Retina Macbook Pro 15" official

[slashbinslashbash]

Ok, so if you were running one of the new ones at 1920x1200... That maps 2:3 to the native resolution of 2880x1800. So if you have a single pixel at the virtual 1920x1200 resolution, that should map to 1.5 pixels on the physical display. Obviously that is impossible, so what do they do instead? I just don't understand how it could come out looking right. I can't try this on my 1680x1050 MBP; 1120x700 isn't an option under OS X. Trying any of the other options (1440x852, 1280x1024, 1280x800) looks like crap. Fuzziness everywhere.

 

[Childs]

Ok, so if you were running one of the new ones at 1920x1200... That maps 2:3 to the native resolution of 2880x1800. So if you have a single pixel at the virtual 1920x1200 resolution, that should map to 1.5 pixels on the physical display. Obviously that is impossible, so what do they do instead? I just don't understand how it could come out looking right. I can't try this on my 1680x1050 MBP; 1120x700 isn't an option under OS X. Trying any of the other options (1440x852, 1280x1024, 1280x800) looks like crap. Fuzziness everywhere.

It looks razor sharp at all resolutions. I stepped through each option and they all looked like native resolutions.

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast

 

[slashbinslashbash]

It looks razor sharp at all resolutions. I stepped through each option and they all looked like native resolutions.

Wow. Color me impressed then. Was this with any old program, or only the Apple applications? Word/Excel? Firefox? (big one for me, I can't live with another browser) I suppose they could build some sort of scaling into the Cocoa API which, AFAIK, most OSX-native programs now use.

 

[Steelbom]

Somehow I'm disappointed. While I think they *can* charge this much, I see the increased resolution as a disadvantage if you want to game.

I personally like 1680x1050 a LOT, meaning I still am leaning heavily towards the old MBP design. 4.5 lbs isn't that light, and if I wanted light I would've gone with the MBA. I guess 256gb is enough, but you can't upgrade the RAM nor can you upgrade the HD.

This is a bigger issue on the MBA where I would love to have 8gb and a larger SSD, but I don't want to pay up the wazoo for it. I can't really see myself paying $1599 for 8gb+256gb of space on a MBA. I can't even game on that. An MBP is at least more justifiable with its speed gains, discrete graphics, etc. t almost seems the old design MBP is a good choice because I can swap out my current SSD into it and upgrade the RAM for dirt cheap. However throwing in 1680x1050 brings my cost in a lot closer to the retina display version. I still maintain good gaming capability, and what not.

I guess I would've liked it if they reduced the old 15" MBP more, because once you upgrade the specs of a regular 15" it's more expensive than a retina MBP. Kinda annoyed. They should've priced it around $1600 or $1700 if they really wanted.

I guess what I'm saying is they should've just moved to the new form factor flat out and offered a non retina version for say $200 cheaper or something. Maybe $2k for the 1680x1050 model and $1800 for a 1400x900

It's fine for gaming since you can play at 1440x900 and still get the same quality as you would on a standard display.

I think he means when a lower res is expanded to a higher res screen. Like fullscreening a 480p video on 1080p

Oh I see. No it'll look just as bad as it does on a standard 15 inch display.

You can't run it at full res? WTF?

At least you can ramp it to 1920x1200 and get the same res as the 17".

Well this isn't going to impact me so much but for the guys that want to do some editing, being able to have a full 1080p video and then space for editing the time would be helpful...

It would have been nice to put to web browsers side by side or a browsers and a spreadsheet. I use to do this on my 1920x1200 monitors.

Koing

If they allowed it at native resolution everything would be too small. The 1920x1200 workspace is about as high as you can go.

Ok, so if you were running one of the new ones at 1920x1200... That maps 2:3 to the native resolution of 2880x1800. So if you have a single pixel at the virtual 1920x1200 resolution, that should map to 1.5 pixels on the physical display. Obviously that is impossible, so what do they do instead? I just don't understand how it could come out looking right. I can't try this on my 1680x1050 MBP; 1120x700 isn't an option under OS X. Trying any of the other options (1440x852, 1280x1024, 1280x800) looks like crap. Fuzziness everywhere.

No it doesn't. It renders at 3840x2400 and downscales to 1920x1200. Apps are only ever mapped 1:1.

 

[Childs]

Wow. Color me impressed then. Was this with any old program, or only the Apple applications? Word/Excel? Firefox? (big one for me, I can't live with another browser) I suppose they could build some sort of scaling into the Cocoa API which, AFAIK, most OSX-native programs now use.

