Why didn't they do 2560x1400 or 2560x1600? 2800x1800 is a 1.5:1 ratio, which increases black bars on the top and bottom of video clips, which means less screen real estate when video editing. It just doesn't make sense why they went this route at all.
yup. i'm windows based and have always preferred 16x10 to 16x9. to me, 1680 x1050 is still the best balance between res and useabilty so I hope it resurrects that long lost "standard"
It's probably because of increase in the number of 27" 2560x1440 panels with LED backlight, they're now more widespread than 30" 2560x1600, so that's probably on of the reasons. They should be slightly cheaper as well. I've no idea why no 1920x1200 for a smaller one, but there should be a similar reason.
The 16:10 panel in that size class (2560 wide) in IPS is a 30" which still costs (as a standalone display) roughly double what 27" 16:9 screens cost. The old Apple 30" Cinema Display was one of those.
The other option is to go smaller, at 1920x1200 24". 27" 2560x1440 16:9 is apparently what apple considers to be the best price/performance mix.
It's 2880x1800 not 2800x1800. That's 16:10 which is standard, they doubled 1440x900 in each direction resulting in four times the pixels to make for an easy transition of existing apps.
I'll admit I cringed when I saw that resolution... My $600 XPS15 is "Retina" at 24" away while still using the convenient entertainment industry standard of 1080p.
I do celebrate them pushing in the industry for such high resolutions, but the fact that they couldn't be bothered to use something like 2560x1440 which scales 720 perfectly means I'll be using my 120hz 1440p Catleap to satisfy the majority of my blu-ray/gaming needs for at least few years.
The entertainment standard of 1080p is a myth. Few, if any, movie releases actually have 1080 vertical pixels. Typically, far less. Only ones I have seen are TV shows.
At any rate, sit far enough away, anything becomes "retina." Then again, the "PC Standard," is now 1366x768 (if webdata is to be trusted, it overtook 1024x768 recently).
I should clarify and say that most of my archived blu-rays are anime series, the majority of which are not lazy upscales. Over all 5+ TB, the distribution is fairly evenly split between 720 and 1080. I admit it's probably not the norm for TV or even movies, but I've had a couple releases in 1080p at >30FPS for a few years now (which is why I'm not as bothered by the idea of higher framerates for movies as most people seem to be). Between the 1080p display on the XPS which received high praise from Anandtech a few years ago and the 120FPS-capable Catleap (which for all intents and purposes is an ever so slightly less vivid Cinema display), I always have a pretty screen that can handle 16:9 content without scaling issues.
So you're saying black bars at the top and bottom would ruin your anime experience? But somehow the bezel surrounding your current 16:9 display would not ruin your experience? :)
They 'no pick standard resolution' because that was likely not enough pixels to create a usable desktop experience at half of each dimension and was also not enough pixels to meet the criteria of retina for them?
The device effectively operates at 1440x900 except where applications have been optimized to support the super high resolution display (unless you set it otherwise). In 2560x1440 land you'd be, as you said at 720p, which is too small for the audience this device is targeting.
Win8 will handle it similarly to OSX as long as you stay in Metro, the desktop DPI scaling is the same as Win7 so it'll be pretty much unusable at default resolution.
You could drop the resolution to 1440x900 though, no need for DPI scaling then and it'll look just fine.
As a user of Windows 7 and OSX with my rMBP, I can say that Windows does not handle dpi scaling properly. Some elements are tiny, some are regular size, some text is fuzzy and some is crisp. Luckily I only use Windows for games as it isn't very usable otherwise. OSX was designed for the retina display therefore I have never come across any rendering issues (it just gets fuzzier if it's not supported, and by now virtually every app is supported).
Doesn't that first picture pretty much answer your question. All the pictures I have seen of the new MBP have had some severe glare on screen. I don't see a matte user being too happy with that.
See the picture in the article. A third of the screen is lost in glare from the window, on what appears to be a cloudy day. So in other words, no, not usable at all.
ASUS actually one upped Apple when it comes to ultraportable res, the new Zenbooks have 1080p panels at 11.6 and 13 inches... Lots of Win8 devices will be 1080p at similar sizes, I'm actually surprised Apple only updated one 15" model, but I'm glad they stuck with 16:10.
