no its the lack of subpixel effects which is making it appear 'sharper' on the rMBP so the pixel is a more pronounced rectangular shape. A single native pixel on a regular non-retina display doesnt appear as sharply rectangular as a "pixel doubled pixel" does on the rMBP. But if you ask me, that is how they should look.
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Why do old apps look so terrible on the Retina display? ["solved"]
- Thread starter MDomino
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no its the lack of subpixel effects which is making it appear 'sharper' on the rMBP so the pixel is a more pronounced rectangular shape. A single native pixel on a regular non-retina display doesnt appear as sharply rectangular as a "pixel doubled pixel" does on the rMBP. But if you ask me, that is how they should look.
In System Preferences, under the General section, uncheck "Use LCD font smoothing when available". That removed subpixel antialiasing for me (Lion, old white MacBook), although it seems you need to restart applications for the setting to take effect. This should also remove subpixel antialiasing for retina-enabled applications, but with the pixel sizes of that screen I guess it would be hardly noticeable.
Please note that the subpixels that we are talking about in this specific case are not exclusive to the retina MBP screen. Every physical pixel (not 2x2 pixels) on a typical LCD screen consists of three subpixels, red, green and blue. Look at the image in the Background section at Wikipedias text about subpixel rendering. There you can also see that using these subpixels, combined with the limited resolving power of our eyes, can improve font smoothing, and has been used at least since the 80s. OS X has used it for a long time.
Anyone know of a site I can go to on the Retina which best demonstrates the blurry web imagery?
I was just in best buy checking out the Retina (I'm trying to decide between the classic and the retina) and I could barely notice the blurry effect. I went to USA Today, CNN, ESPN and a few other random sites. I mean I definitely noticed it, but it was hardly the debilitating, unusable experience that I got the impression it was from reading this thread. I actually thought it wasn't that noticeable at all. I guess my eyesight sucks? Maybe it was the lighting or I was just too far away from the screen? I don't know. I had the retina set on the 1920x1200 res the entire time, so I don't know if that made a difference...
I was just in best buy checking out the Retina (I'm trying to decide between the classic and the retina) and I could barely notice the blurry effect. I went to USA Today, CNN, ESPN and a few other random sites. I mean I definitely noticed it, but it was hardly the debilitating, unusable experience that I got the impression it was from reading this thread. I actually thought it wasn't that noticeable at all. I guess my eyesight sucks? Maybe it was the lighting or I was just too far away from the screen? I don't know. I had the retina set on the 1920x1200 res the entire time, so I don't know if that made a difference...
Of course not. I don't think I said they were. I think there is a limited understanding about this subject.
In fact, in windows you may choose from a series of sub pixel tricks and you are supposed to choose the one which best works with your display.
However the sub pixel layout within the retina display is at a factor so minuscule, we've never dealt with it before. So again
if this is a pixel:
RRBBGG
GGRRBB
GGBBRR
Or some other combination... When you light up one pixel as red, it is, through a number of factors, not necessarily shown to you as a perfect rectangle of that color with no bleeding and fading... sub pixels within a display necessarily affect the quality of a particular pixel.
With the retina display and the necessary pixel doubling, you are seeing for the first time a 'image pixel' as a exact, very defined, rectangle that it has always supposed to really be (just zoom into an image in photoshop)...
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I think for web sites it's not that debilitating. Anyone with a Retina iPad has always lived with it. The other benefit of the web is that apple has already taken care of the fonts, so fonts look great. You are only suffering the occasional image that might not look 100% right.
It's those people who create media that are going to be affected by this most.
For instance, if you make your living editing photos but you can't see down to the pixel level, things will look blocky and blurry and you won't get a good understanding of how sharp your image is or be able to do any detailed work. When both Lightroom and the entire Creative Suite are updated by Adobe, only then will I consider it.
Or even Apps like Microsoft Office, the text is all blocky and horrible looking. It's very obvious. But it's usable if it's just typing.
So really, unless the specific apps you are working in have been updated for retina that is where the problem is. Web sites (IMO) are not as big of a deal because you are just consuming it and Apple has already fixed the font issues with Safari.
NOT SO FAST! I just received my MBPr and did a test myself, and found result DIFFERENT THAN YOURS!!
The above are two sample screen captures of the same area of Outlook 2011 ribbon bar. The top was captured from a regular MBP. The second one was captured from a Retina MBP.
As you can see, I have to blow up the top sample to 400% and the bottom one to 200% in order for them to appear the same size. The screen capture from Retina is understandably twice as big.
As you can clearly see, the graphics are not identical. It's not a simple 1 pixel to 4 pixel translation.
Btw, the text part can be ignored, because the text on the retina screen was using OSX's high resolution font. So please only pay attention to the graphics.
btw, i used a windows machine to make this image because i don't have Adobe license for OSX.
hmm...maybe it's the saving algorithm of two different "Grab" apps on two systems? How can they use different compressions???
all i did was taking screenshot of each system using "Grab" and saved to desktop. displayed both images alongside one another on a third machine and took a screen shot of that. therefore, the only variable here that affects these images differently is the screen capturing step... dang this is ridiculous. if they are the same, how come one looks SO MUCH WORSE? Mind = BLOWN
The screen calibration could be set differently on the two computers (look in System Preferences).
Edit: Hm. A bit unsure if that would change the screenshot or not.
Edit2: The calibration doesn't affect the colours in the screenshots, so just ignore this post.
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Yet-to-be-updated apps should look exactly the same as they do on the standard 15.6 inch 1440x900 panel, and technically they do, but because everything else is much sharper it sticks out like a sore thumb.