All the built in apps, and the Pro Video apps. The only 3rd party app I saw was Aja System Test, and it was sharp as well. I don't doubt some 3rd party apps will have some anomalies, but it'll probably require an update.

 

[Koing]

On apps that support the Retina, you get full use of every pixel. Final Cut X for example has a full 1080p preview window in it now. As in the preview window is 1920*1080 pixels in size. iPhoto, Aperture, Photoshop, they all support the Retina display.

You just can't set the whole thing to always run everything at 2880*1800 in OS X. I would imagine that Windows could.

And again, you can set it to show 1920*1200 'pixels' (it apparently renders at 3840*2400 and then scales down according to Anand) so you can still do the side by side thing.

Gotcha. If iMovie at least runs as high res it can it'll be cool. I only ever import in 720p anyway

Koing

 

[gmaster456]

I think it is clocked the same.

And it's not a lot of pixels for normal desktop. At least I don't think it is more than what the GPU can handle.

The resolution seems a bit... high for games, but if games don't do AA, then I think it's a viable resolution to game at, and the GT 650M is just the right amount of muscle.

But man, am I going to enjoy Photoshop and AutoCAD on this thing...

It's not so much the graphics memory as it is the memory bandwidth and other factors. The 650m can hardly, if at all take advantage of 1gb of vram.

 

[Anubis]

On apps that support the Retina, you get full use of every pixel. Final Cut X for example has a full 1080p preview window in it now. As in the preview window is 1920*1080 pixels in size. iPhoto, Aperture, Photoshop, they all support the Retina display.

You just can't set the whole thing to always run everything at 2880*1800 in OS X. I would imagine that Windows could.

And again, you can set it to show 1920*1200 'pixels' (it apparently renders at 3840*2400 and then scales down according to Anand) so you can still do the side by side thing.

you can
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6008/windows-8-on-the-retina-display-macbook-pro

also its tiny, FWIW i have a 1920x1200 15.4 inch laptop running something above that would be annoying having it do it on a per application basis if a fine idea, however it seems it would have issues if you had say photoshop open but not fullscreened, you woudl be seeing 1/2 the monitor doing 1:1 pixel mapping @ 2880x1800 and the other half doing 1920*1200 with some scaling factor

 

[bleomycin]

Someone has found a quick "hack" for running the panel at native res under osx: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/v2uze/native_2880x1800_exposed_in_os_x/

I really hope a solution is found to enable this without any terrible problems, while i probably won't run that resolution all of the time it will certainly prove useful!

 

[RichieZ]

god dammit i should have ordered this on monday, trying to find one now and its impossible!

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I went and played with these machines at the Apple store over the weekend.

As a total package, this is undeniably a whale of a machine, but honestly I am not convinced that the Retina display creates that much of an advantage as opposed to a quality screen at a more conventional resolution (like the one on my mid-2009 13" MBP). I can see that for movie and photo editors, it would be a clearly beneficial upgrade, and if I were looking to get one unified laptop/desktop system, I'd look hard at a MBP Retina/Thunderbolt Display combo, but using this as a laptop alone (as I probably would), I think I might prefer a 13" MBP or MBA. I am not sure which I would buy if my MBP keeled over tomorrow (I think I am now 3 days past the end of AppleCare) - I'm thinking I might get the top-end 13" MBA.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

I think people need to remember the fact that this is a Pro laptop.

 

[Eug]

I went and played with these machines at the Apple store over the weekend.

As a total package, this is undeniably a whale of a machine, but honestly I am not convinced that the Retina display creates that much of an advantage as opposed to a quality screen at a more conventional resolution (like the one on my mid-2009 13" MBP). I can see that for movie and photo editors, it would be a clearly beneficial upgrade, and if I were looking to get one unified laptop/desktop system, I'd look hard at a MBP Retina/Thunderbolt Display combo, but using this as a laptop alone (as I probably would), I think I might prefer a 13" MBP or MBA. I am not sure which I would buy if my MBP keeled over tomorrow (I think I am now 3 days past the end of AppleCare) - I'm thinking I might get the top-end 13" MBA.

The main problem with the 13" MacBook Pro is that it retains the optical drive... and a lot of weight. The 15.4" MBP:TNG actually weighs slightly less than the 13" MacBook Pro, and well over 1 lb less than the 15.4" MacBook Pro.

