Articles like this are why I keep coming back to Anandtech. I appreciate that you take the time to make full-on, useful observations before doing a review- unlike some other sites that rush to get out their review first.
Agreed - Anand, you are truly the best technology writer in the world as far as I'm concerned, at least in any language I can read. Even Ars Technica writers reference your articles, that tells you something.
On another note: This article/gallery should be taken in while listening to "Carnival of the Animals VII - Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saens for full effect. This thing truly is magical. I love that I have to have mine shipped from Shanghai to Illinois only to have it shipped back to Taiwan. :(
OK, I believe I've been coming to this site since '99, otherwise 2000 at the latest. It truly is one of my favorite tech sites. But I gotta say, stuff like this annoys me:
"This is just an insane panel. I'm typing this on my 27-inch 2560 x 1440 display, and to think that the 15.4-inch panel next to it has 40% more pixels is mind blowing."
If this is true then your mind is too easily blown. It's cool, it's nice, but mind blowing? You've already seen the newest iPad approach those numbers in a smaller, wimpier form factor, yet you find it in a larger and much more powerful form factor mind blowing? I think that would be ok from the teenage Anand back in the day, but this one has grown up. Hasn't he?
It is mind blowing. We've spent somewhere near a decade with 2560x1600 being the highest "mainstream" resolution we can get, and finally we're breaking through that and on a laptop display no less.
This kind of thing is exciting because once Apple pushes it, we'll probably see other manufacturers doing it as well (even if just in a me too way), and they'll start pushing ahead of 2880x1800 to at least beat them on specs.
Should be a good few years for monitors coming up.
"It is mind blowing. We've spent somewhere near a decade with 2560x1600 being the highest "mainstream" resolution we can get, and finally we're breaking through that and on a laptop display no less."
Without intending to, you made my point. This would have been mind blowing several years ago, but not no. Yes, it's been 10 years or so of 2560x1600 max resolution, so why would anybody be surprised it's now been bested, even if it is by a notebook. Making a screen with this resolution has been possible for a while, but making is usable has not. We now have all the parts (hardware and software) necessary to make them usable, all Apple did was do it first. Good for them, but they haven't exactly re-invented anything here, just taken it to the next logical level. It is not mind blowing, it is completely expected, and if anything overdue. See my comments about superlatives below. They should be used very sparingly.
You need to give credit where credit is due. Apple is a disruptive driver for change here. Anybody who has followed resolutions for a long time will tell you that the higher resolutions have been shunned since the advent of 1080P with the 1920x1200 res of the better screens actually being regressed to 1080P for most 24" screens, most manufacturers thinking that the higher res. would only be useful for professional graphics people. Likewise, the res on laptops stopped improving because manufacturers got lazy and figured that consumers didn't know or care about the difference. I'm very pleased that Apple is driving this forward since the days of the iPhone 4, iPad 3 and this new macbook Pro. Without them pushing the envelope here, other OEM's would be content with far lower resolutions to sustain their increasingly thin margins and the consumer would lose out. Retina displays make one huge difference to being able to read text and to images looking great. One good example is the Galaxy 3's screen. Bigger than the iPhone but all fuzzy for text, with wrong colours, and that was even released this year!As the owner of both that and the 4S, the latter won easily overall when the wow factor of the G3's screen subsided and you actually tried to use it for something.
I think the main problem of display nowadays is not necessarly the resolution, but the fact that they are SHINY. Why all the the displays are shiny nowadays? Who wants to see their face in the display? Seems like the hardware manufacturers see all people as narcisists. And here i point at the "beloved" apple at first. Its not like their gear is shiny enough they even put some glass over displays to make it like a mirror. So whats the point in havin a 2880+ resolution when u can't see anything in bright light. Pointless and stupid. Besides right now i have this laptop from Asus with full hd resolution on a 15 inch display. Its mate and i like it but i think windows its not meant for the extra pixels. The scaling its all wrong. The text is big but looks bad like u can see its not proportional with the elements (windows and such). Only a few programs support this scaling without lookin pixelish.
So you're calling Anand not grown up? Please have some respect. You have to love the bravery, audacity, and/or lack of respect that internet anonymity provides, right?
In Anand's opinion, it's cool that a panel that takes up roughly 1/3 the space of another actually has 40% more pixels. He even, how dare he, used the words "mind blowing."
In my opinion, I appreciate that Anand, after so many years of dealing with tech advancements, and, even more fatiguing, tech marketing, hasn't become jaded and disconnected. When new, cool, inspiring technology comes his way, he still appreciates it.
I'm sure there's a hobby or interest you enjoy or appreciate that really gets you excited, but that same hobby or interest might not do the same for others. That's perfectly acceptable; your excitement wouldn't warrant me curbing your enthusiasm, or calling you immature.
Smaller CPU chips push out more power with less power needs. Smaller engines generate more BHP and torque than larger ones. Smaller data connectors pass much more information than others several times larger. This has been the norm for a long time now in engineering, and we all saw the Retina Display notebook coming this year. I think the iPad's resolution and power is actually more impressive than this notebook's. I simply can't call this mind blowing. Like I said, nice, cool, whatever. But please, keep the use of superlatives to a minimum. The words are used so much they no longer mean anything. Every difficult shot made in the NBA is miraculous. Every catch while in coverage in the NFL is incredible. Every star in a movie is absolutely gorgeous and every rock star just an incredible human being. It's like Dash said in "The Incredibles", "If everybody is special, then nobody is special."
drvelocity's son enters the room. "Dad, I just got my artwork back, the teacher gave me an F! Can you believe it?"
"Let me see the work, son. Why son, this is the greatest art I've ever seen. To think my 12 year old created it! I can't believe it got an F!!! What is it?"
"Um, Dad, it's a portrait of you, can't you tell. I did it from memory."
"Wow! Outstanding! Mind blowing!! Can I keep it?"
"Really? Sure Dad, it's yours!"
Later that evening.
"drvelocity, did you see your son got an F in art? Whatever possessed him to think his teacher would pass that drawing of his? I had no idea what it was." Laughing, "I think it was a portrait of some poor ugly bastard."
"No idea what he was thinking, Hon. I try to teach him he has to push himself and face the truth when he reviews his work. The work he's doing just doesn't cut it. I can't imagine why he doesn't see it. By the way, great dinner tonight. Really well done hamburgers are my favorite. They were awesome."
