Resolution Independence

I suspect Apple won't have it ready for prime time until Snow Leopard. They've laid the groundwork to enable it in Tiger, and added more in Leopard (the Core UI framework is new in Leopard, and is responsible for some, but not all, of the user interface drawing tasks), but it is not yet complete.

 

Some people think that "resolution independence" is something that can just be turned on. It can't. For good quality results, developers have to modify their code and that doesn't happen overnight. This is like the first time that colour screens were introduced 20 years ago; applications didn't become colourful over night; it took time for this change to happen.

 

As said, developers would need a lead time to know they had to implement this to go from bitmap raster graphics to vector graphics.

More than likely Apple will push this to be implemented in some greater form by Summer 09 and Snow Leopard.

 

Literally speaking, it can just be turned on. Resolution independence is present even in Tiger, but disabled. You can use the developer tools to enable it.

You're correct that, after you turn it on and start using it, most applications appear pixellated and distorted. (Which is why it's not enabled by default.)