I really think you nailed it here. Technically hey are the same. Each pixel before is correctly mapped to 4 pixels now. But the appearance of 4 very articulate pixels in a square shape is much sharper and blockier looking than 1 old pixel surrounded by the grid/space between non retina pixels (that helps in smoothing).
The irony is that the old display can appear sharper. I guess because our mind can fill in the gaps between the pixels and the softer edges. But when we're shown what it actually looks like it appears blocky/blurry, and unsharp.
I also think it's worse on the RMBP than the iPhone 4 or iPad because the PPI is larger. So that larger 4x4 square is physically bigger than it was on the i-devices. You get people looking closely at a screen that is meant to be looked at a bit further away and you really see it.
I didn't read the rest of the thread, so if this has already been said, then my appologies!
The issue you are referring to here is something I noticed a long time ago with the switch to the iPhone 4. I didn't really take interest in in until the iPad 3, however.
The cause of this problem is very much the screen. The older, lower resolution screens generate sort of a 'screen door' effect because of the spacing between the pixels. Find an old iPad or 3GS and look, it's not something you would have noticed before, but with these new screens, you can definitely see the difference.
The 'screen door' effect produces an optical illusion of sorts and makes images appear sharper than they really are (on the old screen.) When the same image gets moved over to a higher resolution (pixel doubled) display, it lacks these lines, or atleast they're MUCH smaller.
Another issue with this, is the other sharper images on screen at the same time as the upscaled program. They make the image (which would normally have the screen door effect smoothing it out) appear worse because they're already rendering at twice the resolution in the same workspace.
I know it sounds nuts, It took me a while to understand it too. That's what's happening though! Take a screen shot on a 1440 x 900 MacBook and put it on a Retina MacBook Pro, you'll see what I mean.
That's why we need post like this...... so someone who has retina can provide such info... Do you realize that we still don't have rMBP right? How can we check? and no...apple store in Singapore still doesn't have rMBP displayed.
So if you kind enough to provide screenshot (although it maybe not 100% accurate but at least we have some idea what you are talking about)
That's why we need post like this...... so someone who has retina can provide such info... Do you realize that we still don't have rMBP right? How can we check? and no...apple store in Singapore still doesn't have rMBP displayed.
So if you kind enough to provide screenshot (although it maybe not 100% accurate but at least we have some idea what you are talking about)
I don't have a retina myself, but I've seen the effect on ipad's and iphone's and it's the exact same issue on those as well. I've already been through what the OP is going through and couldn't understand why a proportionally scalled image could appear less sharp. That lead me to ask the same questions that he is today!
Retina screen's, as far as Apple is concerned, is the doubling of resolution within the same size (say what you will about PPI and viewing distance, that's irrelevant here, this is how apple does it) and that doesn't change from device to device.
Ok, then I misunderstood you. What I meant to say with my comment was just that the specific issue the I and cruggles were talking about (subpixel antialiasing of fonts not making sense when pixel doubling) is separate from the issue you are mentioning (different size and shape of physical pixels/subpixels, something that affects everything on screen). And from what I read from you and others, it seems that your explanation is the main cause of ugliness. Still, the issue I mention seems to be present, but I don't know how annoying it is. Remember that I have not seen an RMBP on my own, so I can just go on what I read and see on the web.
I don't understand this representation of a pixel, which makes the following hard to understand. But I understand your arguing about pixel shapes being important and I understand that.
I don't understand this representation of a pixel, which makes the following hard to understand. But I understand your arguing about pixel shapes being important and I understand that.
aha
well the R's are red subpixels, G's are green subpixels, and B's are blue subpixels... there are arranged in various patterns to make up 'a pixel'. So with the lcd grid combined with how its laid out, the quality of a particular pixel and its sharpness and softness is all up in the air.... until you get to a retina display, and are pixel doubling, then that softness and arrangement issue is all at a factor below what we are dealing with...
hope that makes more sense
aha
well the R's are red subpixels, G's are green subpixels, and B's are blue subpixels... there are arranged in various patterns to make up 'a pixel'. So with the lcd grid combined with how its laid out, the quality of a particular pixel and its sharpness and softness is all up in the air.... until you get to a retina display, and are pixel doubling, then that softness and arrangement issue is all at a factor below what we are dealing with...
hope that makes more sense
Yes, a bit. I just have never heard of any computer LCD screen having pixels each consisting of 18 subpixels. My understanding is that most just have three subpixels per pixel, arranged as RGB, left to right. As for the rest of what you're saying, it seems like we agree.
Again, like all other sites this depends on the content. On actual photos people uploaded they tend to look great on my rmb, i guess because people don't typically resize them to the exact physical size Facebook displays them at. (the random one i just checked was sized at 520x389 on the site but has a real size of 960x717)...
Then again, reposts of random images from other sites will probably look "not great" because those are typically sized to the exact specs...
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And i agree with some other posters here, On websites it's not a big deal really, many have graphics that have already been updated or at least have larger res "important" images.
It's the apps that get you, word looks pretty bad, my nook app looks pretty bad, for example.
Yeah since one pixel is stretched to four pixels, and four pixels on the new display is physically the same size as one pixel on the old display, it ends up looking exactly the same. The easiest way to compare this is to put a 1440x900 image on full screen and compare the two different displays -- they'll look exactly the same.
But for apps and images and other content during your normal use the non-retina stuff appears blurry because your used to the much sharper retina quality now. I look back at my iPhone 3GS and it's so blurry, but before I had no idea.
Actually the pixel density is less not more, but you're right that it has larger pixels on the display.
Not sure about websites. The worst examples I've seen are in office apps (like Word or Pages) and in Photoshop.
Open Pages and open one of the template documents. Look at the type - the blurriness is pretty bad. You can sharpen things a bit by increasing the screen resolution, but if you then increase the zoom in your document above 100% you end up back where you started.