Why do old apps look so terrible on the Retina display? ["solved"]

[sahot]

Yes, that would indeed fix the problem, as is also discussed in this thread.
But then your apps are - while looking fine - really tiny. So that's of course not the perfect solution for everybody.

So at the moment there are two solutions:
- Apple fixes their scaling
- some third party software is developed that allows you to automatically switch to a 1440x900 resolution if an old app is opened.

I think there is some confusion in this thread on how resolution works...

Apple's scaling is not broken. If you have an picture that is, say, 1200 X 800 there is no way to make it look perfectly crisp when you scale it to 2400 X 1600. It's just not possible. This is basically what apple is doing here, all of apples UI elements are basically created at twice the resolution physical resolution they are expecting so when everything is displayed, it looks crisp.

But it's not like they can just take any random graphic "zoom" it and make it look crisp some how...

Try it yourself, go download some image off the internet open up photoshop or whatever and try to double it's size, you'll see the same results. This is basically what "pixel doubling" does to maintain the correct icon and UI sizes for the targeted physical resolution.

 

[MDomino]

The thread starter (who doesn't own a Retina MBP) claims poor performance with older apps, without saying which apps and without any other evidence. I wouldn't panic yet.

Excuse me?
How could I present evidence when I don't own a Retina MBP? And why should I buy a Retina MBP as long as it has the problems I described?
And as for which apps are affected: ALL apps that are not retina optimized yet. So pretty much all 3rd-party apps, and even Apple apps like Pages.

As for evidence, here is a quote from the Engadget review of the Retina MBP:

"While we got assurances that third-party apps like Adobe Photoshop and AutoCAD are in the process of being refined, right now, seemingly every third-party app on the Mac looks terrible."

(read the full review here)

At first I thought this can't be that bad, but for exactly that reason I went to the Apple store and found out that it IS actually as bad as it sounds.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

If you use chrome or firefox, websites look like crap.

The reason that the retina displays look so bad with old things is that you no longer have the "scan lines" between pixels. Let me explain:

The retina 4x pixels ARE the same size as the regular 1x. But what is missing is the "lines" between the pixels, like scan lines on a TV.

The below images are an example of this. They are both from emulators, but the first one has simulated scan lines. The other doesn't. Those are actual screenshots. Without the scan lines, the image looks very weird. That is because the image is expecting the scan lines between the pixels.

This is the exact same reason that the retina display makes un-retina things look fuzzy. They aren't fuzzy, they are just missing that softening effect of the "scan lines" between pixels.

If your eyes are more than 15-18" from the screen, the retina display looks almost normal with "un-retina" text. This really can't be helped. Hook a NES or emulator up to a HDTV - you'll see the same effect. It's not a resolution screen, it's that there isn't the expected lines between pixels.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

double post =|

 

[houkouonchi]

I assume that atleast text from non-retina apps looks bad probably most likely due to the fact sub-pixel font rendering isn't working correctly anymore.

 

[MDomino]

Try it yourself, go download some image off the internet open up photoshop or whatever and try to double it's size, you'll see the same results.

You seem to miss the point.
When you open an image in Photoshop, double it's size, and then present it on a monitor that has double the resolution, but the same size as the monitor you watched it originally on, then it should look the same.
Of course it does not look good when you double a graphic in size and then watch it on the same monitor.

When you look at my graphic I actually go through the process (no copy paste there) of first scaling an image up to double its size and then "display" it on a double res monitor. As you can see the starting image looks identical to the resulting image, because the second monitor has the double resolution.

And yes, I do understand resolution, I work with that stuff day for day and understand it for sure.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

I assume that atleast text from non-retina apps looks bad probably most likely due to the fact sub-pixel font rendering isn't working correctly anymore.

No. See my post example. Everything will have to be made retina, things aren't going to be made better for non-retina things through software.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15057051/

 

[sahot]

Ah, here's an example of what the deal is.

See
http://images.apple.com/ios/ios6/images/title_2x.jpg

That's a random image a found off of apple's website.

