

MacBook Pro Retina Display Analysis - spathak
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macbook-pro-retina-display-analysis

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Gring
What happens if you span the desktop across the internal retina display and an
external non-retina display and then move a window so that parts of it are on
both displays? Is it just double size on the non-retina (which would be bad)?
Or does it get drawn twice, in both resolutions, and each display gets their
appropriate resolution (which would be preferable, but might be overly complex
and taxing on the hardware)?

~~~
thought_alarm
It appears correctly-sized on both displays, at least when I tried it in Lion
a few months ago. It's an impressive effect.

If you have Xcode and Quartz Debug you can enable HiDPI on any external
monitor and try it out.

~~~
jonhendry
Also, if you have AirDisplay and a new Retina iPad, you can run the iPad as a
HiDPI monitor.

It'll be a little laggy, though, which probably won't be the case with a non-
WiFi connection.

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seanalltogether
"I really wish the $2199 SKU had the 512GB SSD, or at least offered it as an
option - otherwise the spec is near perfect in my mind."

Many of my colleagues agree. Slower cpu with 512GB at ~$2500 would be just
about perfect.

~~~
skore
It is a typical strategy of Apple to _slightly_ underspec desirable aspects of
a product like hard drive capacity or RAM (...or ports - _sigh_ ). That way,
they can release an updated version where those specs _are_ bumped, resulting
in a product that is perceived as _significantly_ better instead of just
_slightly_ better in comparison to the previous model.

I think it's also about using components that give you the largest gross
margin - A _slightly_ outdated model of a component will always be cheaper and
more readily available than the cutting edge model - which further carries the
risk of being less broadly tested.

An in-between step is often to offer that option (like a larger SSD), but at
significant additional cost. Particularly with things like RAM, apple
sometimes charges you more than twice the regular market price: Getting a Mac
Pro, for instance, you pay ~1k € extra when jumping from 6GB RAM to 32GB.
Buying 32GB of RAM (yes, ECC and everything), sets you back 400€.

Their SSD prices have gotten slightly more reasonable lately (buying the
regular HDD option, selling that drive and buying your own SSD often saved you
hundreds), although they're still a good bit off - especially considering that
Apple buys OEM from Toshiba and in bulk.

My personal conclusion is always to buy the bare minimum configuration and
upgrade myself - I purchased a Macbook Pro 17" at the smallest configuration
and added an SSD and an extra regular 1TB drive. Will probably add some RAM
later this year. Had I gotten all that at Apple right away, I would probably
have to pay 50% extra (although they don't even offer the option of exchanging
the DVD Drive with an HDD).

~~~
jaems33
If this is like the Air (which I'm waiting for the teardown), then I'm not
sure how normal people are supposed to upgrade the memory as it's soldered,
while the hard drive is upgradeable (though probably not feasible for non-
techies unaccustomed to opening up their laptop).

~~~
X-Istence
Apple has released pictures on their website: <http://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/design/>

Scroll down and mouse over the image of the bottom of the MacBook Pro with
Retina display. Notice that the RAM is soldered on, the SSD however is not.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Thought I saw this in the video on apple.com... Saddened to learn that I was
right.

My PC loving mates are going to tear the ass outta me on this...

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PopaL
The smart move now will be to wait 2-3 months before buying the Retina Display
machine. I'm convinced that by the launch of Mountain Lion the OS will let you
use the full resolution of the machine for UI, also it will give some time to
other apps to upgrade their UI in order to support the new resolution.

While the upgrade to Mountain Lion will be free, I have a funny feeling that
Adobe will charge (or at least will try) you some extra money for an updated
version of Photoshop for Retina Display MacBook Pro :).

Any self respecting company or individual developer will probably provide a
free upgrade for the UI of their applications soon in order to support the new
resolution.

~~~
sigkill
Why? Apple products have always been such that to gain maximum "value" they
need to be bought at launch. And isnt an OS upgrade going to be 'just' $30?

~~~
Zarel
The keynote and Apple website point out that all purchases of Macs from now on
will come with a free upgrade to Mountain Lion once it's released.

I wonder if the free upgrade will be the App Store version that allows you to
install it on all authorized versions. If so, this could be an advantage to
buying after the Mountain Lion release, since Macs that come with newer OSes
generally don't allow you to upgrade your other Macs to the new OS.