I like my 2.26 Core 2 Duo 13" MacBook Pro a lot (now that it has an SSD in it), but the one thing that bugs me about it is the 4.5 lb weight. I'd prefer something closer to 3 lbs like the 13" MacBook Air.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I went and played with these machines at the Apple store over the weekend.

As a total package, this is undeniably a whale of a machine, but honestly I am not convinced that the Retina display creates that much of an advantage as opposed to a quality screen at a more conventional resolution (like the one on my mid-2009 13" MBP). I can see that for movie and photo editors, it would be a clearly beneficial upgrade, and if I were looking to get one unified laptop/desktop system, I'd look hard at a MBP Retina/Thunderbolt Display combo, but using this as a laptop alone (as I probably would), I think I might prefer a 13" MBP or MBA. I am not sure which I would buy if my MBP keeled over tomorrow (I think I am now 3 days past the end of AppleCare) - I'm thinking I might get the top-end 13" MBA.

I agree, I don't know why Apple didn't put a 1080p IPS panel in the Air and keep it at last years prices, I think a lot of people would have preferred that over the Retina MBP.

 

[Geekbabe]

I agree, I don't know why Apple didn't put a 1080p IPS panel in the Air and keep it at last years prices, I think a lot of people would have preferred that over the Retina MBP.

Agreed, love my 2011 Air but the new Asus Zenbook Prime has the IPS display & the keyboard is now backlite, very tempting alternative to upgrading to a 2012 Air & a lot cheaper & lighter than a retina pro? Anxiously waiting for Anand to receive a shipping model to review to help me decide.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

The main problem with the 13" MacBook Pro is that it retains the optical drive... and a lot of weight. The 15.4" MBP:TNG actually weighs slightly less than the 13" MacBook Pro, and well over 1 lb less than the 15.4" MacBook Pro.

I like my 2.26 Core 2 Duo 13" MacBook Pro a lot (now that it has an SSD in it), but the one thing that bugs me about it is the 4.5 lb weight. I'd prefer something closer to 3 lbs like the 13" MacBook Air.

Yeah, I see your point but I am not that bothered by the weight (I mostly use my MBP at home, and have an iPad I use if I need a very light travel companion) and actually kind of like retaining the optical drive. I also like being able to swap out the HD and RAM myself (particularly since I have a brand-new 512 GB SSD). If they would go to a higher-res screen on the 13" MBP that would still be just about perfect for me. I really like the 13" form factor. At this point I am inclined to just keep using my MBP for another year and see what next season brings.

 

[jalaram]

I love iFixit's teardowns. In this case, it makes choosing AppleCare even easier.

Link

Highlights:
● The display hinges have cables routed through them. You'll have to replace both the cable and hinge at the same time.
● Phillips screws holding the Retina display in place.
● Despite being super careful, they broke the display
● There were two thin strips of adhesive underneath the glass holding it in place
● The fused glass and LCD combo is about 1.5 mm thick, and that includes the metal mounting plates.
● The camera cable is routed along the outside edge of the display assembly, making replacement very difficult and costly.
● Underneath the top layer we find a series of films and sheets that manipulate light before sending it to the user's eye.
● A strip of 48 LEDs at the bottom of the display assembly provides all the light your Retina display needs.

Conclusion:
What we can tell you is that if anything in the display assembly breaks, you'll need to replace the whole thing. It will be more expensive than just replacing the LCD inside a regular MacBook Pro, but it will also make the choice (of whether to replace just LCD or entire display assembly) very easy.

 

[TD912]

Well, looks like I'm the newbie here. Been lurking around for the longest time, but finally decided to make an account.

Anyway, I've been reading about people using hacks and third-party programs to enable native resolutions, and speculating about how OS X is actually going about scaling things.

I think OS X is doing something slick behind the scenes to keep things looking nice. I don't think it's as simple as rendering at double the resolution and scaling down to 2880x1800. That would cause things like the 1080p video demo in FCPX to not be pixel-accurate and not actually display at 100%. The same thing goes for fonts and images. Fonts have special properties like hinting and anti-aliasing, and scaling them down isn't the same as properly rendering them at a fraction of the size. Scaling up an image to scale it down again doesn't make sense either, as it loses detail.

Apple's been hinting at resolution independence for the past couple years. Even way back in 10.4, there was an experimental feature buried in Apple's developer tools to enable UI scaling. It kinda worked the same way Windows currently scales things, which meant it ended up breaking some programs and caused things to look funky.

