Running the Retina MacBook Pro at Full 2880x1800 Resolution

[RexLeo]

This is not a case of it being Adobe's or Apple's decision, it's just the way things change with resolution. If Photoshop does NOT run in "HiDPI" or "Retina" mode, it is by default being pixel-doubled. The hack in this article is talking about how you can disable pixel doubling, basically, and gain a huge amount of space at the cost of a tiny UI.

The problem is that you have to choose between tiny UI elements (hard to see and click, but more space) and normal UI elements (easy to click and see, and more detail, but same amount of space as non-retina screens).

So as I understand this, the perfect (temporary) solution would be, to allow disabling pixel-doubling application-wise.
I would want to disable it for my older photoshop in order to have the best photo rendering quality, however leave it enabled for the other applications.

 

[sinser]

Guys, it's the same thing as the new iPad. It has doubled resolution in both directions but the gui has the same size as the iPad 2.

 

[Piggie]

Do you actually believe that nonsense from iFixIt? Contrary to what iFixIt says, the battery is easily replaceable (by going to the Apple Store and handing over $199. Compared to say a Dell, where you order a battery for $150 and take out your trusted old screwdriver). Contrary to what iFixIt says, you can replace the LCD screen without breaking it (just don't try to remove the glass cover which isn't there with your big fat fingers). Contrary to what iFixIt says, everything else can be repaired (what do you think UK consumer laws would say if a £1799 computer _cannot be repaired_ after two years? )

I agree, however are you ignoring the different between Repair and Scrap/Recycle?

For all we know Apple may not bother "Repairing" the screen, it's just not worth it. By the time the screen is stripped apart, the casings cleaned, the new screen fitted and all reassembled again, it may simply be not worth it.

The cost of the screen coming off the production line may work out less than a repair and parts, so they may just have a deal where faulty screens (the complete unit) is just sent for scrap/recycle and new parts are used to save time which is also money.

I'm not saying this does happen but it could and definatly does for some products.

For all we know a faulty PRO could just be swapped out for a new unit and the SSD just mirrored over by some special bit of kit. and you given a refurb complete with your data on it.

 

[curnalpanic]

If it was recompiling the kernel or something… then maybe...

Which you could do by the way, because Darwin is Open source.

 

[alexgowers]

I always find UI elements too big visually but too small based on mouse inputs and clickability that's why i love the ipad3. This Retina MBP in this mode would need a massive trackpad, this is why apple decided it was stupid. Eyesight aside it's not practical in many other ways too.

I love the idea of pixel less environments where you ignore elements actual pixel make up and instead concentrate on size and shape etc and use vectors and gradients to constuct UI instead, this whole worrying about sharpness only came from sub standard displays up until the retina pixel pitch.

 

[kalsta]

How is the retina display compared to the old glossy high res MBP display. I could not get use to the glossy screen (Old MBP) because of e.g. the reflecting light and so on....

Is it still as bad. I am use to the Antiglare screen on the 15" MBP.

The display on the new Retina MBP is less reflective than the previous MBP, but still noticeably more reflective than the matte (anti-glare) option. I had a brief look at the new machine the other day. I wasn't in a position to hold it next to one of the older machines, but at a guess I would say it's not unlike a standard glossy display like the MacBook Air has. I could still see the ceiling lights reflected in it for example. But this is still an improvement over the mirror-like surface of the iMacs and previous MBPs, because they have a sheet of untreated glass in front of the screen. I could possibly live with the gloss level of the new display, whereas I could not put up with the current iMacs and I've always opted for the anti-glare option on the MBP.

Final verdict? You really need to go into a store and see it for yourself.

 

[subsonix]

For all we know a faulty PRO could just be swapped out for a new unit and the SSD just mirrored over by some special bit of kit. and you given a refurb complete with your data on it.

Doesn't seem likely, if the lcd panel breaks and they do not bother to replace the panel itself they could just replace the lid with a screen already fitted. Also, the SSD and air port are removable. If some other component on the logic board breaks, they likely just replace the logic board.

 

[gnasher729]

So as I understand this, the perfect (temporary) solution would be, to allow disabling pixel-doubling application-wise.
I would want to disable it for my older photoshop in order to have the best photo rendering quality, however leave it enabled for the other applications.