"Aww, I'm so glad you love my cooking. You sure did drink a lot with your meal though. You know I wanted to go out for dinner but then I remembered how much you loved my burgers last time."
"And I do love 'em! Be right back, I gotta take something for my stomach."
@BPB: Since you show no personal respect to Anad nor the other constructive posters here, you are getting none. So, here it goes - You are a pedantic moron. DrVelocity is probably spot on too - people you interact in real life think you're an idiot + assh*** too.And I spent 60 seconds of my life registering to tell you that.
Thank you for summarising why I don't care for comments like the one to which you reply. There's actually an article on cracked.com dedicated to asshats that spend their time in the comments section debating whether or not something really is "a big deal".
Have you worked with the display? Have you compared it to other displays while working with it?
Then your comment means nothing.
And who uses the word cool or nice to describe a monitor? Apparently only you. You may want to take a creative writing class. I haven't seen any comments from any website or any person that describes it as cool. Perhaps a teenager, but cool is usually used to describe something that is less than warm.
Perhaps you should get your own website, your own Macbook Pro and you can then write about how cool it is. I'm sure you will have a lot of followers.
Anand is expressing an opinion, and this is the correct form for using superlatives. In fact its encouraged. Just because you don't agree, does not mean that he wasn't blown away by the display thinking about how the resolution could be so high compared to his 27 inch display.
Any professional or creative writer understands that there is a need to create interest in their audience. He does this effectively not only through integrity over the years, but a deep understanding for the technology behind it.
If you only knew what it took to create that display from start to finish and bring it to market, then maybe you would understand. But because you haven't worked with the display, you don't understand the technology behind it, what it took to create, or think what he was thinking at the time he was writing, then you really don't have a place to criticize anything.
Scaling it makes sense, and I think Apple is on the right track, though I see no reason to allow full res as an option, hidden if need be =P. The point of having more pixels use to be a bigger screen, in this case it's fixed. Retina displays, what with having in distinguishable pixels begs scaling IMO.
Yeah, I agree. Apple has no reason to let OSX users fumble with their machine at a native 2880x1800.
The kind of enthusiasts that will want to do that are the same kind of users that will be comfortable installing some hack that allows the functionality. It's win-win; Apple gets to protect their stupid users and the enthusiasts get to experience of 2880x1800 firsthand.
No one would be fumbling at all if the OS understood the physical DPI of the panel and automatically scaled to fit a smartly designed interface spec for GUI element sizes (or even just pick a previous MBP and make it the new baseline for the physical size of GUI elements).
This kind of thing used to be Apple's forte, but they've definitely been blinded by the numbers game. A numbers game very similar to the one they lambasted Intel for playing back 10 years ago when the PowerPCs did more per clock than the Pentiums. Turns out PowerPC couldn't keep up, though, so we'll how long they can keep just doubling everything visual before the customers realize it's the wrong solution.
The fact that you personally see no reason to allow full-res has little bearing on anybody that's not you, which is actually a lot of people. But thank you for letting us know what you don't understand. ;)
Did you try changing the DPI setting? Windows defaults to 96 dpi, which is close but not quite the same as my 21.5" 1080p screen. I tweaked the DPI on my system to match the actual size of the screen, and it comes out to about 104 DPI, or 108% of the default 96. Just experimenting, Windows 7 can do up to 480 DPI, since it lets me set a 500% increase over the default 96.
That is also how Apple should be handle the scaling issue as well, not this stupid pixel-doubling and psuedo-resolution crap. Modern screens even know how physically large they are, so DPI can be calculated and used for decorations and fonts, and modern CPUs/GPUs are more than fast enough to scale any bitmap images to match the actual DPI.
Pixel doubling is a really good way of handling the issue. It looks better. Looking better is important on a display. At least to me.
And I think the way OS X currently handles the new 2880 display makes sense. A default setting and one that looks like a 1920 screen. Then a few more that are less practical.
I'm sure people who want to will be able to tweak to their heart's content through Terminal or TinkerTool.
Pixel-doubling is a cop-out to supporting real arbitrary scaling and setting up some guidelines to make sure all the click/touch targets remain accessible at different resolutions (and by resolutions I mean DPI/PPI, not 1920x1080, etc, which are dimensions). Microsoft and Google have it right with Windows 8 and Android, both specifying ideal physical-size-to-resolution guidelines to maintain consistent target sizes, while allowing higher resolutions to simply make everything look smoother, not smaller. Apple used to be the king of design guidelines: their old Mac HIG is _full_ of smart, useful, and not nearly borrowed/stolen enough, idea for making GUIs work well with humans. Too bad they've tossed some of it out the window in the chase of simply higher and higher numbers to beat the rest of the industry over the head with.
I don't want to tweak my DPI settings in Android 4 or Windows 7, I just want them to be consistent between different machines with different resolutions.
Your idea doesn't work for a majority of apps. There are fixed cells in most applications and web design. So raising the DPI causes all sorts of headaches. Like the cell becoming too small for the larger DPI. Not everything will scale.
Using Apple's method, everything comes out the way it should look if it doesn't support the new resolution. This is a far better solution until all apps can be optimized for the new resolution.
Looking at how fast people are doing this, I don't think it will be long. Just like it didn't take long for developers to convert to the iPad3 to optimize the look.
So what its time for those devs to get off their butts and start respecting DPI scaling. The reality for a very long time they have been screwing it up because people keep saying that we can use tricks like pixel doubling. The devs see this as a cop out. The end result is no system works well or looks good at higher PPI, not because of the OS, but because of the third party applications.
The OS makers need to lead the charge to true DPI scaling and the application developers that stay behind can see their products become less popular. Apples method can only work on double PPI screens what if you don't have that? And it only works because apple can choose which screens they want on their products.
...noting the 125% and 150% tests. Does Windows 8 only support those discrete settings? I know Windows 7 shows 125, 150, and 200 in combo box, but it is a combo box, which means you can enter anything, and entering anything above 500 forces it back to 500. Does Windows 8 support this? It's worth noting that this setting does affect both fonts and window decorations in Windows 7.
Unfortunately, the Start Screen only has three settings: 100%, 140%, and 180%. The desktop retains the old Windows 7 settings box, so you're right - any scaling up to 500% could be entered. I'm not sure why Anand didn't do this, other than to make Windows look worse than OS X (even though Windows is actually scaling instead of simply doubling pixels for apps that aren't written to be DPI-aware).
