
Web designers: you need a Retina MacBook Pro - wyclif
http://www.marco.org/2012/07/05/web-designers-need-retina
======
geekfactor
_I’ve been using a Retina MacBook Pro for one week, only as a secondary
computer,2 and I’ve already changed my font, redesigned my narrow layout’s
header, and conditionally replaced an image with text. I’ve noticed that
fonts, especially, respond extremely differently on the Retina screen: many of
my old, non-Retina choices simply didn’t look good, and many fonts and metrics
that were previously poor for screen use can be used nicely on Retina
screens._

So you swapped out your old fonts that look good for 99% of people for fancy
new ones that, while "poor for screen use" for those 99%, look nice on Retina
screens?

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xpaulbettsx
> Windows-using web designers, if such people still exist: I’m sure there’s
> something you can do to enable high-DPI mode on Windows

Is the snark really necessary here? Why so mean?

~~~
w1ntermute
> Is the snark really necessary here? Why so mean?

Marco has long shown a visceral disdain for non-Apple products and those who
use them. Unfortunately, this sort of behavior is on the rise in general, and
not many people are willing to call out those who find it necessary to take a
potshot at the "other camp" every chance they get.

As for Marco's comment about Windows-using web devs, one of the most respected
members of our community and a serial web entrepreneur, patio11, appears to be
a Windows user, at least as of 6 months ago:
<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3422608>

~~~
ahi
The comment was about web designers not developers. Patrick is well respected
round these parts for good reason, but it is certainly not for his design
skills.

I didn't read it as being particularly harsh or snarky. It seems Web designers
using Windows are becoming a rare breed. At least from what I can tell anyway.
FWIW, I am not a designer and run Mac/Windows for testing purposes only.

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fpgeek
This is just silly. Are there legions of websites that work on non-Retina
computers that actually break on the Retina MacBook Pro (rather than just
looking bad)?

Web designers should not default to the latest-and-greatest. When they do,
they often produce sites that are completely unusable without it. Web
designers should spend more time worrying about users that don't have the
latest-and-greatest (aka most users).

Most web designers need old laptops and low-end smartphones far, far more than
they need a Retina MacBook Pro.

~~~
pnp
Certainly not legions but it is worthwhile to step into an Apple store and
give your sites a try. I was surprised to find my canvas-based code breaking
on the Retina MacBook Pro.

FWIW, the cause was getImageData(0, 0, w, h) returning 4 _w_ h pixels and not
w*h as I naively expected.

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jonathanyc
This article is ridiculous. The author essentially suggests that we pander to
his demographic (see footnote 1, "Windows-using web designers, if such people
still exist") for a non-existent reason, namely, that "you may not realize
quite how bad it looks when any graphical assets show at 1X.". This is the
type of irresponsible FUD that I would not expect to find here. Show me a
website that looks worse on a Retina display, and I'll show you a crappy
rendering system.

~~~
barumrho
But retina display is the future. (At least I hope so.)

~~~
jonathanyc
It may be, but no website I've looked at on the iPad 2 looks better or worse
than it already looks like on a non-retina desktop/laptop.

EDIT: Gah, I meant the iPad 3. Slip of the finger or slip of the mind, make of
it what you will.

~~~
ajross
Clearly this is the truth. Except (and I'm being quite serious here) to those
who just dropped a big chunk of self image into their new toy. There's a huge
psychological investment to a product like this. It's _better_! And anything
that prevents it from being/seeming/acting better is an abomination. Marco
Arment is deeply, personally offended that site designers aren't improving
their work so that it looks better on his personal screen, because that
situation reduces the value of the thing he so admires.

------
Void_
> No respectable developer would ever ship an app that wasn’t extensively
> tested on real devices.

I find this offensive. You are knowingly mixing facts up to support your
argument.

Testing on a real device is entirely different thing than testing on a real
device with Retina.

Your whole article is about testing on Retina devices, and suddenly an
argument about something completely different. (Testing on real devices.)

What's up, do you think your readers are stupid?

------
programminggeek
Ok, so the truth is raising the hackles of HN. Cool. Examine why you're upset,
is he wrong or is it because he's right but he's talking about the other
team/company that you don't like?

