[Rick Lang]

[Alex Gollner] “The catch of course is that you only get the full effect of the Retina display – full HD in a window with some application UI visible – if the screen is set to the equivalent of 1440 by 900.”

Will be interesting to see. I think when you’re in the office or home, you’ll want to use a secondary display like a 27” screen. Now that’s a simple menu selection but of course currently I imagine it would just blow up your laptop’s smaller application window if you had the screen open as if the 27” screen was a projector screen for an audience to view what’s on the laptop.

When you run with the laptop screen closed, you could certainly see much more real estate on the 27” screen. Would be a cool option to be able to have the laptop’s retina screen open with the virtual 1440×900 application window and see the secondary on the 27” screen in glorious 2560×1440!

“Glorious,” now there’s a new word for Tim Cook to use in his next presentation as “awesome” wears thin. Most companies have a User interface or Usability Designer. Of course when Steve Jobs was CEO, this wasn’t necessary (because Steve said so), but I wonder if I should be moving back to California after all?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] “Jason’s question brings up a real issue. I would hope that any “captured” images are real pixels based on the native object, not scaled or doubled interpolations.”

Here’s the link in the Apple Discussions forum to hopefully find an answer even it it takes Mountain lion to implement:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4028344

[Douglas K. Dempsey] “I also opened FCPX on the store MBPR but noted that they had not installed the newly released FCPX 10.0.5 (in fact they were running 10.0.2)”

So that tells you when these machines were actually ready! Several months ago! Too much to expect the vendors to be able to update old software on their demo machines I suppose. Someone visiting an Apple Store soon? Ask for the software (Aperture and FCPX) to be updated and try it out? Thanks.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] “Jason’s question brings up a real issue. I would hope that any “captured” images are real pixels based on the native object, not scaled or doubled interpolations.”

Here’s the link in the Apple Discussions forum to hopefully find an answer even it it takes Mountain lion to implement:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4028344

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Douglas or anyone with access to the MacBook Pro Retina:
Can you run a HD video through QuickTime set on ‘actual size’ and see if you think it’s being scaled up to fill the screen or if it really looks like it’s using 1080 lines of vertical resolution (60% of the physical screen height when the display preferences are set to no scaling)?

If it doesn’t then QuickTime in Lion just isn’t ‘retina aware’ either. Maybe if you know a developer with the Mountain Lion beta, ask them to test it. I can’t imagine this not working on the final release if Mountain Lion. I’m going to start a thread in the Apple Discussions forum and get to the bottom of this if possible. I’d hold off purchasing the retina machine until we have this question answered. Cross your toes that the display preferences only look dumb and behind the scene AV Foundation will handle it properly, i.e. pixel-for-pixel as advertised on Apple’s web page.

You know some techno-savvy lawyer has likely launched a class-action suit on this very topic as we speak. Or right after we can an answer that isn’t what we were promised.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Look at the posts related to this in the earlier thread:Very specific question re: Retuna Macbook Pro

TO RESPOND TO THIS POST, CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/37318

Or, click on the following link to view the entire thread.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/37157#37318

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Douglas:
“the clip was clearly scaled for the MBPR, to a size that looked to me as approximately the same amount of screen real estate I would see if I was watching an unscaled 1280×720 clip on a standard MBP.”

That’s very interesting but it’s actually what I would expect of an application that wasn’t ‘retina ready’ or controlling the display of the video window. I don’t know what you were using as the viewer. Was it within Safari?

Ir may be additional work needs to be done in Safari or some other program like Preview to treat the video as it would be handled in FCPX or Aperture where clearly the video or photo is not being scaled up. I know what I’m thinking us being done but obviously it takes some additional code that in sure will be forthcoming if it’s not already part of Mountain Lion.

