Why is 1440 x 900 "Best" for the Retina Screen per Apple?

Whoah, for a second I thought you were the person who gave me her retina Macbook to prep while she was away for Friday to Sunday.

But she drives a Z3 ;-)

My take on it is that althought the native rez is 2880, only specially written apps and specific parts of the quartz engine will take advantage of it.... text rendering, UI elements, icon renderin, etc.

In my quick tests, if you run a 3D game, and the MacBook is set to 1440 mode, all you get is pixel quadrupled 2880. The only way to get true 2880 in an appilcation that doesn't know about retina is to find a cheat like SwitchrezX like SoldOnMac found (or get close with the built-in setting of 1920x1200). Of course all the other UI elements are tiny! I'll be someone finds a plist setting to get 2880 without SwitchResX.

I think you are right.. Typing this right now on my MBP-R

You see, when apple says Retina optimized apps, I think they are saying that if it is not optimized, it will run in pixel doubling mode and show up as 1400 x 900, so the text size and quality etc. renders beautifully. However, if it is retina optimized, the app can access the native resolution.. So the menus will use pixel doubling and the image will be rendered 1 for 1 pixel. This is how they showed the full HD 1920 video running on native pixels in Final Cut Pro. They also mentioned the Adobe is busy working on a release for photoshop, which should provide the same capability - ie. the image will use 1:1 pixels..

Well, that's what I think is going on :-)

Nick

Nicholas Dawes wrote:

So the menus will use pixel doubling and the image will be rendered 1 for 1 pixel. This is how they showed the full HD 1920 video running on native pixels in Final Cut Pro. They also mentioned the Adobe is busy working on a release for photoshop, which should provide the same capability - ie. the image will use 1:1 pixels..

Yup, and that's the problem.

If a video editor want's to run an HD video full screen, it has to be interpolated pixels since 1920x1080 doesn't map well to 2880

so if you want to play back full HD with native pixels... it'll be small. Already small on a 15" screen, and then only partially over half the screen

Also If you run any resolutoin other than 1440x900 all graphics that you see on the web can't be shown 1:1, so they have to be reinterpolated, also blurring all the pixels.

SoldOnMac wrote:

"Basically the native resolution of the retina display is 2880x1800.

so if you're using 1440x900 then everything is perfect (which is why apple recommends it). Every pixel can be mapped to 2 pixels of the retina display, and everything is sharp."

Well, 4 pixels. But I'm sure that's what you meant. :-)

ha. yes. thank you.

good to know people read these things 🙂

2 pixels both horizontally and vertically, or 1 pixel maps to a 4x4 area (referred to as pixel doubling because it doubles both horizontally and vertically)

GTCA wrote:

...There is no option for native 2880 x 1800 as presumably the text would be so tiny...

FWIW, here is supposed to be a way to run the Retina Display at 1 to 1:

Awesome! Thanks for pointing to that link!

There are actually five choice now.

Four (SwitchResX, SetResX, scrutil, ChangeResolution) are listed at http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/18/3-ways-to-run-a-retina-macbook-pro-at-2880x1800-n ative-resolution/

QuickSilver also has a DIsplays Plugin that will you change resolutions.

d

It's easy!

The resolution is 2880 x 1800, sure enough, but imagine if that resolution was used in a 15" screen with no adjustment to the software. Everything would be tiny - not only text, but all the icons, window borders, the mouse cursor, everything.

So Apple have made some modifications to the operating system for high density screens.

What they've done, basically, is double the size of every element on the screen, in terms of the number of pixels used. So on a retina screen, in "Best" mode, the system is using 2x2 pixels to display something that on a standard density screen would be displayed with a single pixel.

When they say "1440 x 900 (best)", they're being a little bit disingenuous - what they actually mean is "2800 x 1800 but looks the same size as an old 1440 x 900 screen". The reason that this is "best" is that the other sizes do not map exactly and are cleverly scaled to the screen.

In all the scaled resolutions, what's actually sent to the screen is a scaled version of double the resolution that they say in the text. So when they say "1680x1050", they're actually showing you 3360x2100 scaled down to fit the screen at 2880x1800.

Best solution:

QuickRes

Free, simple, mac GUI, little footprint, 2880 & 2560 resolutions

What is the point of spending all that money on a fancy 2880x1800 resolution screen, but not setting your resolution to 2880x1800?

Although the computer resolution is set to 1440x900, the extra pixels provide "HIDPI mode" where text, icons and graphics are actually rendered at 2800x1800 in programs that support HIDPI mode. So, it provides for a much sharper image.

alanchrishughes wrote:

What is the point of spending all that money on a fancy 2880x1800 resolution screen, but not setting your resolution to 2880x1800?

If your eyes are up to it, why not set your resolution there? See Eye-Friendly in the App Store. The resulting screen real-estate is remarkable. But, of course, your eyes have to be really good.

Some 3D games will present you with 2880x1800 as an option, some will only give you the current screen size as the max (if you set 1920x1200 for your desktop, that will be the max for the game).

Regards, Patrick

So it uses two sets of resolution at the same time?

alanchrishughes wrote:

So it uses two sets of resolution at the same time?

Sort of... Applications that don't know about HiDPI mode will see the screen resolution as whatever you set in the Monitors control panel. Applications that know about HiDPI mode can access the full resolution of the display. Much of the UI will take advantage of it even if the application doesn't know about HiDPI.... menu text, dialog buttons, etc that are actually drawn by the OS are drawn at the higher DPI.

For example, the Finder on a traditional display might display a 32x32 pixel icon for a file. On a retina display, it draws it using 64x64 pixels, but it occupies the same size on the screen.