> Selecting any of these options gives you the effective desktop resolution of the setting, but Apple actually renders the screen at a higher resolution and scales it to fit the 2880 x 1800 panel
Is it possible that bitmaps are scaled whereas vector graphics (including fonts) are actually rendered using extra resolution? If so, this would be a breakthrough - beginnings of a transition from raster to vector rendering.
It'll be interesting to see, but with only 1GB of VRAM on a 128bit wide bus I can't see it pushing all 5.2 billion pixels at anything but low on a couple year old games. It should run games at 1440x900 quite well though, and it won't get any funny scaling issues being 1/4 the native resolution.
Anand, how about some first impressions of the display?! Is it a waste of pixels from any reasonable sitting distance or does it completely blow your mind? Or somewhere inbetween?
Suprise suprise, when you sit 2ft away from your 15" laptop, which is pretty normal for me and most people I know, all you need is a 1080P display to get retina quality, demonstrating how useless all the extra pixels are.
Further, it also shows that from 2.5ft or greater, my 2560*1600 30" display is plenty to get retina class resolution.
True, but the key is different usage scenarios. You are a lot more likely to be 10" from your iPhone than you are to be 10" from your laptop screen. In fact, I can't imagine a single case when you'd be less than 2 ft from your laptop display. Thus, apple's display doesn''t really make any sense, though the fact that its probably a IPS display will make most consumers think its a lot better, plus the fact that it isn't 768P.
I meant, "there exists a distance (not necessarily 10") such that every screen is as "Retina" as [the iPhone 4 at 10"]."
I didn't mean to suggest that we need to compare _every_ device at 10", only that the iPhone 4 meets the "Retina" qualification at around 10", so the resulting angle is used as a benchmark for other screens at varying sizes, pixel counts, and distances.
This is exactly why this resolution is worthless on a 15" laptop or even a 17" laptop. 1080p is the absolute max useful resolution on a 17" screen. I suppose there are a few people who can see that kinda resolution but they are few and far between. I regularly have to turn 22" and 24" displays down 1440x900 or lower for the 40+ crowd at work.
You don't get it, clearly. This isn't just for more desktop real estate, or to game on higher res. It's to make everything more detailed. This is entirely dependent on the content you'll be looking at. The Apps will scale so they're not really a big deal. But yes, this is for those that can take advantage of it. A power user if you will. Is this not what they've always asked for? Now that it's here people are saying it's pointless.... Yes let's stop tech at here. God forbid we ever reach lifelike quality displays...
Seriously. Do people not realize how much time is spent staring at text on computer screens, and how much easier it is to read smaller type sizes on higher resolution displays?
I guess the misconception comes from years of terrible resolution scaling by most OS's and applications. Can you imagine dialing your printer back to 72 DPI for the 40+ crowd instead of just changing the font size?
Jeesh, affordable printers that could manage 144 DPI were available back in the 80's. I can't believe some bourgeois, elitist pigs went off and pushed printer technology to 300 and then 600 DPI and beyond, when clearly that additional level of detail is worthless at typical reading distances based on the average adult male's arm length...
It may not be a huge boon for everyone, but its far from worthless. I actually wish they had updated some of their other Macs with higher res displays (not necessarily 2880 x 1800). It does seem like it was done to a certain extent to grab headlines and blast Retina Display all over the place tho, considering the 13" Air saw no update (probably the most popular model atm no? tho I guess 15" MBP has to be a close second).
The Air is the cheap model, so *of course* it doesn't get retina at the same time as the Pro. It did get an update, by the way, just not a new screen.
The most popular single model is actually the MBP 13, allegedly.
The 15" Retina MBP is, price wise, set somewhat in between the previous MBP 15 and 17 (it's priced like the 17, but now includes SSD as standard).
Why would you expect anything else but the most expensive model to get a Retina display?
The lineup for the next couple of years will be MBA 11, 13, MBP-R 15. The old MBP 13/15 will be going away as soon as the price gap between MBA 13 and MBP-R 15 can be closed far enough that there is not a $1000, 50% pricing difference. Probably WWDC 2013.
Can you elaborate on "a result of the upscaled rendering, there can be a performance and quality impact"? In what scenarios is performance and quality impacted, and in the latter, how is quality impacted?
The problem is that you won't be able to get a screenshot of that, because screenshotting takes place before the GPU's output scaling.
I scaled the AnandTech screenshots (using IrfanView, using the Lanczos filter), and the "1024x600" and "1280x800" modes will look a bit fuzzy to someone with good vision sitting very close, but it's quite serviceable.