They wouldn't be meaningless; in fact, the fact that the switchable graphics don't work is precisely why I wanted to know how the figures between OS X, Windows 7 and Windows 8 compared.
There's no point in buying a Retina MBP for the screen if the battery life is going to be awful.
Hello? of course you see pixels when magnifying the screen to approx 3 times it natural size and from a distance of ~10cm. Nevertheless 'retina' is a stupid marketing buzzword, though the definition is NOT 'you can't see pixels whatever you do'
The concept of a "Retina" display does not mean that pixels are unconditionally indiscernible. You are required to view it from a minimum distance.
If a person with 20/20 vision gets closer than 15" from the new Macbook Pro, the "Retina" effect is gone. This isn't some controversial bullshit, this is the definition of 20/20 vision. It's existed for more than a hundred years.
How the other resolution look like? For example the 1600x1200 has the same problems due to a resolution changes to the non native resolution? Another question, in osx you can't go down (for now) to really (non native) at 1440x900 native resolution? Becouse in theory it would look identical, without the problems about scaling to nominative resolutions (what happen for example when you go to 1280x800 in a display with 1440x900 native resolution), due to fact Who each 4px of retina display become exactly 1px at that resolution. There is any one can try and approve this fact?
Other than the traditional DPI scaling of Windows (desktop mode), there's also a Metro "size" scaling in the metro display settings. It makes things considerably larger for metro apps on that resolution. Give it a shot. It scales perfectly.
Anand, any hint at changes/improvements in the sensitivity/fluidity of MBP trackpad input/gestures in Win8 Metro and Win8 Desktop compared to Win7? Compared to OSX? Thanks, David
Is it possible that you could throw a decibel reading in the review with a few points of reference? I'm curious about that new cooling system. Apparently the Macbook Airs already used the asymmetrical fan and those aren't that quiet at load, but they have some other improvements in the MBP-R so I'm curious how that fares.
- thermals. How hot does it feel under "light" use, say web browsing, under "normal" aggressive use (eg playing a high end game) and under "maximal" use, the most aggressive realistic scenario you can think of. (We have already seen that running a power virus it gets uncomfortably hot, but I'm interested in realistic scenarios more than worst case imaginable).
- how fast (and how does it fall off) is the WiFi when connected to Apple's most recent base station?
- how fast is the USB controller when maxed out --- if you connect it to say a high-end external SSD, can you hit maybe 400MB/s or will you max out at say 200MB/s?
Personally (though this is less AnandTech's specialty) I'd like to see a discussion of how well OSX (and esp Mountain Lion) handle processor affinity. My experience with OSX so far (all on dual-core, none hyper-threaded CPUs) is that there appears to be zero processor affinity, and if one has a single task running it seems to randomly bounce from one CPU to the next instead of any pinning. This is probably not a massive deal in the grand scheme of things, but it would be interesting to see if the core OS guys are finally doing something about it.
[A general discussion of this issue might be valuable. For example, it could perhaps even be argued that Apple is doing the right thing --- in a world with thermal-based turbo, perhaps you get optimal single-threaded performance by keeping a thread on one core running at max turbo until it gets too hot, at which point you switch to the next core? I'd be curious to hear what the currently considered state of the art is for this, across Windows, Linux and OSX --- including what's best on dual and quad ARM cores.]
- make a thorough analysis of the glossy screen vs. other glossy screens and matte screens. Apple claims 75% reduced glare, as far as I can tell solely based on the fact that the made the glass that covers the screen thinner ... but I'm not sure why thinner glass would be less subject to glare than thicker glass, but then again, I'm no optics expert.
We start with the flat panel, which has a layer of glass below and one above, with the magic optics+electronics living between them. The screen on the MBPro has an ADDITIONAL layer of glass above this for extra protection. The screen on the MBPR (and the MBA) does not have this additional layer. So there's one less layer of impedance mismatch to result in reflections.
I agree it seems unlikely that just this change could reduce reflection by 75%. It could be that previous MBPs did not use an anti-reflection coating, whereas the MBPR does. Such coatings consist of a think layer of dielectric on the glass to reduce the impedance mismatch between air and the glass and thus reflection. They only work exactly at one wavelength (generally chosen to be green) meaning that they do a great job of not reflecting green, and a so-so job of not reflecting red and blue. The net result is, looked at from the side, they have a purple cast. These coatings are commonplace --- you've seen them on camera lenses and glasses --- and they work pretty well in those contexts. I'd assume they work well on a laptop screen, but I honestly have no idea. Such a coating could explain the rest of the 75% number.
Can't be really sure since I haven't seen the machine yet, but I am quite positive I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1920x1080 and this screen unless I'd stuck my nose in the middle of the panel. Having above HD resolution is nice, but unless there is really good reason to do it (like having way too big pixels compared to screen size and distance from observer) I'd avoid it any day a week - just the increase of GPU load, requirements on memory size and bandwidth etc... This seems a bit like a chase for "holy 10Mpix screen" .. just to compare IMAX cameras run at 12Mpix (those who run with Sony cameras), if shot to special 70mm IMAX film we get to about 27Mpix on source film (ie. we will never get above that). Compared to that 5Mpix retina screen seems like unfounded wasting...
Then again I might speak otherwise when I actualy get one retina display in my hands :-)
A lower but still high resolution screen would not have perfect scaling though, that's the point of going double the resolution. It's just 2x2 more pixels for every old one so scaling is simple.
I'd like to point out that it *is* currently possible to disable scaling for a true, exposed 2880x1800 in OS X.
There's several ways to do so -- the easiest is by creating and applying a custom, non-scaled resolution with a (non-free, trial) utility called SwitchResX. There's probably similar, open sourced tools out there, this was just the first one I tried.
Here is a (poor) camera shot to put the scale of this resolution into perspective for OS X:
I'm sure there's some kext or plist hidden somewhere within OS X that will enable a much cleaner, free, permanent method. It just hasn't been discovered yet.
The big takeaway from my post is that there isn't a active restrictions on the native 2880x1800 resolution like there is on others.
For example, manually setting a non-scaled 1440x900 didn't work (for me)... the nvidia kext redirected back to HiDPI with every method I tried.
Thanks. This is looking excellent. Don't suppose you've fired up Windows in a VM to see if you can get native resolution support. Definitely going to try and get one of these bad boys!
