
The New Retina Display MacBook Pro: A downgrade from my current MacBook Pro - alexobenauer
http://alexobenauer.com/blog/2012/06/11/the-new-retina-display-macbook-pro-a-downgrade-from-my-current-macbook-pro/
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petercooper
According to the technical specs, the new MBP will support both 1920x1200 and
1680x1050 as "scaled" resolutions. Usually "scaled" meant you'd get
blurrovision but with such a high DPI screen, scaling up to 2880x1800 might be
bearable? I'm intrigued to see how it looks because 1920x1200 at 15" would be
ideal.

UPDATE: 2880 / 1920 = 1.5 and the iPad 3's Retina display (at least) is a very
precise linear RGBRGBRGBRGB arrangement - [http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/ipad-3...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/ipad-3-vs-ipad-2-ips-screens-640x353.jpg) \- so
running 1920 wide on 2880 would essentially result in "pixels" of RGBR BRGB
RGBR BRGB and so on with an extra "shared" green across two pixels. I'm NOT a
display or color expert and really hope someone who _is_ will respond but that
_seems_ to me like it could render rather nicely with some fringing between
sharply contrasting colors (e.g. yellow and blue or green and magenta).

~~~
kbd
> I'm certainly very intrigued to see how it looks because 1920x1200 at 15"
> would be ideal.

Ditto. My concern is the same as the author's. Any antialiasing while looking
at code drives me nuts, so I use a pixel-perfect bitmap font and turn
antialiasing off. I'll have to play with a machine at the Apple store to see
if it'll be noticeable when using a "scaled" resolution.

~~~
idleloops
I like bitmap fonts, but I prefer them not to be so tiny that my nose touches
the screen.

~~~
jdpage
If people are finding them too small, making a new bitmap font which is big
enough to use on a Retina display is not an issue in the slightest.

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hesdeadjim
This is absurd. Spend five minutes comparing an iPad 1 to an iPad 3 and you
will quickly notice that a retina-quality display allows you to comfortably
read much smaller font sizes, thus providing an increase in effective screen
real-estate. Sure, the new retina MacBook has a logical screen size of
1440x900 -- but why would I care if I can now set my Terminal font four points
smaller and see just as much as I do on my clunky 17" MacBook with a 1920x1200
screen.

~~~
gsibble
You clearly don't understand the idea of screen real estate and how this
display will be used on the MBP. They don't intend to use smaller fonts for
instance. They are simply going to scale the fonts to the same life-size as a
1440x900 screen. They'll just be crisper.

~~~
cjoh
Man this discussion would have been so much better had the phrase "You clearly
don't understand" not been uttered.

~~~
AnthonBerg
The Japanese have it right - "You" sucks!

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carsongross
If anyone else feels this way, please ping me and I'll be happy to sell you my
current MacBook Pro at the same price as the new MacBook Pro.

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jamesjyu
Scaling will be configurable: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-
retina-display-ma...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-
display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling)

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ynniv
OMG the physical size of the title bar might be taller than the skinny
nonsense it currently is? EATING ALONE CRYING INTO MY FOOD DOES NOT CONVEY MY
DISAPPOINTMENT

Does anyone remember 9" 72 DPI screens? The title bar was 20px high on a
screen that was 333px tall. That's 6% of the screen for those of you without a
calculator. The current menubar is 22px, or 2.4% of my 15" screen, and 2.1% of
the author's. When pixel doubled, the retina menubar will be 2.4% of the
screen, or basically what I have been subsisting on for years. Except that
between the bottom of the menu bar and the bottom of the screen will be TWICE
AS MANY PIXELS AS BEFORE. And you can use those however you like.

To be fair, the author's menubar will have bloated 10%. Personally, I think
that this is an acceptable tradeoff in this situation, but not everyone will
have the same opinion. So, if you don't, just... could you just give it a
second? It's going to space.

~~~
wmf
Yeah, the people who _can't get anything done_ at less than 1920x1200 amuse
me. I guess they didn't use laptops at all ten years ago.

~~~
aheilbut
Actually, we had 1600x1200 laptops ten years ago.

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sukuriant
With a higher dpi screen, he can lower his font size and still get a
functional increase in screen real estate, potentially.

~~~
indochi
The main issue seems to be with application dialogues; those will be bounded
by the 1440x900 resolution.

~~~
sukuriant
I don't own a mac, are there no system-wide font settings like there are in
Windows?

~~~
lbotos
I didn't see anything on my MacBook. A quick google search and it looks like
there isn't. I do know that some/most apps allow you to resize type on a per
app basis though.

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mgcross
After taking a look at Xcode in an Air Display window on a new iPad (2048x1536
across 10"), I don't think I'd even want to use the MBP retina display at
native res - I was having trouble reading the text at > 12" away.

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colinplamondon
To me, 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB of RAM on a super thin, light, laptop is a
pretty big upgrade. I used to be on a maxed out 17", happily switched to a
maxed out 11", and am now beyond psyched to get my maxed 15".

