Running the Retina MacBook Pro at Full 2880x1800 Resolution

[hayesk]

More confusion.
etc etc

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.

Points are not integers, they are floats. You can position a window at 10.5,11.5 if you like. Heck you could position it at 10.333333, but the display would round to the nearest pixel, and in recommended retina mode, that would be 0.5 of a point.

----------

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.

I'm assuming the SSD is removable so if they have to do a logic board swap, they can preserve the customer's data. I know they don't guarantee your data will be preserved when the unit is in for repair, but that doesn't stop customers who don't have backups from complaining.

 

[faroZ06]

What you guys seem to be asking for is not only more confusing, but also less technically accurate. If you want the default ('Best for Retina display') setting to say '1440 x 900' resolution, most users are going to think that the display is operating at that resolution, when in fact it is operating at 2880 x 1800. You're still thinking in terms of the old screen resolutions when you use those numbers—they simply do not apply anymore. The screen on a new Retina MacBook Pro is and always will be 2880 x 1800 pixels. All you can do is change the physical size of what is rendered to that display, and that is what Apple's new preference panel reflects. In this instance, what you call 'dumbed down' actually makes a lot more sense practically speaking.

I know that, but in addition to the slider thing, you should be able to change your actual screen resolution. Sometimes, you need to do that with certain applications or displays.

 

[griz]

I do hope for some different UI scaling options in Mountain Lion (not sure if that's planned or not), but it's MUCH NEEDED in OSX. I'm not sure the reasoning behind not offering it.

Apple shoots for better quality with a consistency in user experience. In otherwords, your desktop remains the same but only sharper. Nothing to get used to other than the better quality look.

If someone told you that you needed to wear glasses and that they would make everything sharper but further away at the same time, wouldn't that change far more than glasses that just made things sharper?

 

[MacSince1990]

Ugh... i can't stand 1440x900.. I'm really only happy on 1680x1050+

Honestly though.. with 512 pixel icon sizes, I don't see how this would be a problem at all.

 

[mkoesel]

The headline is misleading, the resolution is 2880x1800 on the retina model. The setting changes how large the UI elements are, only.

All fixed pixel displays (which includes all LCDs) always render to the full resolution of the screen, assuming there is no letterboxing or pillarboxing going on (which is the case for all screen modes offered by the OS for the MBP).

So what you've pointed out is absolutely true, but it is also elementary, and misses a big part of the story.

When the OS is set to a resolution that is not the native resolution of the display, there is - by necessity - a scaling operation that must take place when rendering the frame buffer to the display. This operation a) costs some time to perform and b) can lead to undesirable image artifacts. This, by the way, goes far all OSes and all non-native resolutions (for fixed pixel devices), not just the new Retina MacBook Pro.

Now, what apple has done is given you two choices. Your first choice is to let the OS use a 2880x1800 frame buffer. This is the "Best for Retina display" option. You avoid hardware scaler (in terms of the rendered frame buffer). The thing is, in this case, you are locked into fonts and other graphical elements rendering to a pixel doubled virtual resolution of 1440x900. Retina aware applications can certainly choose to render graphical elements and other content to the full 2880x1800 resolution. A 1080p movie can render in a 1080p window. A game can render to 2880x1800. So that part is great. Still, your text, buttons, and other UI elements are larger than necessary.

Maybe, because that last part annoys you, you decide that you will opt for the other choice apple gives you - "Scaled". You can now pick your resolution from 1920 by 1200, 1680 by 1050, 1280 by 800, and 1024 by 640 according to Apple's website. Notice that all of these are 16:10 aspect ratio so there will be no letterboxing or pillarboxing. Now, in this case Apple got tricky. They tell the video card to render to 4x the selected resolution so that, before the scaler does its thing, you are starting with an image that is 4x what you want for the final result. This helps combat scaling artifacts - you are giving the scaler 4x more information to work with than it would otherwise have. This is great, but it won't eliminate artifacts completely. Also, remember, as I said earlier, this scaling operation takes time, as does rendering to the very large screen buffer (larger than native even, for the 1920-by and 1650-by resolutions). And these tradeoffs are exactly why the control panel offers the disclaimer "using a scaled resolution may affect performace"

So what can be done to improve the situation? First off, what apple could have done here (and may do in the future) is for the first choice, have a checkbox that says "Use full-size UI elements" or something along that line. By default this is checked. If you uncheck it, you get the result as shown in the article - very small text. As many point out, this option is less than useful for most people, and that's why Apple probably avoided it.