That's what they are serving to me when I browse on my mpb, and when you actually go to the site the height and width is set to what you'd expect it to be if it where really a 1440 screen.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

You seem to miss the point.
When you open an image in Photoshop, double it's size, and then present it on a monitor that has double the resolution, but the same size as the monitor you watched it originally on, then it should look the same.
Of course it does not look good when you double a graphic in size and then watch it on the same monitor.

When you look at my graphic I actually go through the process (no copy paste there) of first scaling an image up to double its size and then "display" it on a double res monitor. As you can see the starting image looks identical to the resulting image, because the second monitor has the double resolution.

And yes, I do understand resolution, I work with that stuff day for day and understand it for sure.

I've been messing around in Photoshop CS5, and files and text in the document looks the same as any other non-retina stuff. There's no real way around this. It's just not practical for a professional.

Here's a test. One is a direct cmd-shift-4 screengrab which saves at double res, since OS X and photoshop don't agree when it comes to scaling.

The 2nd is a save out of photoshop, scaled DOWN 50%. That's pretty much what it looks like on the screen. The way the 4x pixel scaling works, and the way the physical retina display works, this won't really be able to be "fixed."

Scaling is what is going to kill retina displays for a while. Until the whole world moves up to higher res displays, it just won't line up.

 

[Gata]

People are finding themselves in the same predicament when Apple released the iPhone 4 with Retina display, and later when the iPad got Retina.

Developer updates for the Retina display are going to be coming out relatively fast (or should be), and with regards to issues with web browsing, those can be resolved simply by the web browser updating its rendering engine to support Retina.

 

[henrikrox]

Yes, that would indeed fix the problem, as is also discussed in this thread.
But then your apps are - while looking fine - really tiny. So that's of course not the perfect solution for everybody.

So at the moment there are two solutions:
- Apple fixes their scaling
- some third party software is developed that allows you to automatically switch to a 1440x900 resolution if an old app is opened.

Will it be so tiny though?

In windows this is a breeze (from what i read). Set 2880x1800, and change the dpi to either 100% (normal) 125% (increases text etc etc) 150% and so on.

Now, in osx, you can change some ui elements at least, text size, icons etc. And in that thread its been discussed that 2880x1880 isnt THAT tiny. But i agree its no optimal. Wish i could try it out.

 

[iPhone Addict]

It's unfortunate to see MDomino and some others put so much effort into explaining the issue and a possible resolution only for it to be lost on the majority of readers in this thread.

MDomino, thanks for starting this thread -- it is an important issue to discuss.

My question is this: is it possible that there is an increased processing or other resource cost to handling the pixel mapping via your method as compared to the method Apple is using? Could it be that your method actually puts more strain on the machine's system resources and for that reason Apple chooses to simply have developers "catch up" on their own rather than build in the gradual transition that you propose?

 

[sahot]

You seem to miss the point.
When you open an image in Photoshop, double it's size, and then present it on a monitor that has double the resolution, but the same size as the monitor you watched it originally on, then it should look the same.
Of course it does not look good when you double a graphic in size and then watch it on the same monitor.

When you look at my graphic I actually go through the process (no copy paste there) of first scaling an image up to double its size and then "display" it on a double res monitor. As you can see the starting image looks identical to the resulting image, because the second monitor has the double resolution.

And yes, I do understand resolution, I work with that stuff day for day and understand it for sure.

I see what you're trying to say here, but I still don't think that Image scaling is as simple as you make it out to be or that you can get rid of any image distortion caused by the scaling by simply doubling the resolution of the screen.

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

There are a ton of different scaling algorithms and they all involve trade offs but i don't think any would result in 0 distortion.