~~~
petercooper
Not to contradict your general point, but the i5/i7 MBPs from early 2011
onwards support 16GB total - it was just not a config Apple sold for some
reason.

~~~
jdboyd
Of course, it is probably too early to be sure, but this model might very well
take 32 gigs while Apple just doesn't sell that config for some reason.

~~~
snikch
It's soldered on :(

~~~
beedogs
Wait, the RAM on a $2200 professional model laptop is fucking __soldered on
__???

Apple continues to disappoint. This kills any desire I had to buy one of
these. If I can't keep upgrading it over the next few years as I need it, what
is the point of buying this over an Air?

~~~
loginx
I had the same concerns so i researched it a bit more. While the processors
used in these new macbook pros can address up to 32gb of RAM on the system,
the DDR3 standard accomodates for up to 8gb per chip. With 2 chip slots, you
are already maxed out, regardless of whether the chips are soldered on or not,
so it makes no difference.

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Steko
"Since the OS and apps will be in HiDPI mode"

I'm pretty sure not only will many popular apps be updated but you can turn
HiDPI off.

With updated apps I believe you'd have to be using ~43% of your screen on
chrome and UI elements to lose real estate when moving to the retina MBP.

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snikch
If you get 4x the clarity, then you can reduce the size of various things,
font size, window size etc. So while the concept of resolution as you know it
may not have changed, you can easily put more 'stuff' on the screen – more
real estate.

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glitch
[http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2078/Screen%20Shot%202...](http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2078/Screen%20Shot%202012-06-11%20at%204.36.07%20PM.png)

It appears that the "Scaled" as "More Space" setting merely renders everything
in HiDPI mode (2x widget size) with a canvas render resolution of 3840x2400
and then scales it down on the 2880x1800 display.

Just download the image linked above and display at as "Full Screen" and "Zoom
to Fit" under Preview on an existing 15" MBP—it'll give ya an idea of what the
"More Space" setting scales visual elements as.

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rdl
I think the increase in resolution wins out for the 15" HD vs. the HiDPI.

However, the 17" 1920x1200 is probably still superior (due to physical size)
in the "luggable" mode. If you for some reason can't rely on an external
monitor, the 17" could easily be better for some uses, even compared to
1920x1200 scaled. IPS vs. PVA might be enough to tip the balance for the new
one (one of the main advantages of a 17" would be sharing a screen with
someone else, but the wider viewing angle of the IPS screen would win for
that).

~~~
ktsmith
It looks like the 17" model has been discontinued however. This makes me feel
better about replacing my 2007 17" model in April with the late 2011 variant.

~~~
jcnnghm
I really hope this is not the case. The upgrades to the 15" and 17" Macbook
Pro's were really incremental. I don't think it would be surprising to see an
updated 17" at some point in the future.

~~~
sciurus
The 17" MBP no longer shows up on the apple website.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4096509>

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greghinch
Wow I have no idea who this author is, but jeez get over yourself. An article
comparing resolution sizes could have easily been written without coming off
as an entitled brat. No one is holding a gun to your head saying that you must
upgrade your 2 year old laptop, so stop whining that it's not the pony you
were dreaming of.

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uzyn
Apple is forcing app and web designers to make 2 versions of a desktop app or
website (discounting mobile and tablet versions).

One for normal resolution, the other for Retinal displays, with @2x images and
ability to reduce icon sizes on toolbars, etc for more real estate.

~~~
freehunter
Seems like a properly coded website should be able to handle a very wide
variety of screen resolutions. Seems silly to have a desktop site serve
different templates based on something as wildly varying as a screen
resolution.

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ChuckMcM
I've seen several comments like this, the pixels are there so it seems
reasonable that with some software you should be able to select really really
tiny icons if you wanted too.

~~~
codeka
Should be able to and "will" be able to are different things, though.

Technically, you could just choose a 9pt font or something for text display,
but everything else is going to look huge by comparison (window decorations,
toolbars and whatnot).

~~~
stinky613
I'm sure you could manage between CandyBar (<http://panic.com/candybar/>) and
whatever else is out there

EDIT: CandyBar doesn't seem to help much; however there are already many fonts
and icons that can be scaled through preferences. I don't have an answer yet
for toolbars, etc. I wonder if there's something that can be changed in the
terminal (com.apple.?)

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drivebyacct2
So does that mean that claims of OS X being resolution independent are
incorrect? If OS X is truly resolution independent, couldn't an individual
user choose the "effective" resolution at which they want the UI to be
rendered in?

How does this affect machines in Bootcamp mode? Maybe this will easily sway me
back to the even-more-portable Air. Sorry for the naive questions.

~~~
wmf
Apple and Microsoft worked on arbitrary resolution independence for years.
It's nearly impossible to make it work right because things look blurry unless
you redo _everything_ as vector graphics and even that isn't perfect. [1]
(Appropriate hardware wasn't available, so their failure kinda didn't matter.)
Then Apple decided to just double everything in iOS, which made things
tractable enough. OS X is mostly following the same approach, although there
is a compromise mode where the screen is rendered at 2x resolution and then
scaled down to fit the LCD.

[1] See <http://dcurt.is/pixel-fitting>