You would, if Apple's OS software was as stupid as some of the posters seem to believe.

In reality, any application that was written without any knowledge of Retina displays will work unchanged, and the application will display either exactly as on a non-Retina display, or it will display at higher quality. Most likely an older, unmodified Photoshop will display photos at higher quality than on a normal MBP.

 

[Kerberos]

Well ... I m doubtfull about the point coordinate system being based only on a grid of 1440 x 900 points for retina display ... simply because doing so would no allow to position a graphical elements within 1 pixel of the true screen resolution in pixel ... anyway, it's just techincal detail, not so interesting.

The only important message is the screen is always 2880 x 1800 pixels (as advertised by Apple itself ... no words from Apple on points there)

Also, Apple "mostly" as no control on third party program UI design and resulting real estate for this program, although I m willing to bet that the fonts will be a system UI element and that their size will be controlable by the user.

 

[gnasher729]

Well that might even be more confusing.
By "original size" of course I meant the setting that renders one pixel of the photo (that was taken by one pixel of your cameras sensor) to one physical pixel on your display. Original size might be confusing but I'm not the one that gave this name - it's just there, even in Apple Preview. Just have a look yourself.

Which, as I explained, would be nonsense to do on a Retina display.

You don't want one photo pixel = one retina pixel, because the whole point of this is being able to see the individual pixels of the photo and you can't see the individual pixels of the retina display.

Well ... I m doubtfull about the point coordinate system being based only on a grid of 1440 x 900 points for retina display ... simply because doing so would no allow to position a graphical elements within 1 pixel of the true screen resolution in pixel ...

Apple has for many, many years used this totally advanced concept of floating point coordinates. Any position and size can be set with more than a billionth of a point precision. Otherwise, your text display would have been utter rubbish for many years (letter spacing is done with fractions of a point). So you can (and always could) draw a button 11.3 points from the left of the window, at 18.7 points size and 95.63 points width, if you chose to do so.

 

[the8thark]

You want max resolution?
No thanks. I don't want to be eye squinting every time I try read the teeny tiny font. I'd be ok with the larger font option Apple has.

 

[Kerberos]

Apple has for many, many years used this totally advanced concept of floating point coordinates. Any position and size can be set with more than a billionth of a point precision. Otherwise, your text display would have been utter rubbish for many years (letter spacing is done with fractions of a point). So you can (and always could) draw a button 11.3 points from the left of the window, at 18.7 points size and 95.63 points width, if you chose to do so. .

Ah ok, sorry I didn t read the article. Given the choise, the doubling thing sounds like something Apple would do by default in the mean time of an updated Photoshop UI.

 

[whooleytoo]

One thing I'm confused about - if I open a 2880 x 1800 image file fullscreen on a rMBP at 'full' resolution, and if I open the same image fullscreen (but obviously zoomed out 50%) when running at normal Retina resolution, will they look absolutely identical, or will the 'full' resolution setting look better?

And now that my friends were almost convincing me that my tongue-typing skills were useless!

Anyone got a shiny new RMBP for me to practice on?

"The new 2880 x 1800 resolution Retina MBP. Not for people with long noses"

 

[thewap]

I agree, however are you ignoring the different between Repair and Scrap/Recycle?

For all we know Apple may not bother "Repairing" the screen, it's just not worth it. By the time the screen is stripped apart, the casings cleaned, the new screen fitted and all reassembled again, it may simply be not worth it.

The cost of the screen coming off the production line may work out less than a repair and parts, so they may just have a deal where faulty screens (the complete unit) is just sent for scrap/recycle and new parts are used to save time which is also money.

I'm not saying this does happen but it could and definatly does for some products.

For all we know a faulty PRO could just be swapped out for a new unit and the SSD just mirrored over by some special bit of kit. and you given a refurb complete with your data on it.