But what if instead of a checkbox, they gave you a slider? This slider would control the virtual resolution (really, the effective DPI) that the OS uses to render UI elements. "But", you might say, "that's just going to make everything look bigger, and they already gave you that option with the scaled resolution options". And you would be correct. However, by doing it this way, you allow the OS to draw individual graphical items at the correct size to begin with. You are painting the picture (rendering the frame buffer) the same size as the screen from the get-go, and avoiding the final scaling operation you'd have to perform otherwise.

 

[Navdakilla]

Do you guys think they should do something similar to what they did on the new ipad.

As in increase the resolution but have apps rendered at the same size? thus maintaining the overall look, but having a 4x resolution?

Obviously running this rmbp at that resolution will not work, but could they maintain this resolution and just make the icons/everything bigger?

 

[elgrecomac]

Good old Apple...

Just like their other platforms, THEY tell you what you can and cannot do with it because they know whats best for you. .. like the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. And they hard wired RAM on the new portables...really?


I am really tired of this bovine scat.


------------------
MBP, iPhone 4 (jail broken, of course), iPad 2 (jail broken, of course)

 

[faroZ06]

Requires a hack in Mac OSX, but a simple setting in Windows....not surprised.

These settings don't even exist in Windows.

I'd like it to actually have the resolution selector in the form of a drop-down menu like on the non-retina Macs. What if I want 640x480? Sometimes, you need it, and I've needed it in the past.

 

[subsonix]

Now, what apple has done is given you two choices. Your first choice is to let the OS use a 2880x1800 frame buffer. This is the "Best for Retina display" option. You avoid hardware scaler (in terms of the rendered frame buffer). The thing is, in this case, you are locked into fonts and other graphical elements rendering to a pixel doubled virtual resolution of 1440x900.

As long as the provided graphic details are not of high enough quality. Look, I'm not sure what your point is, it's the same type of situation that occurred when iPhone got a high-res display.

 

[gnasher729]

<Misquoted>

Could you edit your post that looks like you are quoting me? The text that you corrected (and correctly I must say) wasn't written by me, but was a reply to a post of mine.

This setting does not exist in Windows.

Now, the fact that you can't change your actual resolution is stupid. I'd be fine with an "advanced" tab, but give me the choice! What if I actually want to run my display at 1920x1080?

It is physically impossible to change the actual resolution of an LCD screen.

On the Retina MBP, you can choose "pretend" resolutions of 1650 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, and two that are smaller than 1440 x 900. Yes, having that list customisable might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, there might be a very good reason: For example, at the 1920 x 1200 setting, the Retina MBP "pretends" to have a real 1920 x 1200 Retina display (3840 x 2400), so your application produces graphics in 3840 x 2400 pixels which is then scaled down to the real 2880 x 1800 pixels of the display. That means 4 pixels have to be turned into 3. That can be done with few visible artefacts by using a specially designed filter. If you could use any resolution, say 1840 x 1160 (why not? ) you wouldn't have the specially designed filter and therefore more visible artefacts.

Do you guys think they should do something similar to what they did on the new ipad.

As in increase the resolution but have apps rendered at the same size? thus maintaining the overall look, but having a 4x resolution?

That is _exactly_ what Apple is doing. And it works.

2880 x 1800 inside a 15" screen. A sure fire way to say goodbye to your eyes, I would say.

It seems you don't know how the Retina display and MacOS X work. iPad 3 = 2048 x 1536 in a 9.7" screen, and everybody loves it, and their eyes love it, too.

 

[Slogan]

2880 x 1800 inside a 15" screen. A sure fire way to say goodbye to your eyes, I would say.

 

[KnightWRX]

All fixed pixel displays (which includes all LCDs) always render to the full resolution of the screen, assuming there is no letterboxing or pillarboxing going on (which is the case for all screen modes offered by the OS for the MBP).

So what you've pointed out is absolutely true, but it is also elementary, and misses a big part of the story.

When the OS is set to a resolution that is not the native resolution of the display, there is - by necessity - a scaling operation that must take place when rendering the frame buffer to the display. This operation a) costs some time to perform and b) can lead to undesirable image artifacts. This, by the way, goes far all OSes and all non-native resolutions (for fixed pixel devices), not just the new Retina MacBook Pro.

This is simply not true. When you change your display resolution in Windows or OS X on non-Retina Macs, the OS changes the display's resolution. Any scaling done by an LCD to fit (map) the OS's frame buffer to the display's pixels is then done by the display itself, not the OS or the host's processing facilities.

That's why it results in blurry images, as pixels are interpolated by logic in the LCD (coincidently, many LCDs can be set to also not "Stretch" the image to get a good quality image that doesn't cover the entire screen, thus letterboxing).

With the Retina display, Apple changed things a bit. The frame buffer is now being downscaled/upscaled to 2880x1800 pixels before being sent to the LCD panel so that it can always run at its native resolution with no letterboxing or interpolation.