I'm just wondering if you can run Windows 7 or Windows 8 Release Preview in any virtualization software such as VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, or Parallels. Can you take full advantage of the 2880x1800 display **unscaled** when using these virtualization programs in full-screen mode?
I really don't like these ultra high resolutions. What is the point? Everything looks so small, email, web, movies, photos, UI elements, etc are all so small you need a magnifying glass just to use the stupid computer/tablet. These resolutions are a pissing match, I see little value. They also require much more graphics card power and no GPU could run games at these resolutions.
The whole point of the update to OS X is that it doubles the scaling. So the 2880x1800 screen looks like a 1440x900 screen for OS X applications not rewritten for the "Retina" display. You don't just get images 1/4 the size.
great laptop but ram is soldered to the board. I dont mind them making us buy the ram from them. But they should extened the warranty to 5 or 6 yrs on ram to make it worth it. because if ram tweeks after 3yrs. 1 day you have a 2500 to 3000 dollar sinker. if they dont extend the warranty apples just greedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So will Windows 8 metro stuff scaling correctly with the proper driver installed? If so, I think AT should update the article to include this. Based on this article, many users from other tech forums are bashing on Windows 8 as a failure.
This review is taking forever!! I know that Anand does the best and most comprehensive reviews on the internet but more than 1 week to publish the full review of such an important product looks ridiculous in todays fast moving world!! When will it be published Anand?
UEFI indeed appears to have been updated - can natively boot win8 in EFI mode. unfortunately it bluescreens during boot after the first phase of setup.
Using normal Boot Camp works fine, and AHCI support has been added which is nice and long overdue... however it appears to break the boot camp control panel in the same way that hacking ahci into win7 did on my previous MacBook pro. the control panel squawks about not being able to access the startup disk and so I can't set my trackpad options - facepalm.
the NVidia driver is now part of the boot camp package, however performance seems really bad - scrolling anandtech and other sites is very choppy...
The Intel integrated GPU on Core i3/5/7 can normally be enabled in BIOS mode with the following line in grub.cfg : setpci -d 8086:0044 54.b=0b You may need to customize to your CPU PCI ID, which can be obtained with "lspci"
What I was wondering is whether Windows 8 on bootcamp will finally support 2 external displays via thunderbolt. No one is clear on the subject whether Windows 7 was incapable of supporting 2 daisy chained displays or Apple was not updating their drivers to support 2 external displays in windows.
I have been searching for months if anyone has tried it.
I wonder if Windows 8 will finally fix that issue...
Instead of choosing a scaling value like 150%, why not just set it to *exactly* to it's native 220DPI. In Windows 7 you could actual dpi do that by sliding the "custom dpi" ruler until one inch on the ruler was actually one inch long. Does it not work this way in windows 8?
It seems silly that people complain about "how small everything is" yet they don't use the correct DPI.
Hey - Even though Apple doesn't expose the full native resolution for the retina macbook in system preferences, there are a few ways to use it anyway. I'm using the SetResX menubar switcher and it works perfectly....
The actual download is here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mef6sk (make sure you click the right link, there are a bunch of scummy advertisements that look like download links)
I'd recommend SetResX over the other options because (a) scrutil didn't work and (b) SwitchResX isn't free.
By all means, I have decent eye sight. No glasses, no nothing. Just good eye sight.
If I put the macbook pro retina 15 inch on my desk, so that i can comfortably type, there is no way, that I can comfortably read text that is not increased by at least 150%. Given that you use the highest resolution.
And even further: When using multiple monitors and the macbook is one of them, it is moved back even more to be inline with the other monitors. So you are most likely going to increase text by 200%.
What is the point of pixels that you cannot use because you have to zoom in? What is the point of pixels that you are not going to even see?
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
81 Comments
Back to Article
JMS3072 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Articles like this are why I keep coming back to Anandtech. I appreciate that you take the time to make full-on, useful observations before doing a review- unlike some other sites that rush to get out their review first.ImSpartacus - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
It's funny, I was about to make a comment saying just about the same thing.We're such fanboys, lol.
Zak - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Yup. That is pretty cool indeed. I also enjoy bits like this.drvelocity - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Agreed - Anand, you are truly the best technology writer in the world as far as I'm concerned, at least in any language I can read. Even Ars Technica writers reference your articles, that tells you something.On another note: This article/gallery should be taken in while listening to "Carnival of the Animals VII - Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saens for full effect. This thing truly is magical. I love that I have to have mine shipped from Shanghai to Illinois only to have it shipped back to Taiwan. :(
BPB - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
OK, I believe I've been coming to this site since '99, otherwise 2000 at the latest. It truly is one of my favorite tech sites. But I gotta say, stuff like this annoys me:"This is just an insane panel. I'm typing this on my 27-inch 2560 x 1440 display, and to think that the 15.4-inch panel next to it has 40% more pixels is mind blowing."
If this is true then your mind is too easily blown. It's cool, it's nice, but mind blowing? You've already seen the newest iPad approach those numbers in a smaller, wimpier form factor, yet you find it in a larger and much more powerful form factor mind blowing? I think that would be ok from the teenage Anand back in the day, but this one has grown up. Hasn't he?
klagermkii - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
It is mind blowing. We've spent somewhere near a decade with 2560x1600 being the highest "mainstream" resolution we can get, and finally we're breaking through that and on a laptop display no less.This kind of thing is exciting because once Apple pushes it, we'll probably see other manufacturers doing it as well (even if just in a me too way), and they'll start pushing ahead of 2880x1800 to at least beat them on specs.
Should be a good few years for monitors coming up.