Try repairing the retina models when Applecare runs out...its not going to happen and guarantees these as scrap within 3 years i.e.; "unrepairable" , unless you want to spend more than it will cost for a replacement. Also not good for any mobile pro internationally as they are "unrepairable" in the field and reliant on Apple service for simple battery, ram, and drive failures. Very contradictory to Apple's claim of *green* manufacturing or *pro* with the direction Apple is going with this *unrepairable/disposable* approach to what used to be a true pro notebook ,and guarantees *un-repairable*/un-refurbishable scrap to add to the world's dumps. What it does guarantee is 1. forcing consumers to purchase Applecare or you will be SOL within 1 year, 2. forcing consumers to purchase a new laptop whithin 3 years as Everyone will be SOL with no Applecare. 3. Forcing the secondary markets for used macs to be unviable solutions 4. forcing aftermarket solutions for memory, battery and storage to be uncompetitive or non existent.

Of course that is *forcing* only if anyone wants to stay on the mac platform, since Apple also *forces* incompatibility of old software to new hardware platforms. Very uncool, ungreen, un-mac.

PC? not a real viable alternative. Time for new blood that wants to cater the beat of the crowds that are *different* who need adaptability to choice, rather than than what Big Brother wants.

 

[7enderbender]

Now it's slowly starting to make sense. I looked at the rMBP for the first time yesterday. Tried it at the 1900 resolution which looks better than I expected. Now if Apple would only bring these screens to the "regular" MBP and make it matte. I want this kind of resolution, two regular hard disks, user installed memory and firewire ports. Then we're in business.

 

[everything-i]

Not Authorised?

What exactly is 'not authorised' supposed to mean, shouldn't it be not officially supported? At this resolution the screen is probably pretty unusable so no surprise apple don't provide it as a supported resolution setting. I tried one of these out at 1920x1200 and it was about the limit of usability.

 

[shawnce]

Wow folks... so much confusion and wrong information. If you open an image or video and set to view it actual size in your tool of choice (unless the tool is incorrectly written) you will get one image pixel mapped to one screen pixel.

You can see single retina screen pixels your eye just has a harder time noticing the hard edges between adjacent pixels.

Again find my earlier post with screen shots and the one showing how large physically a 1080p video showing at actual size is on the screen... and f'n read Apple spec site on retina.

 

[killmoms]

Now it's slowly starting to make sense. I looked at the rMBP for the first time yesterday. Tried it at the 1900 resolution which looks better than I expected. Now if Apple would only bring these screens to the "regular" MBP and make it matte. I want this kind of resolution, two regular hard disks, user installed memory and firewire ports. Then we're in business.

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. It's much more likely that the Retina display will come to the other sizes of laptops and the "regular" MBP will go away entirely.

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Wow folks... so much confusion and wrong information. If you open an image or video and set to view it actual size in your tool of choice (unless the tool is incorrectly written) you will get one image pixel mapped to one screen pixel.

By which you mean "unless the tool isn't updated for HiDPI mode", which is most non-Apple tools at the moment.

 

[7enderbender]

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. It's much more likely that the Retina display will come to the other sizes of laptops and the "regular" MBP will go away entirely.

I'm sure you're right - and that's a pity. The current 15" hi res matte or even the previous 15 and 17" models without USB3 seem to be near perfect. They are more "pro" then the rMBP to me and having a 2880x1400 resolution on those (non glossy) I would imagine would attract high numbers of former PC users who do photo editing etc. - and also current Mac users who still need those features like dual discs.
With the current uncertainty of where all this is going I find myself still clicking on HP/Lenovo/Samsung/Dell ads...

 

[KnightWRX]

Apple has for many, many years used this totally advanced concept of floating point coordinates. Any position and size can be set with more than a billionth of a point precision. Otherwise, your text display would have been utter rubbish for many years (letter spacing is done with fractions of a point). So you can (and always could) draw a button 11.3 points from the left of the window, at 18.7 points size and 95.63 points width, if you chose to do so.

I posted the documentation in the previous page, I don't get what these doubters have against clicking the link and reading it instead of just constantly trying to refute you based on their presumptions. The documentation is darn clear, so is the code for the CGPoint struct :

https://developer.apple.com/library...reference/CGGeometry/Reference/reference.html

struct CGPoint {
   CGFloat x;
   CGFloat y;
};
typedef struct CGPoint CGPoint;

I'm puzzled why some people don't want to believe in what is plainly stated in the docs.

 

[shawnce]

By which you mean "unless the tool isn't updated for HiDPI mode", which is most non-Apple tools at the moment.

