“Last week’s WWDC keynote saw the launch of iOS 6, as well as a rejig of Apple’s entire Mac line – including a brand new MacBook Pro with a thinner body, souped up specs and a Retina display,” Ben Sillis reports for Electricpig.
“I’ve been testing it out for the last week and – quelle surprise – it’s amazing,” Sillis reports. “The thing is, it’s so good it’s making the internet itself look bad.”
Sillis reports, “I spent a few days working on the new MacBook Pro, then tried to go back to my 2009 15-inch MacBook Pro. It’s hard. It looks grainy. It offends me now. Which is ridiculous, but there you are.”
“Using Apple’s first party apps rejigged for the Retina Display is a wonderful experience. Writing on it in a full screen app is glorious, like typing onto a sheet of paper in a typewriter, only with the option to press delete. Basically, almost anything that doesn’t involve images looks amazing. But that’s a big problem for browsing,” Sillis reports. “Head over to any website outside of Apple.com, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. What looks like a crisp, sharp homepage logo on any well-designed site becomes a blurry mess.”
Read more in the full article here.
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AP reviews Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display: An epiphany, makes all other screens look dull and fuzzy – June 16, 2012
Reg Hardware reviews Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display: Drool-worthy – June 15, 2012
USA Today reviews Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display: Powerfully robust, an object of desire – June 14, 2012
ABC News reviews Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display: If you have the money, this is the one to buy – June 14, 2012
Engadget reviews Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display: Redefines the professional notebook – June 13, 2012
PC Magazine reviews Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display: Editor’s choice – June 13, 2012
Apple debuts new TV ad for MacBook Pro with Retina display: ‘Every Dimension’ (with video) – June 13, 2012
AnandTech analyzes Apple’s new MacBook Pro Retina display: ‘Everything is ridiculously crisp’ – June 12, 2012
Hands-on with Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina display (with video) – June 12, 2012
Apple unveils all new MacBook Pro with stunning Retina display – June 11, 2012
Great, now apple has to show the Internet how to do it’s job properly. First it’s computers, then music players, then phones, then tablets. Now the Internet!
I need some clarification. When people say that standard images look ‘blurry’, I’m guessing that it’s being pixel doubled and actually looks the same as it would on a previous model’s display, no? It just accentuates the ‘bluriness’ being on the same screen as retina rendered text. Or does it actually look worse than a regular display?
it looks worse. Like a too-low res image. Same problem with the iPad 3. You notice it right away..it makes most images look like they were from 1995 when screens were 800×600.
A very nice computer with poor web browsing doesn’t go well together.
Do you even understand what you just wrote?
Good one, Chrissy!
Or you might say that low-res broadcasts on an HD TV show up all the failings of poor quality images. The problem is not with the TV or the Retina display MacBook Pro, it’s the media. What’s hard to understand here?
This is the only reason why I didn’t order one yet. As a web developer, I wouldn’t be able to design web graphics that looked crisp on the 99.999% of devices without a high res screen.
You don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
Are forgetting about all of the iPad 3’s out there?
Asking for the web to be redesigned to accommodate high resolution graphics is counter to the purpose of the modern web. Graphics rendered at the correct Internet size are constructed for ease of transmission. High res just needlessly consumes bandwidth.
“correct Internet size” is a balance between file size and common screen resolutions. The “correct” formula has always followed increases in screen size/pixel density. And it will follow this trend as more people use iPad 3’s and such. All you need is one company’s CEO to browse his companies website on an iPad 3/new MBP..and I guarantee the company web guy is going to get an email..
I’m a web developer and have already been starting to get into the habit of designing in higher-resolutions and exporting images that are then displayed smaller in-browser. That was due to the iPad Retina Display. Now which this, plus other vendors going with 1080p HD displays (and probably higher at some point), we can expect this high-res trend on the web to be a major factor in design globally in a year from now. At present though, I’m afraid it will be very unrealistic to assume very many sites are going to go to the expense of transitioning. Low-res web will be around for a while. :/
The cause of the blur is due to the comparison of the web graphics with the graphics that are native to the Mac (Finder and other Apple apps).
You can still design web graphics, just don’t use extreme detail or a very high resolution. For example: a 30kb image is going to look the same. I always design for the lower half of the bell curve; I assume many people have 4 year old computers. Similarly, being that I have many friends in rural areas, I do not include high-res images or animation as to prevent long download times.
Design for your customer, not for yourself. You can make hi-res items a viewable option.
FYI: Rural US is like a 3rd world country in terms of internet speeds with dial-up covering over 80% of the country. This is solely due to large telecom companies paying congressmen to prevent competition in telephone and cable tv. Without it, there is no incentive to build anything faster or lower the rates. In areas that do have high-speed, it is often under 5Mbps; laughable to most of the rest of the world. Don’t believe it? Ask Apple’s co-founder, Woz, if he has high-speed. Many European countries routinely offer 20+ Gbps at rates similar to local phone service.
This national snail-like internet service prevents me from placing high res graphics on the web, or risk the viewers’ page loading to a slow to a crawl.
Lived in a place like that. Hated it, glad to be back in California with decent speeds and no bandwidth caps or spotty reception due to weather.
Umm, Woz is in the Bay Area.
Perhaps next OS X update will include a toggle feature to allow users to revert to crap mode so variation in visual clarity and precision will be universally degraded for all online experiences. This should eliminate the nausea and distress from cycling between Retina-based and non-Retin-based applications.
Crap mode? ROFLOLMFAO…
It’s truly ruined the internet! With the new retina display, you can see every tiny zit and blemish on the naked ladies you download! The internet’s RUINED, I tell ya!
——RM
Yep. That why i prefer soft focus flv/avi to HD.
I think I’ve figured out a solution. I’ll buy a really cheap matte finish cover for the screen and have someone plaster it over the display before I ever look at it. I’ll never know the difference. Bring on the nubiles! 😉
I’m wondering if should even bother with retina at this stage. Will graphics still remain at 72dpi or is it now 144dpi. It will make it hard designing for others if everything you do will look fuzzy (designing at 72, viewing at double the pixles)
MacBook Pro Retina display = 220 pixels per inch. That is the spec. Read it and weep.
Now I’m frightened to go see one. I’ll never want to use my old MacBook again! =:-O
Just last week was the first time I coded something on a website specifically for retina display. I added high resolution images for the site’s logo in the header and footer, and a bit of JavaScript to swap it in on when the user had a retina display.
I only did this for the site logos because they were the most offensive looking part of the site when viewed with pixel doubling. Making separate high resolution versions for every image seemed cumbersome and hard to maintain in the long run. I also didn’t want to slow down download speeds by quadrupling the size of every single image on the site.
There still isn’t a good established way for developers to optimize websites for retina displays (unlike iOS apps, where retina optimization is very clear and well established). There is talk in the W3C about extending the HTML img tag to handle retina images, but movement is very slow on that front. There are a few JavaScript plugins that try to address this, but none of them are perfect. Retina optimization on the web is still in frontier country, and I think it’s going to be a couple years before retina optimized websites are common place.