~~~
glhaynes
The way it works now when you get a new Mac, the iLife apps (and presumably
Lion) are "granted" to the Apple ID you use to register the computer. Thus you
can use that ID to install them on other computers.

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mortenjorck
This is an advantage of hiDPI screens that hadn't quite clicked for me before
- a throwback to one of the advantages of CRTs, allowing multiple resolutions
to look good on a single display.

~~~
anoother
While true, to an extent, it's also the case that resolutions other than
native will require some kind of supersampling (eg. AA), unless they divide
cleanly into native resolution - a problem CRTs never faced.

This results in both blur (ngligible with a high enough resolution, but
doesn't seem to be the case here, seeing the Safari vs Chrome comparison) and
a performance hit.

~~~
dkordik
I get the impression that at every "resolution", we're really at the native
retina resolution, but with UI widgets scaled to different levels, and
different present-day resolutions reported to applications. Can anyone with
one of these beauties confirm?

~~~
anoother
Yes, but this just amounts to scaling via the compositor and graphics stack
(hardware-accellerated, of course), as opposed to being left to the 'screen'
(post-GPU-hardware/firmware) as would be the case when actually driving a
screen at non-native resolution.

See the Safari/Chrome comparison in the article to see what this means in real
terms...

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rbanffy
I really don't like the approach of hiding the display's real pixel size. By
now, we should have solved the problem of displaying GUIs with correctly sized
elements at various resolutions. This approach only makes it more complicated
to do it right in the future.

~~~
seanalltogether
Both Apple and Windows have always hardcoded their PPI values to 72 and 96
respectively. I've never quite understood this.

~~~
jonhendry
Apple's is based on the typographic convention of 72 points per inch, thus
text on a Mac screen would be drawn the same size as it would print.

According to Wikipedia, Microsoft's 96 is apparently based on screen text
being viewed from a different distance than printed text, so they use 96 ppi
to account for the difference, which also gave them more a few more pixels
with which to draw characters. Apple had to draw a 10 point character 10
pixels high, but Microsoft could draw a 10 point character 13 pixels high,
giving them more to work with.

~~~
starpilot
> Apple's is based on the typographic convention of 72 points per inch, thus
> text on a Mac screen would be drawn the same size as it would print.

This would be true if the displays were also 72 dpi, which they are not. DPI
in Windows can be set manually. Mine is set to 84, based on the handy on-
screen ruler in the settings page. If I view a document in Word's print
preview at 100% zoom, and stick a printed page on my display (via static
electricity, try it) next to it, they match exactly. Very handy for printing
over a page with existing content (paper with preprinted corporate borders,
headers).

~~~
jonhendry
I think the Mac displays used to be, at least at the maximum size. I vaguely
recall Mac monitors being somewhat "lower-resolution" than same-size Windows
monitors, just because of this. Maybe it was Mac laptops? Not sure. Certainly
the original Mac 128 was fixed resolution.

Nowadays, of course, it's a free-for-all.

~~~
Someone
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Peripherals>:

 _"built-in display was a one-bit black-and-white, 9 in (23 cm) CRT with a
resolution of 512×342 pixels, establishing the desktop publishing standard of
72 PPI"_

ImageWriter prints were 144dpi, and you could verify thtat the system was
WYSIWIG by holding a print in front of the screen. Also, Mac OS graphics used
1/72" pixels for years (with various hacks added soon in order to support the
LaserWriter's 300 dpi)

Windows (initially?) had separate notions of device pixels and logical pixels
(dialog units?) that allowed for some resolution independence. Its most
obvious disadvantage was that it was not simple (neigh impossible?) to know
whether two parallel lines you drew looked equally wide.

------
dbecker
I'm trying to determine whether the "75% less glare" claim means this is
usable outside. Anyone seen feedback on this?

~~~
solnyshok
also interested in this, but doubt it. It needs more brightness too.

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fredsted
I was worried the Retinabook was only going to double the pixels. The ability
to select a 1920x1200 "mode" is awesome.

~~~
cheatercheater
How is that more awesome than any other LCD monitor that is able to up-scale?

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
Because it doesn't upscale, it downscales.

~~~
sigkill
Everytime someone makes such a comment, my mind is blown at how we already
live in the future. Just a few weeks ago if someone would've told me that
they're planning to _downscale_ to 1920x1200 on a _15"_ screen, on a portable
computer I would've thought they were crazy.