I guess what I want to say here, is that if you want a retina mbp (i have it and love it) you shouldn't have any confusion that this a software bug that apple can just go and fix. Apps are going to have to be updated, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[kolax]

I just took a screen shots of an app that was designed for 3GS (not optimized for retina screen) in three different ways. You can make your own conclusion (i have a meeting in 10 mins and must go now).

http://i49.tinypic.com/10cuio4.jpg

From left to right:

1. This is what the app looks like at 100% size on iPhone 4. You see it got scaled up, so the graphic is not smooth.

The text looks much better because iPhone 4 automatically changes the text. Please just analyze the images for this exercise.

2. This is what the app looks like at 200% size on iPad 2 running in NON-pixel-double mode. This is equivalent to take a screen shot of this app running in 3GS, then scale it up to 200% myself on a computer.

As you can see, the images look IDENTICAL from (2) and (1), meaning the scale up process iPhone 4 did, did not introduce any artifact or new color.

3. This is what the app looks like running on iPad 2 in pixel-double mode. As you see, the image actually was anti aliased, there fore Apple via pixel-double, actually smooth out the image and by definition, INTRODUCED artifact (information and pixel not in the original image).

So my thoughts right now is, we see iPhone 4 and iPad 2 pixel double, scale the same small image DIFFERENTLY.

They BOTH look worse, for various reasons perhaps theorized by some of the posters on this thread already.

The big question is, how wil rMBP scale an image? Is it using iPhone 4 method (direct honest scaling), or iPad's method (anti-alias scaling)?

You've adjusted the size of those images in OS X so they are all the same size?

Using Photoshop, Preview etc to adjust image sizes will add in anti-aliasing. While I see what you are trying to prove, the way you make those screenshots and adjusted the size so we can compare is flawed since Photoshop or whatever will have smoothed out the scaled image.

 

[sahot]

It's unfortunate to see MDomino and some others put so much effort into explaining the issue and a possible resolution only for it to be lost on the majority of readers in this thread.

MDomino, thanks for starting this thread -- it is an important issue to discuss.

My question is this: is it possible that there is an increased processing or other resource cost to handling the pixel mapping via your method as compared to the method Apple is using? Could it be that your method actually puts more strain on the machine's system resources and for that reason Apple chooses to simply have developers "catch up" on their own rather than build in the gradual transition that you propose?

I appreciate what Mdomino is trying to do as well, but keep in mind, he isn't proposing an algorithm that would result in better quality, read the wikipedia article above on some of the problems and trade offs in image scaling, which is what we are talking about here.

 

[Saturn1217]

I won't pretend to have enough technical knowledge of displays or software to weigh in on either side of the scaling argument.

What I can say is that I too went into an apple store to check out the rMBP and noticed the same thing. Honestly I didn't see much difference in the retina optimized apps (they just looked normal) and the unoptimized apps looked kind of bad...

I am really shocked that this isn't a bigger deal to tech blogs and review sites. Whenever a new version of OS X comes out it is a huge deal if certain apps lose compatibility but no one seems to care that for the many people (especially those who would buy a +$2000 computer) who need to maintain legacy apps they will all look awful on the retina display?

I'm not saying that Apple didn't accomplish an amazing technological feat to get such a pixel dense display on a laptop. I just think they are HEAVILY employing the reality distortion field here to make consumers think they need it.

But no matter. They still have non-retina displays so in this rare case mac users do have options on whether or not we want to be at the bleeding edge (if you couldn't tell I'm not a big fan of that edge).

 

[NoMoreSony]

The reason why old applications looks so crappy on Retina screen is exactly the same why iPhone Retina apps looks crappy in 2x on original iPad and iPad2. Apple have to push software developers to develop Retinas version of their application.

Without bad scaling old applications should look on the new Retina exactly the same as it was on old low-resolution displays. It means that for quite a long time only running Apple native applications you can see the difference between Retina and old Macbooks.

It does mean for us that if you have old software (i.e. Adobe CS4) and it fully satisfied your needs, you have to pay another few hundred bucks, to buy the latest version of CS. I'll bet Adobe will not even try to issue an update for CS4 to support Retina.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

People are finding themselves in the same predicament when Apple released the iPhone 4 with Retina display, and later when the iPad got Retina.