Past about 22" away, someone with 20/20 vision won't notice it. I've effectively got far better than 20/20 on my left eye (with glasses) due to vision correction needed for my right eye, and I can notice it on my 170 ppi ThinkPad display at reasonable distances, but it's not annoying like, say, 1024x600 on a 1440x900 display would be. And that's at 170 ppi, this is 220 ppi.
As for the higher modes... the "1440x900" mode is of course razor sharp, and the modes above that are also razor sharp even though they're being downscaled. It helps that OS X's font rendering is a touch on the fuzzy side anyway, though - Windows font rendering goes for sharper letterforms, and I think it'd be slightly more noticeable on Windows.
I'd share the URL to the directory on my server where I have those images, but I'm worried about bandwidth (my connection is slow).
Yeah, I’m going to rescale them myself too. I’m just worried about the quality of the scaling performed by the MacBook Pro. The full-screen zoom on Snow Leopard is bilinear, for example.
Quote:"there's no default option for 2880 x 1800, which is understandable given just how tiny text would be at that resolution"
Text size on the screen depends on the DPI. At native resolution there would be a much higher dots per inch for the UI framework, and the text rendering engine would use higher number of pixels to render font of same size as normal. Text would just be more clearly rendered.
IIRC five years ago it was possible in linux configure X server simply by giving display geometry (physical height & width) and pixel size. System then computed DPI and rendered 10pt font to be 10pt font. I could put any two different displays side by side and if configured properly both will render the font at the same pitch (though at different DPI).
I believe (never tested it though) MacOS is past X server, so now I do not understand, why using native 2880x1800 should make any text unreadable. In fact it should be better readable than anything seen before because of no aliasing.
Compared to linux, Windows never used real display geometry, for Windows every display was 95 DPI, or 120 DPI, for those brave enough to switch.
A question, but resolution 1440*900 is supported? becouse it is exactly half of 2880*1800, and 1 pixel is 4 pixel; so if you have a problem with a game you can go down on that resolution without problems about displays with the non native resolution. Another question, 1680*1050 and ect, it is a resolution scaling like Windows (100-125-150% dpi)? or is a really change of resolution?. If it isn't, how the display works at this resolution, is possible to use it? Becouse if i use Windows or game (i understand this isn't pc for gaming, but sometime i like to use it and i think use osx + Windows can give better experience), this thing become more important, especially 1440*900 non retiana.
10.7.4 changed the font rendering algorithm quite noticeably (at least for me it is a huge step backwards -- no idea why no one else hasn't complained). On my 17" MBP (Early 2011) with Anti-Glare Display it is quite easy to see that the text is rendered using much more grey around the glyphs thus reducing contrast thus making text much less crisp and harder to read. The negative impact was so apparent when I booted up after the update that I seriously thought about getting my eyes checked that moment...
Reminds me of the first (non-subpixel) antialiasing tries without proper font hinting on Linux 10 years ago. Horrible...
I hope they'll find a way to fix this for non-Retina users...
I'm a bit confused about how it scales, so elements on screen *look* like they are at a lower resolution, but during the presentation they showed a 1080p movie playing using a fraction of the screen space, if everything displays like it would at a lower res that would not be possible. So what were they talking about there, how would a non-scaled 1080p video play?
I got a MBP 2011 and a 24 inches 1080 monitor. I was wondering if i could run it in a 1440x900 or a 1280x720 resolution in a scaled mode like the new MBP retina does with higher resolutions.
What I mean is not only setting the resolution to 1440x900 or 1280x720, but make it be in this proportion but send 1920x1080 to my monitor, like the other scaling options on the retina MBP.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
74 Comments
Back to Article
quiksilvr - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Why didn't they do 2560x1400 or 2560x1600? 2800x1800 is a 1.5:1 ratio, which increases black bars on the top and bottom of video clips, which means less screen real estate when video editing. It just doesn't make sense why they went this route at all.rscoot - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Huh? 2880x1800 is 16:10 just like every mbp has been for like 6 years or something.RamarC - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
yup. i'm windows based and have always preferred 16x10 to 16x9. to me, 1680 x1050 is still the best balance between res and useabilty so I hope it resurrects that long lost "standard"eanazag - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
I agree. My favorite 15.4" laptop was a Dell with 1680x1050.schenley101 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
its a 16:10 ratio. 2880x1800 not 2800x1800iwod - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
I never knew the MBP remains a 16:10 Ratio! Why do they not used 16:10 on iMac as well?16:9 just doesn't make sense for Computer usage.
