

Retina on OS X - kmfrk
http://dcurt.is/retina

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Greenisus
I want a Retina Display Mac as badly as anyone, but I'm trying to not get my
hopes up too much. Apple is famous for being secretive, even amongst
themselves. They are also consistent with their design patterns in Cocoa.
If/when the Retina Display comes to the iPad, it will almost certainly follow
the @2x naming convention, and the Mac will almost certainly follow it as
well.

This could just as easily mean the design teams at Apple are simply being
well-prepared for whenever a Retina Display Mac _does_ come, even if it's
years away.

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kenthorvath
Out of curiosity, what is the cursor of the hand giving 'the shocker' used
for?

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djbender
That has to be a joke.

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brian_cloutier
no joke, I'm also a little confused.

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thought_alarm
HiDPI mode is already here. You can enable it today if your monitor is
sufficiently large, and see these large images in action for yourself. There's
no need to go digging around app package resources and speculate about what's
coming.

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ugh
Does anyone know what those panels cost compared to the old ones? Is a 13 inch
or a 15 inch panel more likely to show up first? Is a 13 inch panel even
feasible?

2880x1800 is seriously crazy, that would be 255 ppi on a 13 inch screen, 50
ppi more than previous commercially available and extremely expensive high-ppi
screens (excluding really small screens for phones and the like), like this
one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors>

Is it even possible to build those panels with the same thinness that they
would fit? Oh, and will Ivy Bridge be able to deal with that kind of screen?
If not, we can be fairly certain that there will be no Retina MacBook Air.
There is just no space for a dedicated GPU on that logic board.

Hm, I guess if a Retina iPad is possible (263 ppi, by the way, and that one
seems like a certainty) then a 13 inch screen can’t be all that harder. And if
the iPad hardware can deal with that screen (presumably while keeping the
battery runtime, performance and size the same – I can’t imagine Apple
sacrificing any of that) a desktop GPU – even an integrated one – should be
able to deal with it, too.

The price will be interesting, too. It seems inconceivable that Apple will be
able to sell a Retina iPad for $500. The current iPad has an IPS screen and
that – the high quality screen with wide viewing angles – is one of its
headline features. The next iPad would then also have to have an IPS Panel
that is of the same or better quality and also Retina. I’m looking forward to
see how Apple will deal with that. (The same applies to the Mac, too.)

~~~
arn
[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/10/ces-2012-panasonics-20-i...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/10/ces-2012-panasonics-20-inch-
display-at-216-ppi-arrives-amid-rumors-of-retina-macbook-pro/)

Panasonic showed a 3840x2160 20" screen at CES at 216dpi. 3.5mm thin. No word
of pricing, but the technology seems to exist.

Also 2880x1800 would be the 15" size, not the 13" size. Since it's double the
15" MBP's linear resolution.

~~~
ugh
The 13 inch MBA and the 15 inch MBP have identical resolutions, so 2880x1800
would be the resolution of both MacBooks. (The 13 inch MBP lags behind for
whatever reason – but it’s kind of useless and a waste of space in Apple’s
lineup anyway.)

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Karhan
That's interesting. I know a lot of web designers that use macs primarily and
I wonder how having such a high default resolution would impact their design
choices. Could this 'break the web' as people around here are so fond of
saying for non high resolution screen users?

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twiceaday
I doubt that the new macs will have higher effective resolutions. Everything
will be very sharp but will remain the same size, just like on the iPhone.
This can't break the web, it will simply raise the ceiling on how good a
website can look.

~~~
gerrit
Except that designers might want to include 4x-sized bitmap assets to have
their sites appear sharp on those retina displays. If that isn't done
carefully, users with smaller displays might have to download those, wasting
their bandwidth.

~~~
webjprgm
Hmm, yes, especially if the designers are working on such a large resolution
screen.

Would the solution be a media query in the CSS? Would there be data in the
HTTP user agent string to serve up a different CSS/HTML/image resource?

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gerrit
Apple introduced the -webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2 media query parameter
with the iPhone 4. But for HTML images that doesn't help

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esusatyo
Does anyone have any idea how well retina display MacBooks work for Windows
and Linux? AFAIK Windows have resolution independence but can they display hi
res system UI? Or will everything just become smaller?

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brian_cloutier
From my experience everything on linux will become smaller. More user-centric
linux's like Ubuntu might have resolution independence though.

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esusatyo
If it really happens, Windows and Linux users will probably have no choice if
they want retina display laptop. At least for a few years.

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idont
In my quest of the perfect screen for coding +8 hours a day Retina is good
news. BUT as Anti-Glare filter are too grainy, there will surely be only
glossy screen (headache in bright rooms). :(

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ctdonath
Relative predicted timings between Ivy Bridge release and full OS X "retina"
capability? To wit, odds of next 27" iMac having that resolution? and when?
Just chomping at the bit for one...

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wmf
A 27" retina display would be 5120x2880; this seems pretty far beyond the
state of the art. I'm not even sure eDP could drive it.

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ori_b
Or that they are just sharing resources between OSX and iOS apps. As much as
I'd love to have higher resolution displays, I don't think this is as strong a
signal as this article is claiming.

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gerrit
Some of the assets are mouse cursors. Unlikely we are going to see iOS mouse
support, so that does suggest mac retina displays

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jacques_chester
It's been really, _really_ annoying in the past 4-5 years as monitor
resolutions came to a grinding halt at 1920x1080 (ie, HD video). There's not
much point buying a larger monitor if the resolution doesn't keep pace.

Hopefully Apple can serve their usual task of kicking all the other
electronics manufacturers out of a rut.

~~~
wmf
My 2560x1600 HP monitor disagrees with you. (Affording it is a different
matter.) The trend of replacing 16:10 monitors with lower-res 16:9 models is
disturbing, though.

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ugh
But what size is that screen? That’s the problem.

Screen sizes have increased (or rather: it’s now affordable to buy a larger
screen). A 27 inch panel with your resolution has the same old and boring ppi
like a 17 inch screen with 1600x900 pixels.

The screens Apple seems to want to build into their Macs would double that ppi
count. That’s what would be great.

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wmf
A smaller, higher-DPI monitor displays less information; all those extra
pixels just make things sharper. Sure, I'd like a sharper screen but I'm not
giving up real estate for it. If Apple comes out with a 30" retina display
I'll be all over it, but I know they won't.

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ugh
Huh? That makes no sense. People don’t pick small displays over large displays
just because. They pick them because they make for an attractive package. It’s
all tradeoff, don’t you understand?