Developer updates for the Retina display are going to be coming out relatively fast (or should be), and with regards to issues with web browsing, those can be resolved simply by the web browser updating its rendering engine to support Retina.

On the iPad 3, this is NOT TRUE.

Until every png and jpg on the web are re-saved as 2x the size, they will forever be blurry and not-crisp on retina displays, iPad or Retina displays.

There is simply no way to interpolate or "render" raster art and upscale it. You can enlarge it, but you cannot create pixels out of nothing.

 

[sahot]

I won't pretend to have enough technical knowledge of displays or software to weigh in on either side of the scaling argument.

What I can say is that I too went into an apple store to check out the rMBP and noticed the same thing. Honestly I didn't see much difference in the retina optimized apps (they just looked normal) and the unoptimized apps looked kind of bad...

I am really shocked that this isn't a bigger deal to tech blogs and review sites. Whenever a new version of OS X comes out it is a huge deal if certain apps lose compatibility but no one seems to care that for the many people (especially those who would buy a +$2000 computer) who need to maintain legacy apps they will all look awful on the retina display?

I'm not saying that Apple didn't accomplish an amazing technological feat to get such a pixel dense display on a laptop. I just think they are HEAVILY employing the reality distortion field here to make consumers think they need it.

But no matter. They still have non-retina displays so in this rare case mac users do have options on whether or not we want to be at the bleeding edge (if you couldn't tell I'm not a big fan of that edge).

It's actually interesting on a technical level what apps look bad and what apps look fine. Skype, for example, looks great on my machine, but the nook app looks pretty bad. I'm not sure if some apps use my native widgets and such or what.

I agree though, it's certainly not a necessary upgrade and If you 100% need it to look great right now for work or something it's probably a bad call. Apps will get updated, just like they did for the ipad but it will take a bit, and some websites will probably always look bad.

Then again, apple seems to have never cared much about legacy apps, so you can't really fault them there, at least they are consistent right?

 

[cruggles]

I've been messing around in Photoshop CS5, and files and text in the document looks the same as any other non-retina stuff. There's no real way around this. It's just not practical for a professional.

Here's a test. One is a direct cmd-shift-4 screengrab which saves at double res, since OS X and photoshop don't agree when it comes to scaling.

The 2nd is a save out of photoshop, scaled DOWN 50%. That's pretty much what it looks like on the screen. The way the 4x pixel scaling works, and the way the physical retina display works, this won't really be able to be "fixed."

Scaling is what is going to kill retina displays for a while. Until the whole world moves up to higher res displays, it just won't line up.

Thank you for those screen shots Sean. I don't see any extra anti-aliasing happing in the first image, it looks like straight out pixel-doubling to me. That is to say, I don't see any "small" pixels, I only see "large" pixels which are presumably groups of 4 identical pixels. But I would have to compare it to an image from a non-retina MBP to be sure.

Out of interest, which browser do you have running in the background?

 

[ethereal45]

Deleting my post because it was wrong.

 

[BlueOcean]

People are finding themselves in the same predicament when Apple released the iPhone 4 with Retina display, and later when the iPad got Retina.

Developer updates for the Retina display are going to be coming out relatively fast (or should be), and with regards to issues with web browsing, those can be resolved simply by the web browser updating its rendering engine to support Retina.

Although I agree that this will happen eventually with Mac specific apps, what worries me is if general web stuff ends up looking permanently **** on the retina. The difference between the iDevices and the Mac is that iPad/iPhone make up a significant enough chunk of the mobile market for people to optimise websites and other things for them.

For computers, at least until more Win laptops start getting 'retina' like resolutions, it's going to take much longer for people to bother to transition I think.

Perhaps I can help explain the issue another way (this may or not be scientifically valid...)

Many people think something like this:

If the retina display has 4 pixels in place of 1 regular pixel, why can't you just make these four pixels all behave as 1? Theoretically the image should look exactly the same with no artifacts.