maratus - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
It's probably because of increase in the number of 27" 2560x1440 panels with LED backlight, they're now more widespread than 30" 2560x1600, so that's probably on of the reasons. They should be slightly cheaper as well. I've no idea why no 1920x1200 for a smaller one, but there should be a similar reason.JasperJanssen - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
The 16:10 panel in that size class (2560 wide) in IPS is a 30" which still costs (as a standalone display) roughly double what 27" 16:9 screens cost. The old Apple 30" Cinema Display was one of those.The other option is to go smaller, at 1920x1200 24". 27" 2560x1440 16:9 is apparently what apple considers to be the best price/performance mix.
radbmw - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
It's 2880x1800 not 2800x1800. That's 16:10 which is standard, they doubled 1440x900 in each direction resulting in four times the pixels to make for an easy transition of existing apps.quiksilvr - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
AHHHHH missed the 8 between the 8 and 0. Sorry for the pointless post.ViperV990 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
On the other hand, 1024x768 isn't 16:10 - looks like it should be 1024x600 instead.cyabud - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Tech spec page says:Supported resolutions: 2880x1800 pixels (Retina); scaled resolutions: 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1280x800 and 1024x640 pixels
Grimmm - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
I'll admit I cringed when I saw that resolution... My $600 XPS15 is"Retina" at 24" away while still using the convenient entertainment
industry standard of 1080p.
I do celebrate them pushing in the industry for such high resolutions,
but the fact that they couldn't be bothered to use something like
2560x1440 which scales 720 perfectly means I'll be using my 120hz
1440p Catleap to satisfy the majority of my blu-ray/gaming needs for
at least few years.
jeremyshaw - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
The entertainment standard of 1080p is a myth. Few, if any, movie releases actually have 1080 vertical pixels. Typically, far less. Only ones I have seen are TV shows.At any rate, sit far enough away, anything becomes "retina." Then again, the "PC Standard," is now 1366x768 (if webdata is to be trusted, it overtook 1024x768 recently).
Grimmm - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
I should clarify and say that most of my archived blu-rays are anime series, the majority of which are not lazy upscales. Over all 5+ TB, the distribution is fairly evenly split between 720 and 1080. I admit it's probably not the norm for TV or even movies, but I've had a couple releases in 1080p at >30FPS for a few years now (which is why I'm not as bothered by the idea of higher framerates for movies as most people seem to be). Between the 1080p display on the XPS which received high praise from Anandtech a few years ago and the 120FPS-capable Catleap (which for all intents and purposes is an ever so slightly less vivid Cinema display), I always have a pretty screen that can handle 16:9 content without scaling issues.darkcrayon - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
So you're saying black bars at the top and bottom would ruin your anime experience? But somehow the bezel surrounding your current 16:9 display would not ruin your experience? :)piroroadkill - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
"the fact that they couldn't be bothered to use something like2560x1440 which scales 720 perfectly"
What the fuck? Oh no, they gave me a higher resolution than I wanted.. waa.. waa?
Tegeril - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
They 'no pick standard resolution' because that was likely not enough pixels to create a usable desktop experience at half of each dimension and was also not enough pixels to meet the criteria of retina for them?The device effectively operates at 1440x900 except where applications have been optimized to support the super high resolution display (unless you set it otherwise). In 2560x1440 land you'd be, as you said at 720p, which is too small for the audience this device is targeting.
Tegeril - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Also, 16:9 laptops are :(schenley101 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Shouldn't it be 4 pixels? The resolution is doubled in both dimensions.RamarC - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
2 physical height X 2 physical width = 2x2 = 4.pesos - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
how will this work under windoze? i know win8 is ready for hi-res displays - will it detect the 2880x1800 from the start?tipoo - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
I'm 90% sure I read Windows 8 will detect and scale like you said. Not sure how Windows 7 will handle it.Rand - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Win8 will handle it similarly to OSX as long as you stay in Metro, the desktop DPI scaling is the same as Win7 so it'll be pretty much unusable at default resolution.You could drop the resolution to 1440x900 though, no need for DPI scaling then and it'll look just fine.