BPB - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
"It is mind blowing. We've spent somewhere near a decade with 2560x1600 being the highest "mainstream" resolution we can get, and finally we're breaking through that and on a laptop display no less."Without intending to, you made my point. This would have been mind blowing several years ago, but not no. Yes, it's been 10 years or so of 2560x1600 max resolution, so why would anybody be surprised it's now been bested, even if it is by a notebook. Making a screen with this resolution has been possible for a while, but making is usable has not. We now have all the parts (hardware and software) necessary to make them usable, all Apple did was do it first. Good for them, but they haven't exactly re-invented anything here, just taken it to the next logical level. It is not mind blowing, it is completely expected, and if anything overdue. See my comments about superlatives below. They should be used very sparingly.
robinthakur - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
You need to give credit where credit is due. Apple is a disruptive driver for change here. Anybody who has followed resolutions for a long time will tell you that the higher resolutions have been shunned since the advent of 1080P with the 1920x1200 res of the better screens actually being regressed to 1080P for most 24" screens, most manufacturers thinking that the higher res. would only be useful for professional graphics people. Likewise, the res on laptops stopped improving because manufacturers got lazy and figured that consumers didn't know or care about the difference. I'm very pleased that Apple is driving this forward since the days of the iPhone 4, iPad 3 and this new macbook Pro. Without them pushing the envelope here, other OEM's would be content with far lower resolutions to sustain their increasingly thin margins and the consumer would lose out. Retina displays make one huge difference to being able to read text and to images looking great. One good example is the Galaxy 3's screen. Bigger than the iPhone but all fuzzy for text, with wrong colours, and that was even released this year!As the owner of both that and the 4S, the latter won easily overall when the wow factor of the G3's screen subsided and you actually tried to use it for something.ukw - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
I think the main problem of display nowadays is not necessarly the resolution, but the fact that they are SHINY. Why all the the displays are shiny nowadays? Who wants to see their face in the display? Seems like the hardware manufacturers see all people as narcisists. And here i point at the "beloved" apple at first. Its not like their gear is shiny enough they even put some glass over displays to make it like a mirror. So whats the point in havin a 2880+ resolution when u can't see anything in bright light. Pointless and stupid. Besides right now i have this laptop from Asus with full hd resolution on a 15 inch display. Its mate and i like it but i think windows its not meant for the extra pixels. The scaling its all wrong. The text is big but looks bad like u can see its not proportional with the elements (windows and such). Only a few programs support this scaling without lookin pixelish.Moizy - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
So you're calling Anand not grown up? Please have some respect. You have to love the bravery, audacity, and/or lack of respect that internet anonymity provides, right?In Anand's opinion, it's cool that a panel that takes up roughly 1/3 the space of another actually has 40% more pixels. He even, how dare he, used the words "mind blowing."
In my opinion, I appreciate that Anand, after so many years of dealing with tech advancements, and, even more fatiguing, tech marketing, hasn't become jaded and disconnected. When new, cool, inspiring technology comes his way, he still appreciates it.
I'm sure there's a hobby or interest you enjoy or appreciate that really gets you excited, but that same hobby or interest might not do the same for others. That's perfectly acceptable; your excitement wouldn't warrant me curbing your enthusiasm, or calling you immature.
BPB - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Smaller CPU chips push out more power with less power needs. Smaller engines generate more BHP and torque than larger ones. Smaller data connectors pass much more information than others several times larger. This has been the norm for a long time now in engineering, and we all saw the Retina Display notebook coming this year. I think the iPad's resolution and power is actually more impressive than this notebook's. I simply can't call this mind blowing. Like I said, nice, cool, whatever. But please, keep the use of superlatives to a minimum. The words are used so much they no longer mean anything. Every difficult shot made in the NBA is miraculous. Every catch while in coverage in the NFL is incredible. Every star in a movie is absolutely gorgeous and every rock star just an incredible human being. It's like Dash said in "The Incredibles", "If everybody is special, then nobody is special."seapeople - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I bet you're very encouraging to those around you."Hey dad, I just hit a grand slam to win the Little League World Series! It was amazing!"
"Eh, grand slams have been hit before to win baseball games. Stop using superlatives so freely. Go clean your room."
"I already did that, mowed the lawn, and aced my chemistry test."
"Stop making it sound like that's important. Wake me when you do something that matters. Until then can't you just leave me alone?"
BPB - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
drvelocity's son enters the room. "Dad, I just got my artwork back, the teacher gave me an F! Can you believe it?""Let me see the work, son. Why son, this is the greatest art I've ever seen. To think my 12 year old created it! I can't believe it got an F!!! What is it?"
"Um, Dad, it's a portrait of you, can't you tell. I did it from memory."
"Wow! Outstanding! Mind blowing!! Can I keep it?"
"Really? Sure Dad, it's yours!"
Later that evening.
"drvelocity, did you see your son got an F in art? Whatever possessed him to think his teacher would pass that drawing of his? I had no idea what it was." Laughing, "I think it was a portrait of some poor ugly bastard."
"No idea what he was thinking, Hon. I try to teach him he has to push himself and face the truth when he reviews his work. The work he's doing just doesn't cut it. I can't imagine why he doesn't see it. By the way, great dinner tonight. Really well done hamburgers are my favorite. They were awesome."
"Aww, I'm so glad you love my cooking. You sure did drink a lot with your meal though. You know I wanted to go out for dinner but then I remembered how much you loved my burgers last time."
"And I do love 'em! Be right back, I gotta take something for my stomach."
sid.shetye - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
@BPB: Since you show no personal respect to Anad nor the other constructive posters here, you are getting none. So, here it goes - You are a pedantic moron. DrVelocity is probably spot on too - people you interact in real life think you're an idiot + assh*** too.And I spent 60 seconds of my life registering to tell you that.Spunjji - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Thank you for summarising why I don't care for comments like the one to which you reply. There's actually an article on cracked.com dedicated to asshats that spend their time in the comments section debating whether or not something really is "a big deal".ukw - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Excuse me kind sir, but your a troll. A mind blowing one. :>Dadofamunky - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
He runs the site dude, you don't. He can do what he wants. I like his enthusiasm. If you don't, don't read his site.Spunjji - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Matter of opinion. Boring. Move along.Dug - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Have you worked with the display? Have you compared it to other displays while working with it?Then your comment means nothing.
And who uses the word cool or nice to describe a monitor? Apparently only you. You may want to take a creative writing class. I haven't seen any comments from any website or any person that describes it as cool. Perhaps a teenager, but cool is usually used to describe something that is less than warm.
Perhaps you should get your own website, your own Macbook Pro and you can then write about how cool it is. I'm sure you will have a lot of followers.
Anand is expressing an opinion, and this is the correct form for using superlatives. In fact its encouraged. Just because you don't agree, does not mean that he wasn't blown away by the display thinking about how the resolution could be so high compared to his 27 inch display.
Any professional or creative writer understands that there is a need to create interest in their audience. He does this effectively not only through integrity over the years, but a deep understanding for the technology behind it.