Forget about the requirements of professionals for a moment. Even plebeians will like the ability to see works unscaled when it suits their purposes. Do I have to send a note to Tim Cook and sign it Franz to get some respect?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

I’ve thought about the link you provided to AnandTech. He does clearly state the native resolution is 2880×1800 but you can’t set the screen size to that. The Retina setting is 1440×900 where each virtual pixel represents four physical pixels. Larger and smaller virtual screens scale screens so that the 2880×1800 physical pixels represent virtual screens up to 1920×1080. Looking at the actual sample screenshots in the various scales offered, I see the left size doesn’t even tell you the virtual resolution. I think the label “looks like virtual 1920×1080 was annotated test from Anand. This is dumb beyond belief.

Back on topic, now. I would think the MBPR is designed to be programmed in a manner similar to the iPhone 4’s screen. If an application does not supply any additional graphic elements, such as a button, that are defined specifically for the retina screen (double the resolution), then the iPhone will scale everything in the application by doubling the resolution in each dimension. So the graphic would look a bit blocky. If the graphic is defined to support the retina resolution, then the button for example will be very smooth in all the full retina resolution.

But this pixel-doubling applies to graphic elements, like a designed button, not a photo or a video. I’m hopeful that will display in all its glorious retina resolution within the physical limits of the screen. So if you have a 1920×1080 video running in the preview window of FCP X 10.0.5, you are seeing every pixel in a fraction of the application’s screen even though the application screen looks like a virtual 1440×900. The same in Aperture on a virtual 1440×900 screen when looking at an 18 MP photo in actual size—you’re going to see about one-quarter of the actual photo at a time and be able to easily pan around to review the image.

Now we don’t have images posted that show what would happen if you ran FCP X in a 1920×1080 virtual screen, but I suspect you’ll still see every physical pixel of your 1920×1080 video in the preview window and that preview window will look to be the identical physical size because it’s displaying the real physical pixels regardless of the virtual size of the screen selected. If it can’t be programmed like this, the promotional materials on Apple’s web pages wouldn’t claim you can see these pixel-for-pixel accurate details.

If you haven’t fallen asleep reading this, in conclusion, you should be able to generate and window-capture and insert your HD special effects images/video. Go back to sleep and rest easy.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Sorry I don’t know for sure if it will work as I thought it would as I don’t have the machine. I recall seeing the dumbed down Display preferences screen and seeing the pixel counts on the left side. But I think those were all custom options. I haven’t seen the pixel count when the native screen is selected. It would be amazing to me not to have access to the actual 2880×1800 pixels in some way. If anyone can capture an active HD window as a TIFF, it would be so easy to calculate the actual dimension from the file size. Can someone else chime in?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Bill Davis:
“they’ve engineered the Retina display to have something like 75% of the reflectance of the prior glossy displays – positioning the new MBP-Retina significantly closer to the matte screen option”

With the MacBook Pro Retina screen integrated (bonded) to the inside top panel, there’s no need for a glass cover over the LCD. Apparently that glass cover accounted for most of the objectionable glossy screen effect. Brilliant solution and the blacks are apparently much deeper now, so much so that the screen was rated second on a long list of laptop screens for quality of the contrast.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

If you do not require mobility and cannot wait another year or so, I suspect the iMac will be updated this fall. Don’t know anything about the specs although I assume it will be “the fastest all-in-one we’ve ever built.” Big question would be: will it have a retina screen? Doesn’t seem possible given the size of the screen would be 5120×2880 pixels if they kept the 27″ format. Perhaps a 21.5″ or 24″ retina screen is more likely this year. Certainly anyone who feels limited by the current 15″ laptop screen may be more comfortable on the larger iMac screens. Downside is there’s longer to wait with no guarantee you’ll like what happens.

I think Apple is right to move everything to a retina display. It just seems once it’s possible to do technically, it will become the de facto standard for many years. And now the ball is rolling on laptop computers after it started with the iPhone 4 and the iPod touch, it’s going to be mainstream in desktops eventually. Apple wants the competitive edge of being seen as the leading edge facilitator of this transition. And professionals of all stripes that are in front of a screen too many hours a day will consider it a given that they utilize the best imaging technology

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB