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

[portishead]

No need to apologize - you were correct in that something is wrong with non-retina graphics. I have a Retina MBP, and graphics look kinda bad with programs not optimized. It bugs me also, but I think it is still worth it because apps that are optimized look AMAZINGLY awesome. Plus, I think some apps will get optimized in the future. So I am fine paying the "early adopter" tax.

The main problem is going to be web graphics/photos. I think a lot of apps will eventually optimize, but I am afraid a lot of websites won't care. Still, I think it is worth it because text is buttery smooth even on Safari.

 

[2Turbo]

I'm glad you figured it out man. I simply can't buy a product that makes most of what I use look worse. Once most everything is Retina optimized, I'll upgrade. But for now it's old MBP or Air for me.

What I don't get is why can't someone make an app that turns off scaling and changes the screen res to 1440 or 1920? Then things would look completely fine on old apps. I don't want to fool with this scaling nonsense right now.

 

[BJonson]

I think the fact the display is IPS makes it all worth the trouble.

 

[Seamaster]

Apple has a Confucian attitude to the new MBPR: Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

 

[cruggles]

Ok, everybody, I stand corrected.

MDomino, thank you very much for those images - that was exactly what I was after, some evidence.

I was pretty confident about the pixel doubling because that was what Apple clearly said was happening in the keynote, but I hadn't seen any evidence.

I also have read that apps that use MacOS text rendering will automatically have sharp text on a retina display. It's just those apps that use their own text rendering (such as Chrome) that will need to update their apps to be retina-aware in order for their text to look good.

Google is obviously aware of this and they are moving fast on a new version of Chrome.

I am surprised however that Pages doesn't seem to have clear text - I would have thought that being an Apple product it would have used MacOS text rendering - you have showed a menu only - maybe it is different in the actual workspace of Pages. Anyway, they have stated new versions of iWork coming soon. I think I read that Safari is already compliant.

Anyway, thanks heaps for your latest update, I live in a remote area and will not have access to an rMBP before I order - this helps a lot in my decision making.

 

[MDomino]

No need to apologize - you were correct in that something is wrong with non-retina graphics. I have a Retina MBP, and graphics look kinda bad with programs not optimized. It bugs me also, but I think it is still worth it because apps that are optimized look AMAZINGLY awesome. Plus, I think some apps will get optimized in the future. So I am fine paying the "early adopter" tax.

Fair enough.
I personally do not care so much about buttery smooth text - although it does look awesome for sure - but I really need graphics to be displayed reliably.

What I don't get is why can't someone make an app that turns off scaling and changes the screen res to 1440 or 1920? Then things would look completely fine on old apps. I don't want to fool with this scaling nonsense right now.

Unfortunately this seems not to be the case. After what I found out now Apple scales up stuff in a way that would be no different from stuff not being scaled up at all (on a 1440x900px display, that is). Sadly, that also means that all old apps, which aren't updated anymore will look forever bad on the Retina display (well, on THIS Retina display as they manufacture it now) and no software will be able to do something about this.

I really wanted to have the Retina MBP as well, but as it looks now, it just doesn't work for my case. But hey, the MBP with the old design and new specs is still a great computer. So I am looking forward to play with it soon!

 

[cruggles]

The AnandTech review was interesting - they stated that for basic consumer use (such as browsing) they preferred it in Retina mode (1440x900 pixel doubled) but for workspace use they preferred it in a higher scaled resolution. They also commented that it was easy to switch on the fly.

 

[MDomino]

Anyway, thanks heaps for your latest update, I live in a remote area and will not have access to an rMBP before I order - this helps a lot in my decision making.

Hey, you're welcome. Glad all this fuss and me rushing to the Apple Store a second time to do some testing helped at least some people.

Now keep in mind, the screenshots that I made will still not give you a precise impression of how these old apps do look on the retina display (since for you and me they are just displayed on a normal display).
You will have to see this in person, to know how it actually looks and if you can live with it or not.

 

[cruggles]

I use the following software 95% of the time:
Chrome (due to be updated but I can use Safari or Chrome beta)
Aperture (due to be updated)
Photoshop (due to be updated)
Final Cut Pro (due to be updated)
MS Office (not sure about that one, but could use iWork, due to be updated)

So for me, I'm not too worried about legacy apps that may not be updated soon.

I'm still interested in how web graphics look but I don't think that will be a show-stopper.

And I'm coming from a 15" MBP with hi-res anti-glare - the new display still could be a show-stopper.

