Microsoft Office 2011 on Retina Macbook Pro

[nontroppo]

Yes, exactly! Your screenshot is comparing Apple Pages, that uses the retina display to its full capacity and Word which looks like it does on a non-retina display Mac.

Some people are complaining that Word looks fuzzy, and they are exactly right, compared to how it could look. But others say it is fuzzy compared to a non-retina display, and that is patently false. Word is fuzzy on the Retina Mac like it is fuzzy on any DPI display Mac that is not retina. We are spoilt with the new retina display; that is what ColoArtist was showing us.

Honestly I really want Word to look as smooth as a baby's bottom too!!!

To fix the problem on restart with the Word fix, did you minimise and then restore the Word window? That is supposed to fix that.

 

[duckrabbit]

Some people are complaining that Word looks fuzzy, and they are exactly right, compared to how it could look. But others say it is fuzzy compared to a non-retina display, and that is patently false. Word is fuzzy on the Retina Mac like it is fuzzy on any DPI display Mac that is not retina. We are spoilt with the new retina display; that is what ColoArtist was showing us.

Edit: This is correct. See post below.

 

[duckrabbit]

I used SwitchResX to set my rMBP's display to 1440x900 (non-retina) and 1440x900 (hi-dpi). I took two screenshots and scaled down the hi-dpi screen by half. As you can see, Word looks identical in the two screenshots (which implies it uses nearest-neighbor scaling), while the menu bar looks messed up in the retina screenshot (which makes sense, because scaling down by half is lossy when the pixels aren't quadrupled like in the non-retina apps). In conclusion, non-retina apps should look identical on the rMBP and on non-retina MBP at 1440x900.

1440x900 is on the left. 1440x900 hi-dpi scaled down is on the right.

 

[Spicedham]

yep office looks jagged like in this picture. it's obvious it looks nothing like how it runs on a non retina screen.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

yep office looks jagged like in this picture. it's obvious it looks nothing like how it runs on a non retina screen.

Actually that is how it looks like on a non-Retina screen. But because the pixels are larger, and contain more space between them (i.e., the density is lower), your eye tends to blur our the jagged steps between pixels whereas the Retina display more clearly delineates those steps due to its higher density of pixels. The smoothness you are referring to on non-Retina devices is actually an optical illusion.

 

[nontroppo]

yep office looks jagged like in this picture. it's obvious it looks nothing like how it runs on a non retina screen.

Are you refusing to read what several people have (so I thought) expressed clearly, and refusing to look at what at least three of them have presented side-by-side hard evidence of?

Simple Recipe: make a screenshot on a normal MBP, make one on a retina MBP, put them side-by-side (adjust to the DPI difference). When you do that you'll realise the screenshots are identical! You have 3 examples from entirely different people here to look at. What you think you see is the result comparing what you see on the screen to other retina apps that draw at 220DPI (the screenshot you present is comparing retina Pages to non-retina Word) and the pixel border artefacts that lower DPI displays exhibit. You keep saying things like "obvious", but surely you know perception isn't...

Are the lines straight or curved?

 

[ColoArtist]

I did some testing and found the same mod works for Excel and PowerPoint...
http://imgur.com/a/0P5KY

Use at your own risk. I don't know if there are any unwanted side effects, but I can say it does make them "retinized."

You do need to go through the minimize/maximize and menu fix each time the app is opened to get the super sharp text, just like with Word.

I did notice something odd. I made the mods on another machine. For some reason it didn't work for Excel. Everything was the same, but for one thing, on the second machine Excel was in the dock and the system setting for the Dock had "Minimize windows into application icon" was turned on. For some reason that screws it up. It has to be turned off for min/max to work properly. Weird.

When I posted the other samples, I forgot they'd be scaled down to 600 px wide. Here are some smaller samples that'll fit and be displayed full size. They are at x1 of how big screenshots are on the rMBP...

Word before and after the mod...

Excel...

PowerPoint...