 

[faroZ06]

Could you edit your post that looks like you are quoting me? The text that you corrected (and correctly I must say) wasn't written by me, but was a reply to a post of mine.




It is physically impossible to change the actual resolution of an LCD screen.

On the Retina MBP, you can choose "pretend" resolutions of 1650 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, and two that are smaller than 1440 x 900. Yes, having that list customisable might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, there might be a very good reason: For example, at the 1920 x 1200 setting, the Retina MBP "pretends" to have a real 1920 x 1200 Retina display (3840 x 2400), so your application produces graphics in 3840 x 2400 pixels which is then scaled down to the real 2880 x 1800 pixels of the display. That means 4 pixels have to be turned into 3. That can be done with few visible artefacts by using a specially designed filter. If you could use any resolution, say 1840 x 1160 (why not? ) you wouldn't have the specially designed filter and therefore more visible artefacts.



That is _exactly_ what Apple is doing. And it works.

Hmmm
But it seems that setting your display size lower (say, 1280x800 instead of 1920x1080) makes all screen-recording applications record at that resolution. Also, applications that use a lot of graphics tend to run faster. Minecraft with anti-aliasing mods ran noticeably faster at lower-res, but the low res looked bad, of course.

----------

2880 x 1800 inside a 15" screen. A sure fire way to say goodbye to your eyes, I would say.

This would strain your eyes less than non-retina.

 

[KnightWRX]

Hmmm
But it seems that setting your display size lower (say, 1280x800 instead of 1920x1080) makes all screen-recording applications record at that resolution. Also, applications that use a lot of graphics tend to run faster. Minecraft with anti-aliasing mods ran noticeably faster at lower-res, but the low res looked bad, of course.

Guys, fix the quoting, it's getting hard to follow.

As for your point, see my post about using the display's logic to interpolate pixels vs the host doing the actual upscaling/downscaling required.

 

[mkoesel]

As long as the provided graphic details are not of high enough quality.

I don't understand your reponse. My statement was one of fact.

Look, I'm not sure what your point is, it's the same type of situation that occurred when iPhone got a high-res display.

I don't agree it is the same at all. This is a laptop, not a touch screen device. And it is running an OS which allows the user to select resolutions. Expectations and considerations are completely different from a mobile phone.

 

[faroZ06]

It's changing the Operating System that you don't own. You only license it.

No, you can change whatever you want. The actual copy of the OS is yours. If you want to change it, download the freeware; no big problem.

 

[KnightWRX]

This would strain your eyes less than non-retina.

He was talking about the original post of this article, ie, running in non-retina mode (scaling factor of 1 for user space to device space coordinates) on the 15.4" retina macbook, resulting in 2880x1800 points (not pixels), thus making the UI appear very small.

----------

I don't agree it is the same at all. This is a laptop, not a touch screen device. And it is running an OS which allows the user to select resolutions. Expectations and considerations are completely different from a mobile phone.

The concept still remains the same. HiDPI mode works the same on iOS and OS X. A scaling factor is applied to Quartz' user space coordinates to fit into the Screen device space coordinate system.

----------

No, you can change whatever you want. The actual copy of the OS is yours. If you want to change it, download the freeware; no big problem.

The actual copy of the OS not yours. Licensing does not work like this. You have a right to use the OS as long as you agree and respect the license.

That being said, nothing in the license prevents you from doing what this article explains.

 

[subsonix]

I don't understand your reponse. My statement was one of fact.

The key is to separate DPI and size, size and coordinates is expressed in a way that is separate from the notion of pixels or resolution by Quarz on OS X. Read the documentation.

I don't agree it is the same at all. This is a laptop, not a touch screen device. And it is running an OS which allows the user to select resolutions. Expectations and considerations are completely different from a mobile phone.

The situation I was referring to was the issue of scaling (in the quote I made), if you scale a low DPI image to a large size it will suffer.

 

[everything-i]

Just like their other platforms, THEY tell you what you can and cannot do with it because they know whats best for you. .. like the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. And they hard wired RAM on the new portables...really?


I am really tired of this bovine scat.

You still have the option to go with the old user upgradable form factor if you don't like the rMBP limitations in this respect. Lets face it if everyone saw these limitations as a big problem the new rMBP would not be selling and apple would go back to the drawing board, but as we all know they can't make them fast enough so rMBP looks like its here to stay. The reason limitations are enforced are as much to do with stopping the whole ecosystem becoming chaotic than some kind of conspiracy. The limit on selectable resolutions probably comes from a lot of usability testing so you don't have to tinker with it for hours to find the best settings. This is what we pay for these days, convenience. Unfortunately for the tiny fraction of people that like to tinker its a big problem. Trouble is its the way everything is going these days. Look under the hood of any modern car and its the same, nothing user serviceable in there. Same with all the 'i' gear, they want to keep user fingers well away from anything technical to stop them messing it up. Again they still don't seem to be having any trouble shifting this stuff, it flies off the shelves.