Actually if they are using standard API they will likely just work. Additionally if they followed Apple resolution independent documentation over the years they may also just work on more advanced situations.

Products I work on do in fact work just fine with crisp images, icons and UI because we followed Apples guidance over the years. We have been shipping for years now with hi-dpi images and utilizing scale aware coordinate transforms correctly.

We do have a few edges cases we missed but a quick update should be all that is needed. We also plan to move to follow their now concrete recommendations on retina support going forward (talk about at wwdc but under nda).

 

[killmoms]

Actually if they are using standard API they will likely just work. Additionally if they followed Apple resolution independent documentation over the years they may also just work on more advanced situations.

I'd imagine many imaging products do not rely on standard APIs though, for various reasons.

Products I work on do in fact work just fine with crisp images, icons and UI because we followed Apples guidance over the years. We have been shipping for years now with hi-dpi images and utilizing scale aware coordinate transforms correctly.

We do have a few edges cases we missed but a quick update should be all that is needed.

Good on you! I'd be reluctant to assume that all other developers have been as fastidious though, especially considering how long resolution independent hooks had been in OS X but gone unexploited.

 

[Kerberos]

I posted the documentation in the previous page, I don't get what these doubters have against clicking the link and reading it instead of just constantly trying to refute you based on their presumptions. The documentation is darn clear, so is the code for the CGPoint struct :

https://developer.apple.com/library...reference/CGGeometry/Reference/reference.html

struct CGPoint {
   CGFloat x;
   CGFloat y;
};
typedef struct CGPoint CGPoint;

I'm puzzled why some people don't want to believe in what is plainly stated in the docs.

Sorry to disapoint you buddy, but I m not going to ingest a coder techincal document before posting a comment. Either you care to explain or not. It is a forum here, not some holly book of the absolute truth.
Teaching is repeating the same thing all over again, and again and again ...
If you cannot stand being challenged, well ... maybe this is not for you.

Btw, the floating point grid concept is a nice thing, thanks to gnasher729 for explaining it.

----------

Which, as I explained, would be nonsense to do on a Retina display.

You don't want one photo pixel = one retina pixel, because the whole point of this is being able to see the individual pixels of the photo and you can't see the individual pixels of the retina display.




Apple has for many, many years used this totally advanced concept of floating point coordinates. Any position and size can be set with more than a billionth of a point precision. Otherwise, your text display would have been utter rubbish for many years (letter spacing is done with fractions of a point). So you can (and always could) draw a button 11.3 points from the left of the window, at 18.7 points size and 95.63 points width, if you chose to do so.

Ok, got it thanks. I missed that coordinates could be floating point and not just integer.

 

[funkybudda]

Actually, this is apple's description in the rMBP specs:

Supported resolutions: 2880 by 1800 pixels (Retina); scaled resolutions: 1920 by 1200, 1680 by 1050, 1280 by 800, and 1024 by 640 pixels


So if you can't set it to 2880x1800 directly without the hack, then the specs are false.

Lawyers have sued over much, much less. (eg. the recent fine from the Aussie government).

who cares, I bet Apple dont care if another lawsuit is directed at them, they can afford it, lol.

 

[KnightWRX]

Sorry to disapoint you buddy, but I m not going to ingest a coder techincal document before posting a comment. Either you care to explain or not. It is a forum here, not some holly book of the absolute truth.
Teaching is repeating the same thing all over again, and again and again ...
If you cannot stand being challenged, well ... maybe this is not for you.

Btw, the floating point grid concept is a nice thing, thanks to gnasher729 for explaining it.

Gnasher explained it on page 10, someone ask that "he be refuted". I then posted a link to the docs, and the appropriate paragraph, going so far as to bold a single sentence that explained it perfectly well.

That's why I'm left puzzled that 1 page later, we're still having this "debate". Gnasher is right, when challenged, the appropriate documentation was produced, the passages were put in evidence and everything was cleared up.

I'm not asking you to read and understand how the entire Quartz system works, but at least you should have read what was presented thus far and that is not too much to ask if you're going to participate in the thread. Otherwise, it forces people to repeat themselves, which is hardly interesting to those participating in said thread.

Thank you for being considerate to other posters by not just posting before having seen all the arguments and evidence.