

The Problem With The Macbook Pro's Retina Display - virtualritz
https://plus.google.com/u/0/106640475803914092337/posts/ZDEgQKKUMR5

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Steko
It's disappointing that Apple didn't include some obvious retina friendly
system preferences. System font size, ui scaling, true native retina
resolution, etc.

That said I think the sky is falling impression here is overblown:

"It means my Retina display, while being 125% sharper than my the HD display
on my Sony, has 44% less screen space!"

Isn't this only true if 100% of your screen is taken up by ui elements from
non-updated applications? Isn't this the sort of problem that's common with
early adoption?

"What it does is render the whole screen at a different resolution, say
1920×1200, and then scale it up, using the graphics hardware, to 2880×1800!
This means everything gets blurred. I.e. I get less crispness than a native
1920×1200 display would give me."

There are third party apps that will display at true 2880 x 1800:

[http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/18/3-ways-to-run-a-retina-
macboo...](http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/18/3-ways-to-run-a-retina-macbook-pro-
at-2880x1800-native-resolution/)

~~~
jamescun
> It's disappointing that Apple didn't include some obvious retina friendly
> system preferences. System font size, ui scaling, true native retina
> resolution, etc.

They did. Granted not all in one menu, but all exist within system
preferences. It even asks you after first install if you want to be at "Retina
Optimised" resolution or native resolution.

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kevinflo
You can run at true 2880x1800 using switchresx.
<http://www.madrau.com/indexSRX4.html>

Thing is, this resolution is not really usable as everything becomes too
small. I personally think the way apple did it makes perfect sense. Increase
pixel density & sharpness while retaining the size of UI elements.

~~~
realize
I do this when developing and it's great. I don't mind things small if I can
see twice as many of them.

------
teilo
"What it does is render the whole screen at a different resolution, say
1920×1200, and then scale it up, using the graphics hardware, to 2880×1800!
This means everything gets blurred. I.e. I get less crispness than a native
1920×1200 display would give me."

No, it does nothing of the sort. It renders the whole screen at 3840x2160 and
scales it DOWN to 2880x1800. As a result everything designed for retina is
razor sharp. Everything that is standard resolution is blurry, but no more so
than when running at 1440x900 equivalent.

I run 1920x1200 equiv. on my rMPB all day. I even run Adobe CS6 on it. No
problems. Seriously, all the complaining I've heard about "unusable" Adobe
products on this machine are bunk. It hasn't effected my photo editing, or
page layout work even a tiny bit. I don't use MS Office much, which is indeed
blurry at any resolution, but LibreOffice is sharp.

------
virtualritz
Thanks heaps for the helpful links. I had googled for solutions before writing
that rant but couldn't find anything.

I ended up using Change Resolution ([http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-
view_blog_post.php?pos...](http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-
view_blog_post.php?postId=51)) to do what I needed.