It seems like most people forgot about that hint, but in newer versions of Quartz Debug, that UI slider in was changed to a "Enable HiDPI display modes" checkbox. It also mentions something about "virtual display modes" in the Displays prefpane.

I'm on a 2010 15" MBP, so this option doesn't seem to do anything for me. Maybe it'll allow you to actually set real "hardware" resolutions instead of "virtual" scaled ones? I have no clue. If anybody here has a new rMBP, it would be great if you could figure out what that checkbox does.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

...

From what I've heard, it sounds like the OS is scaling text natively if at all possible (which it should be, in most apps; but not for games, websites, etc. with fully-rendered text-as-image) while taking care of other graphical elements on the upscale-to-twice-rez-then-downsample algorithm.

Certain programs like FCP have direct access to the 100% rez and bypass the scaling entirely. I think that it must be somewhat like running a 3D game in a downsized window on a Windows machine; the interior of the window (3D) is running as a separate graphical process from everything outside of the window (2D). So there are two different parts of the screen that are effectively running on different parts of the GPU. It was the same back in the early days of DVD-on-PC playing when CPU's weren't fast enough to decode the MPEG2 video on the fly, so you could install a special DVD decoder card that had a VGA passthrough from your video card. Essentially, the video card would render all the pixels that weren't in the DVD window and leave an empty black box, where the decoder card would overlay the DVD output to fill in the blank spot left by the video card.

Oh, and welcome to AT

 

[TD912]

Oh, well this is interesting. After unchecking and checking the box, and logging out and logging in again, a new option appeared in the Displays prefpane... Didn't notice it before for some reason.

There's a new "720x450 (HiDPI)" setting available. Clicking it seems to activate the same scaling mode on the rMBP, scaling everything 2x, making the effective resolution 720x450 instead of 1440x900. It's obviously pretty unusable at this low setting, but Retina-ready programs do look pretty nice. It looks like Apple might have forgotten to upgrade the rounded window corners to HiDPI, though...?

Normal: http://i.imgur.com/sr8KY.png
HiDPI: http://i.imgur.com/JzS8y.png

 

[Childs]

Oh, well this is interesting. After unchecking and checking the box, and logging out and logging in again, a new option appeared in the Displays prefpane... Didn't notice it before for some reason.

There's a new "720x450 (HiDPI)" setting available. Clicking it seems to activate the same scaling mode on the rMBP, scaling everything 2x, making the effective resolution 720x450 instead of 1440x900. It's obviously pretty unusable at this low setting, but Retina-ready programs do look pretty nice. It looks like Apple might have forgotten to upgrade the rounded window corners to HiDPI, though...?

Normal: http://i.imgur.com/sr8KY.png
HiDPI: http://i.imgur.com/JzS8y.png

This feature would be more apparent if you had a high resolution monitor. Like 2560x1600 or 2560x1440. It would be presented at 1280x720 or 1280x800.

 

[Steelbom]

Apple isn't rendering at double 2880x1800 -- they're rendering at double the selected workspace, and the available workspaces from "best" and up are 1440x900, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200.

For proper scaling the resolution needs to be doubled, so that's what Apple does, and the apps which support retina become more detailed as they're being rendered with four times the pixels, and the apps which don't are simply upscaled (aka stretched) which doesn't look so nice.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Just got my Macbook Pro w/ Retina display.

This is hands down the best screen I've ever seen on a laptop, period. It is worth the cost of admission alone just for this screen. Believe me I have a Dell U2410, I'm no stranger to high quality monitors but this is something that has to be seen to be believed. The text clarity is just unbelievable.

On the whole this machine is incredibly snappy. With the SSD, everything happens at light speed. It is very light and portable for a 15" machine, and the heat output is not too bad. The only complaints I have so far have to do with VERY laggy scrolling in Safari and iTunes. This appears to be a software bug as developer previews of Mountain Lion do not exhibit the lag (Apple has apparently redone how they do scrolling). Be prepared to be an early adopter for a few quirks here and there as Apple gets their software in a row to handle the new Retina display.

All in all, I am not disappointed in my purchase. This is a quality machine through and through. Well worth the price of admission. I am a long time PC user, and this was the first machine to finally make me switch over to Apple.

 

[MrX8503]

I'm tempted to grab one myself, but it's quite costly. I'll probably check one out at BB to see that screen for myself.