If you only knew what it took to create that display from start to finish and bring it to market, then maybe you would understand. But because you haven't worked with the display, you don't understand the technology behind it, what it took to create, or think what he was thinking at the time he was writing, then you really don't have a place to criticize anything.
EnerJi - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Agreed! +1EnzoFX - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Scaling it makes sense, and I think Apple is on the right track, though I see no reason to allow full res as an option, hidden if need be =P. The point of having more pixels use to be a bigger screen, in this case it's fixed. Retina displays, what with having in distinguishable pixels begs scaling IMO.ImSpartacus - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Yeah, I agree. Apple has no reason to let OSX users fumble with their machine at a native 2880x1800.The kind of enthusiasts that will want to do that are the same kind of users that will be comfortable installing some hack that allows the functionality. It's win-win; Apple gets to protect their stupid users and the enthusiasts get to experience of 2880x1800 firsthand.
just6979 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
No one would be fumbling at all if the OS understood the physical DPI of the panel and automatically scaled to fit a smartly designed interface spec for GUI element sizes (or even just pick a previous MBP and make it the new baseline for the physical size of GUI elements).This kind of thing used to be Apple's forte, but they've definitely been blinded by the numbers game. A numbers game very similar to the one they lambasted Intel for playing back 10 years ago when the PowerPCs did more per clock than the Pentiums. Turns out PowerPC couldn't keep up, though, so we'll how long they can keep just doubling everything visual before the customers realize it's the wrong solution.
drvelocity - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
The fact that you personally see no reason to allow full-res has little bearing on anybody that's not you, which is actually a lot of people. But thank you for letting us know what you don't understand. ;)ex2bot - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I almost guarantee that it's available through Terminal using a "defaults write . . ." command.just6979 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Did you try changing the DPI setting? Windows defaults to 96 dpi, which is close but not quite the same as my 21.5" 1080p screen. I tweaked the DPI on my system to match the actual size of the screen, and it comes out to about 104 DPI, or 108% of the default 96. Just experimenting, Windows 7 can do up to 480 DPI, since it lets me set a 500% increase over the default 96.That is also how Apple should be handle the scaling issue as well, not this stupid pixel-doubling and psuedo-resolution crap. Modern screens even know how physically large they are, so DPI can be calculated and used for decorations and fonts, and modern CPUs/GPUs are more than fast enough to scale any bitmap images to match the actual DPI.
ex2bot - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Pixel doubling is a really good way of handling the issue. It looks better. Looking better is important on a display. At least to me.And I think the way OS X currently handles the new 2880 display makes sense. A default setting and one that looks like a 1920 screen. Then a few more that are less practical.
I'm sure people who want to will be able to tweak to their heart's content through Terminal or TinkerTool.
just6979 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Pixel-doubling is a cop-out to supporting real arbitrary scaling and setting up some guidelines to make sure all the click/touch targets remain accessible at different resolutions (and by resolutions I mean DPI/PPI, not 1920x1080, etc, which are dimensions). Microsoft and Google have it right with Windows 8 and Android, both specifying ideal physical-size-to-resolution guidelines to maintain consistent target sizes, while allowing higher resolutions to simply make everything look smoother, not smaller. Apple used to be the king of design guidelines: their old Mac HIG is _full_ of smart, useful, and not nearly borrowed/stolen enough, idea for making GUIs work well with humans. Too bad they've tossed some of it out the window in the chase of simply higher and higher numbers to beat the rest of the industry over the head with.I don't want to tweak my DPI settings in Android 4 or Windows 7, I just want them to be consistent between different machines with different resolutions.
Dug - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Your idea doesn't work for a majority of apps.There are fixed cells in most applications and web design. So raising the DPI causes all sorts of headaches. Like the cell becoming too small for the larger DPI. Not everything will scale.
Using Apple's method, everything comes out the way it should look if it doesn't support the new resolution. This is a far better solution until all apps can be optimized for the new resolution.
Looking at how fast people are doing this, I don't think it will be long. Just like it didn't take long for developers to convert to the iPad3 to optimize the look.
PubFiction - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
So what its time for those devs to get off their butts and start respecting DPI scaling. The reality for a very long time they have been screwing it up because people keep saying that we can use tricks like pixel doubling. The devs see this as a cop out. The end result is no system works well or looks good at higher PPI, not because of the OS, but because of the third party applications.The OS makers need to lead the charge to true DPI scaling and the application developers that stay behind can see their products become less popular. Apples method can only work on double PPI screens what if you don't have that? And it only works because apple can choose which screens they want on their products.
just6979 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
...noting the 125% and 150% tests. Does Windows 8 only support those discrete settings? I know Windows 7 shows 125, 150, and 200 in combo box, but it is a combo box, which means you can enter anything, and entering anything above 500 forces it back to 500. Does Windows 8 support this? It's worth noting that this setting does affect both fonts and window decorations in Windows 7.Spivonious - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I had this question as well.Unfortunately, the Start Screen only has three settings: 100%, 140%, and 180%. The desktop retains the old Windows 7 settings box, so you're right - any scaling up to 500% could be entered. I'm not sure why Anand didn't do this, other than to make Windows look worse than OS X (even though Windows is actually scaling instead of simply doubling pixels for apps that aren't written to be DPI-aware).
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scal...
ex2bot - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Never mind about the pixel doubling part. I misunderstood your comment.Core2uu - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Let's see some battery life figures with Windows 8!Lonyo - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
They would be pretty meaningless since switchable graphics doesn't work, so the battery life would be much lower than OSX due to that anyway.Core2uu - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
They wouldn't be meaningless; in fact, the fact that the switchable graphics don't work is precisely why I wanted to know how the figures between OS X, Windows 7 and Windows 8 compared.There's no point in buying a Retina MBP for the screen if the battery life is going to be awful.
mayankleoboy1 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
in the native resolution screenshot with skyfall playing, i can see individual pixels ! There goes the Retina down the draindrummy-b - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Hello? of course you see pixels when magnifying the screen to approx 3 times it natural size and from a distance of ~10cm.Nevertheless 'retina' is a stupid marketing buzzword, though the definition is NOT 'you can't see pixels whatever you do'
ImSpartacus - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
The concept of a "Retina" display does not mean that pixels are unconditionally indiscernible. You are required to view it from a minimum distance.If a person with 20/20 vision gets closer than 15" from the new Macbook Pro, the "Retina" effect is gone. This isn't some controversial bullshit, this is the definition of 20/20 vision. It's existed for more than a hundred years.
