 3360x2100 modes).
Turning off HiDPI, the GPU will still work just as hard, but you'll get a lot more on the screen.
In any case, here's a thread I posted about maybe getting HiDPI disabled: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1386034/
Mac OS X does not really support resolution independence, you can't even change the size of the font in the menu bar (something that the Amiga could nearly 20 years back), that's why they chickened out and only offer this 2x "HiDPI" mode...
I agree
Boy, I've been guilty of flip-flop on both sides of that coin.
I don't want to repeat the multiple Mac tests/returns insanity of 2010-2011.
Hoping I can upgrade my 2010 iMac's ram capacity (the memory plate screws look stripped) so I won't have to buy something more powerful for design work/studies. If the screws are stripped, I'll make do until I can't any more. Can't justify putting that much $ out for a laptop, but I sure understand why people want and/or need it.
I think one can always find justification for buying or not buying hardware in these forums
I'm certainly guilty of doing both
Boy, I've been guilty of flip-flop on both sides of that coin.
I don't want to repeat the multiple Mac tests/returns insanity of 2010-2011.
Hoping I can upgrade my 2010 iMac's ram capacity (the memory plate screws look stripped) so I won't have to buy something more powerful for design work/studies. If the screws are stripped, I'll make do until I can't any more. Can't justify putting that much $ out for a laptop, but I sure understand why people want and/or need it.