I installed Windows 8 on a Retina MacBook Pro. The modern UI is working perfectly after changing a setting to "Make everything on your screen bigger", but the desktop mode is not. I changed the display size to 200%, but a lot of things look strange now. The cursor and the text on some applications are pixeled and a few things are still very tiny. Many proportions are different as well. Does anyone have a fix?
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Retina MacBook Pro and Windows 8
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I've heard that setting the desktop scaling to exactly 200% can cause some issues. You may have better luck with a setting between 150% and 199%.
Are you referring to bootcamp or are you using some sort of virtualisation solution?
I've been struggling to get the right setup for my 27 inch 2560x1440 monitor and there are some apps that just won't cooperate.
Run away!
Windows comes from a strong tradition that thought 96 DPI was all anyone would EVER need. I think Adobe is the one to blame for this. Apple is showing here that it pays to control both the hardware and the software to get this magic to work.
I don't think we'll ever see retina working on Windows. Not without the ghetto looking UI.
Windows comes from a strong tradition that thought 96 DPI was all anyone would EVER need. I think Adobe is the one to blame for this. Apple is showing here that it pays to control both the hardware and the software to get this magic to work.
I don't think we'll ever see retina working on Windows. Not without the ghetto looking UI.
I found it better to leave it at 100% and just change the resolution. Scaling on windows never really works, and retina is good enough to cope with nonstandard resolutions.
I have been loving Win 8 on my MBP Retina. Take a look at this post for optimized settings (but don't use xp style scaling):
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16665599/
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16665599/
pgiguere1
macrumors 68020
Windows and Windows applications in general just have poor support for resolution independance.
There's nothing you can do to completely fix things and this won't change for a while. Windows customers show a lot more interest for $500 1366x768 notebooks than the high-end stuff. That's just how it is and developpers have no incentive to work for the 0.1% of people who run Boot Camp on their rMBP or own a Toshiba KiraBook.
Perhaps HiDPI display will become affordable enough for the mass of Windows users to start buying them sometime in the next 5 years, but it's not looking too good right now because we're stuck in a vicious circle of:
- "Not enough apps are optimized for HiDPI displays to warrant paying more for a HiDPI display on a Windows laptop."
- "Not enough people with HiDPI displays on Windows warrant developers investing more to optimize their applications for HiDPI displays."
Apple was able to pull it of in part because they make both software and hardware, in part because they attract a lot of "early adopters" and in part because the average selling price of a Mac laptop is ~2.5x that of a Windows laptop.
I have just given up on using DPI scaling in Windows 8, it simply causes more trouble than it's worth. I have set my screen to 1920x1200 with no scaling and just deal with the slight bluriness every time I use Windows on my internal screen. It's annoying but at some point you just have to accept that Microsoft has basically no incentive to fix it.
There's nothing you can do to completely fix things and this won't change for a while. Windows customers show a lot more interest for $500 1366x768 notebooks than the high-end stuff. That's just how it is and developpers have no incentive to work for the 0.1% of people who run Boot Camp on their rMBP or own a Toshiba KiraBook.
Perhaps HiDPI display will become affordable enough for the mass of Windows users to start buying them sometime in the next 5 years, but it's not looking too good right now because we're stuck in a vicious circle of:
- "Not enough apps are optimized for HiDPI displays to warrant paying more for a HiDPI display on a Windows laptop."
- "Not enough people with HiDPI displays on Windows warrant developers investing more to optimize their applications for HiDPI displays."
Apple was able to pull it of in part because they make both software and hardware, in part because they attract a lot of "early adopters" and in part because the average selling price of a Mac laptop is ~2.5x that of a Windows laptop.
I have just given up on using DPI scaling in Windows 8, it simply causes more trouble than it's worth. I have set my screen to 1920x1200 with no scaling and just deal with the slight bluriness every time I use Windows on my internal screen. It's annoying but at some point you just have to accept that Microsoft has basically no incentive to fix it.