He is right to say that web designers need to start designing for high-dpi
displays because high-dpi is going to be or already is the norm. Look at
phones, they have what 150-200+ dpi? Tablets? Yep, high-dpi there too.

Windows? Well, actually yes. Windows 8 was designed to support high-dpi as
well. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-
dif...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-
screens.aspx)

Perhaps the article would be better worded to say that web designers should
buy Retna MBP because high-dpi is the future and Mac, Windows, iOS, and
Android are all going to have high-dpi screens inside of a year or two, so
it's going to take off pretty fast, and the Retna MBP is the best/only
mainstream high-dpi workstation you can buy right now.

Of course, that would be rational and nuanced and those things don't get you
clicks, links, or pageviews because after all this is the internet.

~~~
majormajor
Windows has been scaling to various DPIs for ages (sometimes to undesired out-
of-the-box resulsts, such when, a few years ago, I plugged in an XP desktop to
an HDTV over HDMI and it tried to make the fonts display at the same physical
size as on a monitor despite me sitting much further away). It's something it
(and Linux, and Android) has ahead on the curve of compared to Apple—from an
engineer's perspective, just going with doubling is a rather inelegant
solution.

XP wasn't very good at it when it came to third-party apps, but on Vista or 7
(I forget which I was on back then now) once I got the DPI slider in the right
place for that TV, it provided a quite enjoyable experience, even on older or
non-standard apps.

------
naner
It is important but not urgent (sorta depends on your site demographics). I'm
not dropping a couple grand for a 1st run, rushed to market laptop. I can test
now using the other methods he mentioned and I'll get a retina laptop when
they are more reasonably priced, the hardware is more refined, and when most
software is updated to look right.

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zpj5005
There are a number reasons to adopt retina graphics for your website today but
it's not for everyone.

Consider the time it takes to update and maintain 2 versions of all images and
ask yourself, is the >1% user base going to outweigh the time it takes to
update this?

Make sure you consider the possibility that the >1% who are early adopters of
the retina macbook may also be the type of early adopters who would try your
alpha version.

As a designer, I know it's a major problem that if you primarily work on the
best/brightest displays, you forget what your designs look like everywhere
else.

So if you decide to "go retina", make sure you don't get carried away with
fine lines and make the <99% squint to see your 8px #f0f0f0 text.

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OzzyB
Between the Mac, Cinema Display, iPad, iPhone/Touch and now a Retina
Display/Mac -- being a web designer is pretty hard on the wallet these days me
thinks.

And that's just Apple.

~~~
pasbesoin
Perhaps akin to my thought: 'So, I need to spend $2500 on another laptop
because I have no source for an equivalently featured monitor that I can plug
in to what I have.'

Monopolies... [de facto, if nothing else]

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jsz0
Apple had a WWDC 2012 session on optimizing web sites for high DPI displays.
Interesting but not terribly complex stuff. I think if you follow the best
practices they outline you can feel pretty confident your site will look good
on a high DPI display. If you have a high enough resolution display you could
always switch to high DPI for testing.

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btipling
If the thing would ship. I ordered this thing weeks ago, and the Apple store
ever since then has said "ships in 3-4 weeks." Every week I go to check on my
order for the retina MBP and it says this.

They either really dropped the ball on manufacturing this laptop or it's the
best selling Mac ever, because they just cannot ship any.

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snowwrestler
I'm really excited for the high DPI Web. Higher resolution should be the last
piece of the puzzle needed to finally kill the (terrible) practice of using
images or Flash or (gulp) Silverlight to display text. Finally text can be
beautiful to graphic designers, but still be text to developers and software.

------
majormajor
There is probably a simple explanation, but I'm stuck wondering why a pixel-
doubled image looks worse than that same image at native resolution on a lower
resolution screen? Why doesn't "combining" four pixels into one make it look
the same?

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zyb09
I bought one as my primary work machine for developing iPhone, iPad and
Android apps and I can recommend it to any developer of all sorts. This is
just a really nice developer machine, I love coding on that thing.