~~~
FireBeyond
It's not that impressive, when you consider that Sony has let you select a
1920 resolution on some of their 13" laptops for over a year.

Lest I be considered a nay-sayer, I'm going to be getting an MBP largely for
the resolution boost.

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chaz
I buy a new MacBook Pro every year, and the dilemma here is similar to
Anand's. I bought the high-resolution display on my current 15.4" MBP at
1680x1050. The resolution can be scaled to 1680x1050 or 1920x1200, but I'd
like to know how blurry that is as opposed to native resolution. I've flipped
my current MBP to 1440x852 to get a feel for the same effective real estate as
the Retina Display's native resolution. Will try it out for a few days before
pulling the trigger on upgrading.

~~~
bitrot
Per the article, the new MBP actually renders at double the scaled resolution
(so 3360x2100 for 1680x1050) and then downscales that to fit 2880x1800. (See
the screenshots.) It shouldn't look blurry at all. In fact, it should look
considerably better than a MBP with a 1680x1050 display.

~~~
tjoff
I don't know which screenshots you look at but there sure is blur when not
dealing with apps that aware of the retina display, such as chrome (left) vs.
safari (right):
[http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5998/Screen%20Shot%202012-0...](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5998/Screen%20Shot%202012-06-11%20at%208.21.29%20PM_575px.png)

In other words, it depends but it most certainly will have its share of
issues, question is for how long.

~~~
jonhendry
I would probably look at apps other than Chrome. There's "unaware of the
retina display", and there's "we eschewed native APIs to some extent and
rolled our own implementations of stuff".

I don't know if this is the case, exactly, with Chrome. I'm just saying it
might not be wise to generalize from Chrome's appearance to retina-naive 3rd
party apps in general.

~~~
lloeki
> I don't know if this is the case, exactly, with Chrome

As part of its security model, Chrome does something akin to rendering
everything offscreen in an unprivileged process then passing that to the user-
facing process.

~~~
jonhendry
Yeah, that sounds like it would do it. On the bright side, maybe they just
have to double their offscreen buffer size.

~~~
rbanffy
Actually, since it's 2D, they have to quadruple it.

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nchlswu
For creators, one of the reasons to own these devices is to create content for
retina devices.

I'm curious of Apple and Adobe have worked together to allow image documents
to display at true resolution, within a scaled output?

Does that make sense? I suppose what I'm saying is, working at a 100% canvas
at 100% zoom level (instead of say, a 50% scale level) while all system
elements are scaled.

EDIT: This might not even matter, from a practical perspective.

~~~
wmf
This is Adobe you're talking about. Wait for CS7 or CS8.

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serge2k
I'm torn between my complete refusal to buy all things Apple and the fact that
I really want this. :(

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andyjsong
Who makes the retina display? Samsung or LG?

~~~
hyprsonic
samsung (source: ifixit article)

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ktizo
Why are they faking the resolution? Is it that the graphics card has problems,
or is it to make their own apps look nicer than competitors, or what? I hope
they are not rescaling stuff like photoshop to something other than actual
screen res, otherwise they will severely piss off graphics professionals even
more than they managed with the Mac Pro workstation non-upgrade.

[edit] reading through the article, it seems that they've either gone and
broken the word 'resolution', or Anand is very confused.

 _At 1440 x 900 you don't get any increase in desktop resolution compared to a
standard 15-inch MacBook Pro, but everything is ridiculously crisp._

I have read this sentence three times and it still makes no sense unless the
word 'resolution' has been completely mauled by marketing idiots.

~~~
nudded
They clearly stated in the keynote that Adobe is working on a retina version
of Photoshop.

~~~
ktizo
So the current existing version of photoshop can't access all the pixels then?
Excuse me while I scream in horror and dismay.

~~~
masklinn
> So the current existing version of photoshop can't access all the pixels
> then?

It can if you set the global resolution to 2880x1800, but because most UI
elements are likely bitmapped it'll be unusable: a 30px button will remain
30px, but will be a quarter the physical surface.

~~~
rcgs
It didn't look like you could set it to 2880x1800 (1:1), unless I missed
something.

~~~
masklinn
Ah well, that would be sad. Though maybe not surprising either (after reading
the article, it looks like the "emulated" resolutions are limited but games
get access to the native resolution).