 

[faroZ06]

The "hack" is only required to switch to use 2880x1800 at 1:1 scaling which results in comically small elements on the display. So it isn't something that anyone would normally do... you know Apple is about presenting sensible things to users. They don't care if you use existing screen configuration API to do crazy things, they just aren't typically going to present the crazy thing to a normal user.

The following is what you are able to do and it presents several options that result in reasonable physical dimension.

Note my mouse was over the gray boarded "more space" on the right which triggered the gray text you see in various places. ...and yes if you click on this image you can see the real pixel dimension of the capture with is 2x (in each dimension) what it looks like on the display

View attachment 344481

Some people here are making sensible arguments as to why they would need the 1:1 (in Photoshop, for example). There should just be an "advanced" option to unlock all scaling settings that normal users would not need.

 

[mkoesel]

This is simply not true. When you change your display resolution in Windows or OS X on non-Retina Macs, the OS changes the display's resolution. Any scaling done by an LCD to fit (map) the OS's frame buffer to the display's pixels is then done by the display itself, not the OS or the host's processing facilities.

The scaling is done by the graphics hardware. That graphics hardware is under control of the OS. I didn't say anything different. These facts were not germane to my point which is that the framebuffer is not being rendered at native resolution so it must be scaled before being shown on the display.

That's why it results in blurry images, as pixels are interpolated by logic in the LCD.

This statement doesn't make sense. An LCD is a panel consisting of liquid crystals, filters, and typically backlight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display

There is no "logic in the LCD". It's just a display device. The logic is in the graphics processing hardware that drives the LCD.

 

[KnightWRX]

The scaling is done by the graphics hardware. That graphics hardware is under control of the OS. I didn't say anything different. These facts were not germane to my point which is that the framebuffer is not being rendered at native resolution so it must be scaled before being shown on the display.



This statement doesn't make sense. An LCD is a panel consisting of liquid crystals, filters, and typically backlight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display

There is no "logic in the LCD". It's just a display device. The logic is in the graphics processing hardware that drives the LCD.

That's simply not true sorry. DOS has no idea about LCDs, how they work, etc... yet you can plug a LCD monitor into the VGA port on your DOS computer just fine. There's nothing in the VESA spec for them. To the host computer, a LCD panel is just like any other monitor. The host graphics and its frame buffer are set, and a signal is sent using normal VGA/DVI codes to force the display device to that mode. The frame buffer is then sent to the device.

If the display device cannot run the resolution, it has to interpolate it. That's where the logic in your monitor comes in. The LCD panel itself has no logic, but the monitor it's built into does. How do you think the menus get displayed, the buttons on it work, etc.. ? There's more to a monitor than just the pixel array. Sorry if I used LCD to refer to the whole monitor apparatus rather than just the slab of liquid crystals.

That's the old way of doing things and that's what results in either letterboxes or blurry crap on your LCD. Apple changed things up with the Retina display by using Quartz' user space and device space seperation.

 

[spartig]

Why is everyone obsessed with changing the resolution of the retina mbp? I prefer to see things the correct size...

What exactly is the "correct size"? Everybody has their own preference and that's probably based on how good your eyesight is. Personally I think the native resolution would probably be too small for me. I don't know, I haven't used a rMBP. But at the same time if I can see it comfortably I would use it. The real estate would be awesome!

 

[mkoesel]

The key is to separate DPI and size, size and coordinates is expressed in a way that is separate from the notion of pixels or resolution by Quarz on OS X.

I can't understand your point or even if you are trying to make one. Fonts, for example, are resolution independent -they are vector graphics. They can be scaled to any resolution. Most other graphical elements are rectangular in shape and a rectangle can also be scaled easily.

Read the documentation.

I honestly have no idea what you mean.

The situation I was referring to was the issue of scaling (in the quote I made), if you scale a low DPI image to a *large size* it will suffer.

But my entire point is that it would be useful to allow fonts and images to be displayed smaller than the pixel-doubled resolution that Retina mode uses - not larger.

 

[faroZ06]

Requires a hack in Mac OSX, but a simple setting in Windows....not surprised.

Where in Windows does it let you set your display to 2880x1800?

If (when) they make retina Windows-running PCs, it's probable that they will have the 1:1 setting on it, though. This is an example of Apple going too far with locking their stuff.