ananduser - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Actually Win7's built in dpi scaling works fine. Better than OSX anyway as it is resolution agnostic.stu_douglas - Sunday, March 10, 2013 - link
As a user of Windows 7 and OSX with my rMBP, I can say that Windows does not handle dpi scaling properly. Some elements are tiny, some are regular size, some text is fuzzy and some is crisp. Luckily I only use Windows for games as it isn't very usable otherwise. OSX was designed for the retina display therefore I have never come across any rendering issues (it just gets fuzzier if it's not supported, and by now virtually every app is supported).NorthernRage - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Can you speak to the glossy or reflective nature of the screen? Will matte users find it usable?SpartanJet - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Doesn't that first picture pretty much answer your question. All the pictures I have seen of the new MBP have had some severe glare on screen. I don't see a matte user being too happy with that.tipoo - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Yeah, they said reflections were reduced 75% or something but it looks pretty reflect-ey, comments?ImSpartacus - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
25% of a large quantity can still be unacceptably large.rs2 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
See the picture in the article. A third of the screen is lost in glare from the window, on what appears to be a cloudy day. So in other words, no, not usable at all.Henk Poley - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
It appears they still don't use something like Schott Mirogard anti-reflective coating. So it's pretty reflective, as seen in the pictures.RamarC - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
signed..,. most windows laptop manufacturers ;-)Denithor - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Well said!Too bad more manufacturers aren't following Apple's lead (yet). I refuse to buy an Apple but damn, they design nice hardware.
Impulses - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
ASUS actually one upped Apple when it comes to ultraportable res, the new Zenbooks have 1080p panels at 11.6 and 13 inches... Lots of Win8 devices will be 1080p at similar sizes, I'm actually surprised Apple only updated one 15" model, but I'm glad they stuck with 16:10.steven75 - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - link
How is that one upping Apple when the Air line hasn't yet been made Retina? 1080p is barely better than what's been out for 4-5 years now.AlexFeren - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
> Selecting any of these options gives you the effective desktop resolution of the setting, but Apple actually renders the screen at a higher resolution and scales it to fit the 2880 x 1800 panelIs it possible that bitmaps are scaled whereas vector graphics (including fonts) are actually rendered using extra resolution? If so, this would be a breakthrough - beginnings of a transition from raster to vector rendering.
etamin - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
I wonder how well the 650M is able to drive this display with medium gaming.ImSpartacus - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
I wouldn't even bother at 2880x1800. Just game at 1440x900 and call it a day.frostyfiredude - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
It'll be interesting to see, but with only 1GB of VRAM on a 128bit wide bus I can't see it pushing all 5.2 billion pixels at anything but low on a couple year old games. It should run games at 1440x900 quite well though, and it won't get any funny scaling issues being 1/4 the native resolution.ispaure - Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - link
Plays Far Cry 3 on High @ 1920x1200 |25-30 fps|, base 2.3Ghz model w/ 8gb RAMxp3nd4bl3 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Anand, how about some first impressions of the display?! Is it a waste of pixels from any reasonable sitting distance or does it completely blow your mind? Or somewhere inbetween?ImSpartacus - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
For a person with 20/20 vision 15" away, it's the same experience as an iPhone 4 at 10". Whether it's a "Retina" experience or not, I don't know.I cranked the numbers below:
http://goo.gl/dNkj6
xp3nd4bl3 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Thanks for that.SodaAnt - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Suprise suprise, when you sit 2ft away from your 15" laptop, which is pretty normal for me and most people I know, all you need is a 1080P display to get retina quality, demonstrating how useless all the extra pixels are.Further, it also shows that from 2.5ft or greater, my 2560*1600 30" display is plenty to get retina class resolution.
ImSpartacus - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Yup, there exists a distance such that EVERY screen is as "Retina" as the iPhone 4 at 10" (the perscribed distance from Apple).SodaAnt - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
True, but the key is different usage scenarios. You are a lot more likely to be 10" from your iPhone than you are to be 10" from your laptop screen. In fact, I can't imagine a single case when you'd be less than 2 ft from your laptop display. Thus, apple's display doesn''t really make any sense, though the fact that its probably a IPS display will make most consumers think its a lot better, plus the fact that it isn't 768P.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - link
I'm sorry, I worded my sentence poorly.I meant, "there exists a distance (not necessarily 10") such that every screen is as "Retina" as [the iPhone 4 at 10"]."
I didn't mean to suggest that we need to compare _every_ device at 10", only that the iPhone 4 meets the "Retina" qualification at around 10", so the resulting angle is used as a benchmark for other screens at varying sizes, pixel counts, and distances.