You're right, the image would look exactly the same.

If you did this, your displays would look exactly the same because you would have effectively reduced the number of pixels on the screen by a factor of four, and you would wind up with the same number of "effective pixels" as a regular display.

You have to scale to get the retina effect.

If you just doubled everything, whether it's 4 pixels or 1 pixel, there technically shouldn't be a difference. This sounds fine.

But I think what we're looking for ideally is that 'old' apps (or low res elements of apps like UI buttons and icons) should just appear exactly the same like this, whereas ones designed for retina can take advantage of those extra pixels. In that case, the worst case would be that elements look the same as on a 1440x900 display and the best case would be that they are twice as sharp. I'm not a technical expert either, but theoretically, this seems like what should be happening. Though, as I said before, the reason this isn't happening might be that it is not so simple technically.

 

[2Turbo]

Why can't someone just release an app that changes the entire screen res to 1440 (without any scailling) then everything will look normal again?

 

[Gata]

Although I agree that this will happen eventually with Mac specific apps, what worries me is if general web stuff ends up looking permanently **** on the retina. The difference between the iDevices and the Mac is that iPad/iPhone make up a significant enough chunk of the mobile market for people to optimise websites and other things for them.

For computers, at least until more Win laptops start getting 'retina' like resolutions, it's going to take much longer for people to bother to transition I think.

Remember the transition from Flash to HTML5?

This one will be way easier.

 

[MDomino]

Ok, everybody, I stand corrected.

I just went to the Apple Store again to do some testing.

As it turns out Apple scales up the stuff exactly like i proposed in my graphic (many in this thread have said that this is the wrong way and that it will look bad, but it is exactly the way that Apple did it).

Attachment01 is a screenshot of a graphic that I prepared one time in 100x100 and one time in 200x200 (with the latter having black lines twice as thick).

I scaled the 100x100 up (in Preview) to double its size to see what would happen. If it looks identical, the scaling is done correctly. As you can see it looks identical, so Apple is doing it right.
It looks the same when I watch the 100x100 graphic in Safari.


Also I took a screenshot of an old app (Pages) next to a new one (iTunes).
When you watch it at full Resolution (which is to big, because you never see it in the 2880x1800 resolution) you can clearly see the difference in quality. (Attachment02, watch at 100%)

You can also see the difference in quality when you watch it in Retina mode on a rMBP (which is what you would expect of course, I just expected the old app to look less crappy).

But when you actually zoom into the screebshot really close then you can see that Apple did exactly what I proposed it should do: It puts 1 pixel into 4 retina pixels, so that in the zoomed in version you will always see groups of 4 pixels in the same color. (Attachment 03)

In theory graphics and old apps should then look exactly the same as they did on old MBPs.


So, why do old apps still look terrible?
Well, it has to be - as some people in this thread already said - the display itself which is sharper and more detailed and therefore seems to pronounce the pixels of the antialiased graphics of the old apps more. I could find no other explanation.

So with graphics consisting only of vertical and horizontal lines (as I used in my graphic) and stuff like that, everything seems to look fine. But as soon as graphics get more complex it just doesn't look good anymore on the Retina-display.


I apologize to all the people who had this right in the first place. To me this looked so bad that I was sure, it must be a software issue (although a lot of people in this thread didn't even understand what I was trying to talk about in the first place).
Sorry for making a fuss.


Well, after finding this out, it still puzzles me completely why anyone would want to buy such a computer at the moment, when there are old apps around and when 99,9% of all web graphics will look really bad on it. The only thing to overcome the latter issue would be an update of Safari, that it just doesn't scale up web graphics anymore, but shows them unscaled instead which of course leads to the issue that they are shown really small.

I am not sure, if in the future Apple (or others) will be able to manufacture Retinas which will display scaled up graphics in a nicer way, but I certainly hope they do.

I for one will now just order the new version of the "old" MBP and hopefully be happy with that (and my old apps and the entire internet) for a few years.