Thanks again.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

I use the following software 95% of the time:
Chrome (due to be updated but I can use Safari or Chrome beta)
Aperture (due to be updated)
Photoshop (due to be updated)
Final Cut Pro (due to be updated)
MS Office (not sure about that one, but could use iWork, due to be updated)

So for me, I'm not too worried about legacy apps that may not be updated soon.

I'm still interested in how web graphics look but I don't think that will be a show-stopper.

And I'm coming from a 15" MBP with hi-res anti-glare - the new display still could be a show-stopper.

Thanks again.

The Chrome beta only updates the retina look for the UI elements of the browser - text (like on these forums) still renders all blurry and crappy.

Right now the only browser that works for html text is Safari.

 

[cruggles]

The Chrome beta only updates the retina look for the UI elements of the browser - text (like on these forums) still renders all blurry and crappy.

Right now the only browser that works for html text is Safari.

Thank you for that info. Cheers

 

[samac92]

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.

A very good explanation, this is exactly how I understood it too.

 

[ethereal45]

So if you run 2880x1440....there's no issue, right? For those with good eyesight this could be an attractive option.

 

[andymac2210]

K so after reading this I'm going for the new version of the 'old' MPB.

Thanks.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

So if you run 2880x1440....there's no issue, right? For those with good eyesight this could be an attractive option.

Right, and I did try that and it "worked" exactly how you'd expect.

The stuff is really small, but /shrug maybe that's a good thing, you can still do CMD-+ in a browser and whatnot to make things bigger.

 

[sahot]

The Chrome beta only updates the retina look for the UI elements of the browser - text (like on these forums) still renders all blurry and crappy.

Right now the only browser that works for html text is Safari.

Untrue, the canary build of chrome looks great for text and all.

 

[Sheppard]

As a web designer, I am very excited to see all my designs in full flow on the display. It won't take long for mainstream websites to catch on as it's easy to double your vectors in size. HTML5 elements at this density are going to look very silky.

 

[NiVanc]

I, as a designer, am really afraid to buy a RMBP after reading this thread. This sounds like a real issue to me. Unfortunately I can't go to an Apple Store and check it out myself as I live in Belgium and we haven't received any units yet.

Could someone possibly make a video of this issue? Or more 100% screenshots?

That would be really helpful!

 

[ladeer]

I just tired Photoshop and iPhoto on MBPR and found an interesting thing.

When you take a screen shot of something and paste it into Photoshop, the image looks 4x bigger than the actual thing you took a screenshot of. This is expected because in Photoshop, each actual picture that your screenshot image had, becomes 4 pixels.

This is stupid because you can't take advantage of the retina display. Everything looks blurry and images are never sharp.

In iPhoto which is optimized for the screen, photo is actually displayed using the real pixel on the retina display. In other words, if you take a screen shot of something on your MBPR, it will show up 1:1 in physical and pixel size in iPhoto.

This also means, when you save a picture from a website (right click on image and save as), the said picture will look 1/4 of its size in iPhoto.

I like this because it means, iPhoto is really taking advantage of the retina display.

I assume once Photoshop and Apperture upgrade to retina optimized, we can expect Photoshop to allow editing of images at actual retina resolution.

But now the problem is, what if I want to save that said image in Photoshop onto, said, Dreamweaver. How does that work? Will my photo look suddenly 4x bigger in Dreamweaver, because for the web, the photo needs to look 4x the size? But if it's stayed in the retina 1:1 ratio, then the photo will look absurdly small in Dreamweaver...

 

[houkouonchi]

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.

I still think that anti aliased fonts/sub-pixel font rendering is still playing a slight roll in not being done quite correctly when its being pixel quadrupled.

And here I will unpuzzle you. Not all people like huge text/icons/windows and absolute lack of desktop real-estate. This machine is amazing when running it at its native 2880x1800 resolution. I guess for those of you who dont wear glasses when you should be (or reading glasses if your older than 42) or are otherwise visually impaired then yeah it sucks for you but its perfectly comfortable at normal distances for me.

I used the google earth plugin on safari and the only way to get it to look really nice was to run at native resolution (2880x1800) so even if safari itself supports the resolution it doesn't even work right with plugins even ones that use 3d rendering. Google earth looked 4x better when viewed in the native 2880x1800 resolution (no scaling, no HiDPI).

 

[smali]

Hi thanks for this thread, I have been on the fence on this one for awhile. I'm leaning towards the classic design with hi res matte display.