Einy0 - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
This is exactly why this resolution is worthless on a 15" laptop or even a 17" laptop. 1080p is the absolute max useful resolution on a 17" screen. I suppose there are a few people who can see that kinda resolution but they are few and far between. I regularly have to turn 22" and 24" displays down 1440x900 or lower for the 40+ crowd at work.EnzoFX - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
You don't get it, clearly. This isn't just for more desktop real estate, or to game on higher res. It's to make everything more detailed. This is entirely dependent on the content you'll be looking at. The Apps will scale so they're not really a big deal. But yes, this is for those that can take advantage of it. A power user if you will. Is this not what they've always asked for? Now that it's here people are saying it's pointless.... Yes let's stop tech at here. God forbid we ever reach lifelike quality displays...repoman27 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Seriously. Do people not realize how much time is spent staring at text on computer screens, and how much easier it is to read smaller type sizes on higher resolution displays?I guess the misconception comes from years of terrible resolution scaling by most OS's and applications. Can you imagine dialing your printer back to 72 DPI for the 40+ crowd instead of just changing the font size?
Jeesh, affordable printers that could manage 144 DPI were available back in the 80's. I can't believe some bourgeois, elitist pigs went off and pushed printer technology to 300 and then 600 DPI and beyond, when clearly that additional level of detail is worthless at typical reading distances based on the average adult male's arm length...
Impulses - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
It may not be a huge boon for everyone, but its far from worthless. I actually wish they had updated some of their other Macs with higher res displays (not necessarily 2880 x 1800). It does seem like it was done to a certain extent to grab headlines and blast Retina Display all over the place tho, considering the 13" Air saw no update (probably the most popular model atm no? tho I guess 15" MBP has to be a close second).JasperJanssen - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
The Air is the cheap model, so *of course* it doesn't get retina at the same time as the Pro. It did get an update, by the way, just not a new screen.The most popular single model is actually the MBP 13, allegedly.
The 15" Retina MBP is, price wise, set somewhat in between the previous MBP 15 and 17 (it's priced like the 17, but now includes SSD as standard).
Why would you expect anything else but the most expensive model to get a Retina display?
The lineup for the next couple of years will be MBA 11, 13, MBP-R 15. The old MBP 13/15 will be going away as soon as the price gap between MBA 13 and MBP-R 15 can be closed far enough that there is not a $1000, 50% pricing difference. Probably WWDC 2013.
steven75 - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - link
It is astounding for text, which is 90% of what everyone uses a computer for. Should greatly reduce the need for anti aliasing trickery.bhtooefr - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Grab Xcode 4, run /Developer/Applications/Graphic Tools/Quartz Debug, go to Window>UI Resolution, and uncheck Enable HiDPI display modes.Report what happens.
I'm thinking that will get the 2880x1800 native mode.
marlencrabapple - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - link
Has anybody tried this yet? I'd love to see if this is possible before I run out and buy one of these things.tetsujin256 - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Not sure if this works with Quartz Debug, but SwitchResX does the job and it sure is tiny...http://t.co/byGDo12F
somethingchanged - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Can you elaborate on "a result of the upscaled rendering, there can be a performance and quality impact"? In what scenarios is performance and quality impacted, and in the latter, how is quality impacted?Sypsy - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
1440x900 scaling, okay. I get it, 1 pixel = 2 by 2 (or 4 total pixels). It's clean, it's square. I'm happy.But I use a 1080p on a 15.6" screen. I would probably want a similar experience.
So let's assume I want to use a the 1920x1200 scaling. This means that every 1.5 actual pixels represents 1 "scaled" pixel.
So now, 1 pixel = 1.5 by 1.5 (or 2.25 total pixels). This is impossible, so what happens?
Will small font look funny? Or is that why it's not "effective" and the nice round 1440x900 is ideal.
Sypsy - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Doh' nevermind. I seems it's answered in the next article. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macbook-pro-ret...mckale - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
I would highly appreciate if you could run Geekbench or/and Xbench and post the details or screenshots of your results.Thanks a lot!
Chortos-2 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
The screenshots in the gallery are all just pixel-quadrupled. The actual 2880-by-1400 pictures displayed would be much more interesting and useful.bhtooefr - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
The problem is that you won't be able to get a screenshot of that, because screenshotting takes place before the GPU's output scaling.I scaled the AnandTech screenshots (using IrfanView, using the Lanczos filter), and the "1024x600" and "1280x800" modes will look a bit fuzzy to someone with good vision sitting very close, but it's quite serviceable.