Nockawa - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
It would be great to make some benchmarks of the SSD on the Win8. Is AHCI properly working, TRIM too?Sfasciacarene - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
How the other resolution look like? For example the 1600x1200 has the same problems due to a resolution changes to the non native resolution?Another question, in osx you can't go down (for now) to really (non native) at 1440x900 native resolution?
Becouse in theory it would look identical, without the problems about scaling to nominative resolutions (what happen for example when you go to 1280x800 in a display with 1440x900 native resolution), due to fact Who each 4px of retina display become exactly 1px at that resolution. There is any one can try and approve this fact?
Sfasciacarene - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I see in the gaming session you can choose 1440x900, how it lolla like compared to a standard MacBook pro display's with a 1440x900 native resolution?drvelocity - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Anand, after a couple days with the new RMBP, what are the chances that this is your new daily driver?melgross - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I'm sure before too long, someone will come out with some free utility to allow the full Rez.lilmoe - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
@authorOther than the traditional DPI scaling of Windows (desktop mode), there's also a Metro "size" scaling in the metro display settings. It makes things considerably larger for metro apps on that resolution. Give it a shot. It scales perfectly.
hfm - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
It appears these guys got the drivers working with a modified .infhttp://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=13854...
Give it a shot Anand.
kazsud - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I hear it gets pretty hot on the osx sideAhmad - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Just awesome. This MBP with Retina Display is in my list of gadgets to buy.I was wondering how Metro Apps would look like on the Retina Display of MBP. Would they need scaling or they are also Retina Display ready.
dcuccia - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Anand, any hint at changes/improvements in the sensitivity/fluidity of MBP trackpad input/gestures in Win8 Metro and Win8 Desktop compared to Win7? Compared to OSX? Thanks, Davidtipoo - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Is it possible that you could throw a decibel reading in the review with a few points of reference? I'm curious about that new cooling system. Apparently the Macbook Airs already used the asymmetrical fan and those aren't that quiet at load, but they have some other improvements in the MBP-R so I'm curious how that fares.name99 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
When you get to the final review please include:- thermals. How hot does it feel under "light" use, say web browsing, under "normal" aggressive use (eg playing a high end game) and under "maximal" use, the most aggressive realistic scenario you can think of. (We have already seen that running a power virus it gets uncomfortably hot, but I'm interested in realistic scenarios more than worst case imaginable).
- how fast (and how does it fall off) is the WiFi when connected to Apple's most recent base station?
- how fast is the USB controller when maxed out --- if you connect it to say a high-end external SSD, can you hit maybe 400MB/s or will you max out at say 200MB/s?
Personally (though this is less AnandTech's specialty) I'd like to see a discussion of how well OSX (and esp Mountain Lion) handle processor affinity. My experience with OSX so far (all on dual-core, none hyper-threaded CPUs) is that there appears to be zero processor affinity, and if one has a single task running it seems to randomly bounce from one CPU to the next instead of any pinning. This is probably not a massive deal in the grand scheme of things, but it would be interesting to see if the core OS guys are finally doing something about it.
[A general discussion of this issue might be valuable. For example, it could perhaps even be argued that Apple is doing the right thing --- in a world with thermal-based turbo, perhaps you get optimal single-threaded performance by keeping a thread on one core running at max turbo until it gets too hot, at which point you switch to the next core?
I'd be curious to hear what the currently considered state of the art is for this, across Windows, Linux and OSX --- including what's best on dual and quad ARM cores.]
bji - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Can I please add:- make a thorough analysis of the glossy screen vs. other glossy screens and matte screens. Apple claims 75% reduced glare, as far as I can tell solely based on the fact that the made the glass that covers the screen thinner ... but I'm not sure why thinner glass would be less subject to glare than thicker glass, but then again, I'm no optics expert.
name99 - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Some of this has been explained.We start with the flat panel, which has a layer of glass below and one above, with the magic optics+electronics living between them.
The screen on the MBPro has an ADDITIONAL layer of glass above this for extra protection.
The screen on the MBPR (and the MBA) does not have this additional layer. So there's one less layer of impedance mismatch to result in reflections.
I agree it seems unlikely that just this change could reduce reflection by 75%. It could be that previous MBPs did not use an anti-reflection coating, whereas the MBPR does. Such coatings consist of a think layer of dielectric on the glass to reduce the impedance mismatch between air and the glass and thus reflection. They only work exactly at one wavelength (generally chosen to be green) meaning that they do a great job of not reflecting green, and a so-so job of not reflecting red and blue. The net result is, looked at from the side, they have a purple cast. These coatings are commonplace --- you've seen them on camera lenses and glasses --- and they work pretty well in those contexts. I'd assume they work well on a laptop screen, but I honestly have no idea. Such a coating could explain the rest of the 75% number.
HollyDOL - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Can't be really sure since I haven't seen the machine yet, but I am quite positive I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1920x1080 and this screen unless I'd stuck my nose in the middle of the panel. Having above HD resolution is nice, but unless there is really good reason to do it (like having way too big pixels compared to screen size and distance from observer) I'd avoid it any day a week - just the increase of GPU load, requirements on memory size and bandwidth etc... This seems a bit like a chase for "holy 10Mpix screen" .. just to compare IMAX cameras run at 12Mpix (those who run with Sony cameras), if shot to special 70mm IMAX film we get to about 27Mpix on source film (ie. we will never get above that). Compared to that 5Mpix retina screen seems like unfounded wasting...Then again I might speak otherwise when I actualy get one retina display in my hands :-)
tipoo - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
A lower but still high resolution screen would not have perfect scaling though, that's the point of going double the resolution. It's just 2x2 more pixels for every old one so scaling is simple.plazmic - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
I'd like to point out that it *is* currently possible to disable scaling for a true, exposed 2880x1800 in OS X.There's several ways to do so -- the easiest is by creating and applying a custom, non-scaled resolution with a (non-free, trial) utility called SwitchResX. There's probably similar, open sourced tools out there, this was just the first one I tried.