It's nice to read some people are thinking clearly here. I mean when will these Retina Apps for the mac actually come out? This isn't iOS fart apps that devs can easily make retina compatible.

I use Cinema 4D, After effects/Premiere Pro, Painter, Photoshop, Illustrator are staples. Only Photoshop is in the "works". Do people really think Adobe is going to spends time and money to update all their apps to retina in the next year which only a very very small % of their userbase will see a benefit from?

Maybe CS7 we will see a across the board retina update, that's at least 2 years away. Other programs, who knows maybe till retina is at least on 25% or more screens which is a long time away.

 

[cecildk9999]

Trying after buying

This thread was really helpful in terms of preparing me what to look for in field testing the machine at the Apple store. While I can't offer anything more than the subjective comments of my experience, I personally found the scaling to be noticeable, but not unusable (Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop). It's a pretty stark contrast when retina optimized/non-optimized apps are placed side by side, but it seemed like a reasonable trade off after downloading some of my photos and viewing them on the new screen.

Also, one of the reps highlighted the different web experiences one could expect: although he said the employees there were instructed to show off the NY Times webpage (optimized) as a demo for customers, he contrasted it with the BBC and Microsoft pages. Text was fine, most images were ok, but banner ads (which I ignore anyway ) were ugly and jagged. So I'm thinking that unless I have a sudden need to find out about the 'treatment making Botox doctors furious' or the 'government program Congress doesn't want you to know about,' pixelated ads might end up being a gain for my internet experience.

So while I'll be definitely putting it through its paces next month when I receive it, I'm thinking that the scaling won't be an issue for me. Many thanks to the OP (and others) for exploring these issues in this thread!

 

[ethereal45]

The thing that concerns me more than the jagged web images is the troubles that may arises from the inconsistencies with some apps performing "scaling" or pixel doubling (or quadrupling...) vs. some apps going at it pixel for pixel. This seems like it will complicate things for web designers and such. I'm not in this boat personally, but this seems like it will change people's workflows, to say the least.

 

[imladris]

I haven't seen a retina Macbook Pro, but I have followed this thread with some interest. MDomino proved quite convincingly that scaling from 1440x900 to 2880x1800 is done by pixel doubling for applications that don't yet understand to take advantage of the new screen. However, it is evident when zoomed in that some pixels within fonts that are supposed to be black actually have color, which to me is a sign of subpixel anti-aliasing. When a font with this kind of anti-aliasing is made without pixel-doubling, i.e. natively, it improves the quality of the font shapes (although some people still see the color "fringing" and don't like it). In "native mode" subpixel antialiasing utilizes the red, green and blue subpixels of each physical pixel to create higher-quality fonts. (Google subpixel anti-aliasing to understand how this works.) After pixel-doubling, there are no longer any subpixels (the 2x2 size "zoomed pixel" is not split up into a red, green and blue part, from left to right), and subpixel antialiasing makes no sense.

Right now I'm not at my Mac, so I don't quite remember which settings are available nowadays, but there used to be anti-aliasing settings in the Appearance section of System preferences. At least in the past, some (or at least one) of these settings would not use subpixel anti-aliasing, but just gray-scale anti-aliasing. It would be interesting if someone with a retina MacBook Pro could test if this setting still exists, and if they think that the quality of text on pixel-doubled becomes better when anti-aliasing is not done using subpixels. I think it should.

If I am correct, pixel-doubled grayscale anti-aliasing of text should look much better than pixel-doubled subpixel anti-aliased text, but it would not look as good as subpixel anti-aliased text without pixel doubling on an equivalent non-retina screen (1440x900). So, apps that don't take advantage of the retina display would still look slightly worse on the retina display than when it is run at "native" resolution, on the old 1440x900 display.

 

[cruggles]

In "native mode" subpixel antialiasing utilizes the red, green and blue subpixels of each physical pixel to create higher-quality fonts. (Google subpixel anti-aliasing to understand how this works.) After pixel-doubling, there are no longer any subpixels (the 2x2 size "zoomed pixel" is not split up into a red, green and blue part, from left to right), and subpixel antialiasing makes no sense.

Ok, I've been following this all week and you are the first to explain to my understanding exactly why it is that this pixel doubling reportedly looks worse than a conventional 1440x900 display.

Of course! It's just the subpixel rendering going on which makes no sense once it is pixel doubled into 4 separate pixels. I've just read the wikipedia page on the subject.

All we need to do is work out how to turn off subpixel rendering, although I can't work out how to do it on my MBP.

Anyone know how to turn off subpixel rendering on a rMBP?