Past about 22" away, someone with 20/20 vision won't notice it. I've effectively got far better than 20/20 on my left eye (with glasses) due to vision correction needed for my right eye, and I can notice it on my 170 ppi ThinkPad display at reasonable distances, but it's not annoying like, say, 1024x600 on a 1440x900 display would be. And that's at 170 ppi, this is 220 ppi.
As for the higher modes... the "1440x900" mode is of course razor sharp, and the modes above that are also razor sharp even though they're being downscaled. It helps that OS X's font rendering is a touch on the fuzzy side anyway, though - Windows font rendering goes for sharper letterforms, and I think it'd be slightly more noticeable on Windows.
I'd share the URL to the directory on my server where I have those images, but I'm worried about bandwidth (my connection is slow).
Chortos-2 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Yeah, I’m going to rescale them myself too. I’m just worried about the quality of the scaling performed by the MacBook Pro. The full-screen zoom on Snow Leopard is bilinear, for example.bhtooefr - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Well, IrfanView calls that triangle scaling... honestly, it doesn't look bad, at least at 2048x1280 scaled to 2880x1800.The bilinear scaling is a bit fuzzier, but it's also less harsh (it hides some of the pixel boundaries that the Lanczos filter leaves evident).
Chortos-2 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
I meant 2880-by-1800, of course.policeman0077 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
the resolution is actually quadedgirishp - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Quote:"there's no default option for 2880 x 1800, which is understandable given just how tiny text would be at that resolution"Text size on the screen depends on the DPI. At native resolution there would be a much higher dots per inch for the UI framework, and the text rendering engine would use higher number of pixels to render font of same size as normal. Text would just be more clearly rendered.
The exact same thing is done on new iPad
risa2000 - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
IIRC five years ago it was possible in linux configure X server simply by giving display geometry (physical height & width) and pixel size.System then computed DPI and rendered 10pt font to be 10pt font. I could put any two different displays side by side and if configured properly both will render the font at the same pitch (though at different DPI).
I believe (never tested it though) MacOS is past X server, so now I do not understand, why using native 2880x1800 should make any text unreadable. In fact it should be better readable than anything seen before because of no aliasing.
Compared to linux, Windows never used real display geometry, for Windows every display was 95 DPI, or 120 DPI, for those brave enough to switch.
Sfasciacarene - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
A question, but resolution 1440*900 is supported? becouse it is exactly half of 2880*1800, and 1 pixel is 4 pixel; so if you have a problem with a game you can go down on that resolution without problems about displays with the non native resolution.Another question, 1680*1050 and ect, it is a resolution scaling like Windows (100-125-150% dpi)? or is a really change of resolution?. If it isn't, how the display works at this resolution, is possible to use it?
Becouse if i use Windows or game (i understand this isn't pc for gaming, but sometime i like to use it and i think use osx + Windows can give better experience), this thing become more important, especially 1440*900 non retiana.
Sorry for my bad english
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - link
10.7.4 changed the font rendering algorithm quite noticeably (at least for me it is a huge step backwards -- no idea why no one else hasn't complained). On my 17" MBP (Early 2011) with Anti-Glare Display it is quite easy to see that the text is rendered using much more grey around the glyphs thus reducing contrast thus making text much less crisp and harder to read. The negative impact was so apparent when I booted up after the update that I seriously thought about getting my eyes checked that moment...Reminds me of the first (non-subpixel) antialiasing tries without proper font hinting on Linux 10 years ago. Horrible...
I hope they'll find a way to fix this for non-Retina users...
tipoo - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
I'm a bit confused about how it scales, so elements on screen *look* like they are at a lower resolution, but during the presentation they showed a 1080p movie playing using a fraction of the screen space, if everything displays like it would at a lower res that would not be possible. So what were they talking about there, how would a non-scaled 1080p video play?luizhdcosta - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I got a MBP 2011 and a 24 inches 1080 monitor. I was wondering if i could run it in a 1440x900 or a 1280x720 resolution in a scaled mode like the new MBP retina does with higher resolutions.What I mean is not only setting the resolution to 1440x900 or 1280x720, but make it be in this proportion but send 1920x1080 to my monitor, like the other scaling options on the retina MBP.
platinumjsi - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Can someone explain to me why the OS cant output at the native res and just increase the text / app size?