Here is a (poor) camera shot to put the scale of this resolution into perspective for OS X:
http://cloudmancer.com/images/trueretina.jpg
pcgeek101 - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Woah -- NICE! That looks pretty awesome, and is exactly how I would want to use it.But why do you have to find some obscure, free (or paid) tool to enable this? Why does Apple lock it down from the customer? It's rather stupid.
plazmic - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
I'm sure there's some kext or plist hidden somewhere within OS X that will enable a much cleaner, free, permanent method. It just hasn't been discovered yet.The big takeaway from my post is that there isn't a active restrictions on the native 2880x1800 resolution like there is on others.
For example, manually setting a non-scaled 1440x900 didn't work (for me)... the nvidia kext redirected back to HiDPI with every method I tried.
jchannon - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Wow! That looks fine. What's it like in reality, not too small?plazmic - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
That would depend on your vision I guess. Many a sysadmin have used similar DPI's with their beloved 22" 3840x2400 monitors.Personally, I'm quite happy with the display at this scale. I posted my experienced here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=1504925...
jchannon - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
Thanks. This is looking excellent. Don't suppose you've fired up Windows in a VM to see if you can get native resolution support. Definitely going to try and get one of these bad boys!pcgeek101 - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Hey Anand,I'm just wondering if you can run Windows 7 or Windows 8 Release Preview in any virtualization software such as VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, or Parallels. Can you take full advantage of the 2880x1800 display **unscaled** when using these virtualization programs in full-screen mode?
Cheers,
Trevor Sullivan
jchannon - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Definitely!! Please let us know. Bootcamp was a nice to know but this is more important for me!p05esto - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
I really don't like these ultra high resolutions. What is the point? Everything looks so small, email, web, movies, photos, UI elements, etc are all so small you need a magnifying glass just to use the stupid computer/tablet. These resolutions are a pissing match, I see little value. They also require much more graphics card power and no GPU could run games at these resolutions.Stupid stupid and pointless in my opinion anyway.
KPOM - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
The whole point of the update to OS X is that it doubles the scaling. So the 2880x1800 screen looks like a 1440x900 screen for OS X applications not rewritten for the "Retina" display. You don't just get images 1/4 the size.KPOM - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
Apple just posted the Boot Camp drivers for the 2012 MacBook Air last night, so perhaps the Retina MacBook Pro drivers are also available.pesos - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
did apple finally get around to updating their efi implementation so you can efi boot windoze?RedHot906 - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
great laptop but ram is soldered to the board. I dont mind them making us buy the ram from them. But they should extened the warranty to 5 or 6 yrs on ram to make it worth it. because if ram tweeks after 3yrs. 1 day you have a 2500 to 3000 dollar sinker. if they dont extend the warranty apples just greedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!marcusj0015 - Sunday, June 17, 2012 - link
Apple's greedy because you'd be too cheap to get the RAM replaced for a few hundred dollars, after 3 years? Or to buy an AppleCare warranty?RedHot906 - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Fool the ram is soldered to the board airgo ram goes logic board goes!!!!!!!!!!!!BehindEnemyLines - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
So will Windows 8 metro stuff scaling correctly with the proper driver installed? If so, I think AT should update the article to include this. Based on this article, many users from other tech forums are bashing on Windows 8 as a failure.cheesecake500 - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
This review is taking forever!! I know that Anand does the best and most comprehensive reviews on the internet but more than 1 week to publish the full review of such an important product looks ridiculous in todays fast moving world!! When will it be published Anand?Dug - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
I don't see anyone with a thorough, professional review of the screen, ssd, apps, wireless, etc. with full analysis and both OS's.It takes far more time than you realize, and I'm sure its not the only thing that he has going on. Computex just ended.
pesos - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - link
UEFI indeed appears to have been updated - can natively boot win8 in EFI mode. unfortunately it bluescreens during boot after the first phase of setup.Using normal Boot Camp works fine, and AHCI support has been added which is nice and long overdue... however it appears to break the boot camp control panel in the same way that hacking ahci into win7 did on my previous MacBook pro. the control panel squawks about not being able to access the startup disk and so I can't set my trackpad options - facepalm.
the NVidia driver is now part of the boot camp package, however performance seems really bad - scrolling anandtech and other sites is very choppy...
metatechbe - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
The Intel integrated GPU on Core i3/5/7 can normally be enabled in BIOS mode with the following line in grub.cfg :setpci -d 8086:0044 54.b=0b
You may need to customize to your CPU PCI ID, which can be obtained with "lspci"
isaackhazi - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
What I was wondering is whether Windows 8 on bootcamp will finally support 2 external displays via thunderbolt. No one is clear on the subject whether Windows 7 was incapable of supporting 2 daisy chained displays or Apple was not updating their drivers to support 2 external displays in windows.I have been searching for months if anyone has tried it.
I wonder if Windows 8 will finally fix that issue...
Aftershocker - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link
I have heard that temps, particulary the CPU temp, can rise quite dramatically using bootcamp.I have mind on order but obviously would like to keep it running as cool as possible under bootcamp.
So an anybody confirm if lubbo's fan control works with the new retina mackbook?
MaximusW - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6069/nvidia-posts-ge...Verde 304.79 Driver
Version 304.79 - BETA
Release Date: Tue Jul 03, 2012
jimd - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Instead of choosing a scaling value like 150%, why not just set it to *exactly* to it's native 220DPI. In Windows 7 you could actual dpi do that by sliding the "custom dpi" ruler until one inch on the ruler was actually one inch long. Does it not work this way in windows 8?It seems silly that people complain about "how small everything is" yet they don't use the correct DPI.
johngibb - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link
Hey - Even though Apple doesn't expose the full native resolution for the retina macbook in system preferences, there are a few ways to use it anyway. I'm using the SetResX menubar switcher and it works perfectly....Read more about it at: http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/18/3-ways-to-run-a-ret...
The actual download is here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mef6sk (make sure you click the right link, there are a bunch of scummy advertisements that look like download links)
I'd recommend SetResX over the other options because (a) scrutil didn't work and (b) SwitchResX isn't free.
wotaewer - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
By all means, I have decent eye sight. No glasses, no nothing. Just good eye sight.If I put the macbook pro retina 15 inch on my desk, so that i can comfortably type, there is no way, that I can comfortably read text that is not increased by at least 150%. Given that you use the highest resolution.
And even further: When using multiple monitors and the macbook is one of them, it is moved back even more to be inline with the other monitors. So you are most likely going to increase text by 200%.
What is the point of pixels that you cannot use because you have to zoom in? What is the point of pixels that you are not going to even see?