The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2012 4:14 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
- Laptops
- Notebooks
Achieving Retina
To make the MacBook Pro’s Retina Display a reality Apple had to work with panel vendors to build the panels it wanted at a reasonable cost, as well as deliver the software necessary to support insanely high resolutions. There was another problem Apple faced in making the rMBP a reality: the display pipeline of the GPUs Apple wanted to use didn't officially support scaling to the resolution Apple demanded of them. Let me explain.
All modern GPUs have fixed function scaling hardware that is used to efficiently scale between resolutions. A scaler either in your GPU or in your display panel is what lets you run non-native resolutions at full screen on your LCD (e.g. running 1680 x 1050 on a 1920 x 1080 panel). None of the GPUs used in the Retina Display MacBook Pro officially support fixed-function scaling of 3840 x 2400 or 3360 x 2100 to 2880 x 1800 however. Modern day GPUs are tested against 2560 x 1440 and 2560 x 1600, but not this particular 5MP resolution. Even 4K resolution support isn’t widespread among what’s available today. Rather than wait for updated hardware and/or validation, Apple took matters into its own hands and built its own GPU accelerated scaling routines for these higher resolutions. Fixed function hardware is almost always more efficient from a performance and power standpoint, which is why there’s some additional performance loss in these scaled resolution modes.
What’s even crazier is Apple wasn’t pleased with the difference in baseline filtering quality between the Intel HD 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPUs. As the Retina Display MacBook Pro would have to regularly switch between GPUs, Apple wanted to ensure a consistently good experience regardless of which GPU was active. There are a lot of filtering operations at work when doing all of this resolution scaling, so rather than compromise user experience Apple simply wrote its own default filtering routines. Since you want your upscale and downscale quality to be identical, Apple had to roll its own implementation on both. Apple’s obsessive attention to detail really made it possible to pull all of this off. It’s just insane to think about.
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Super56K - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Maybe talking paper specs on the software side it's 'the same' but really that's not even close. Dpi scaling is flaky in Windows anyways.And it's really not the same. It's rendered at double the resolution on a screen that actually has 4x's the pixels at the native 1440x900 res. Nobody else does that. Hell, it's rare to even find a 16:10 Windows laptop.
I don't own a MacBook anything, but some of you sound ridiculous in here going on about Sony laptops with 1080p screens
Spunjji - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
What if I, the user, don't want my laptop rendering the display at a pointlessly high resolution just to scale it back down again? I understand the theory but the execution is utterly ridiculous.UpSpin - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
You're right, it wouldn't sell, because the issue is that Windows DPI scaling doesn't work so well. It also doesn't work perfectly in Mac OS (Chrome best example, they had to update it). And so will many older programs, which don't receive further updates, like Adobe Creative Suite <6 don't scale right (assumption)That's one reason that Apple released only one MacBook with a retina display, because the software isn't ready for DPI scaling yet. Apple was brave enough to do the step and force programers to integrate scaling in high res images in their programs because future MacBooks will have retina displays only.
No PC manuafcturer could have done such a step, they would have been blocked by the lack of proper scaling of Windows, rendering a high res display useless because of display errors. So Microsoft should have made Windows 7 resolution independent (just as all mobile OS are, which rely on DPI instead of absolute pixels), then PC manufacturers could have included high res displays which the customer could have used.
EnzoFX - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
MS Should have with Win7? Hardly. That was too long ago and there were no retina screens yet. Even 1080p screens were scarce. Remember that 99% were getting 1366x768 in their laptops.You're right in that Apple can sort of force developers to update apps for support. I do give them credit for usually implementing a solid stopgap. Their scaling for older apps is usually good enough without it being a bad experience. Forcing them to update is a good thing though, having that ecosystem of active developers is good. It's further easier on them to target simple hardware configurations. The benefits of vertical integration at its best. Now for these retina displays to trickle down to all their displays =P.
ananduser - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Win7 scales perfectly well for a screen this res. Such an absurd panel jump however is meant as bragging rights. It also serves as differentiation. Instead of going "post PC" like W8 transformer devices at Computex, it adds a huge panel. There's nothing special about the hardware that hasn't been done before, except the impressive panel.Ohhmaagawd - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Exactly what would constitute "special"?dagamer34 - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Mobile operating systems aren't resolution independent. The iPhone supports 2 resolutions, Windows Phone currently supports 1 resolution, but will support 3 in WP8, and Android supports a variety of resolutions, but is NOT resolution independent.garcondebanane - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Frankly, yes I think so. See "the software side of retina" and "Achieving retina".I don't think any other PC manufacturer can realistically be expected to do it this seamlessly.
UberApfel - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Apple didn't think of the idea. The screens are simply now available and Apple has the resources and reason to push it to market first. Apple also has their own operating system and software engineers to prepare for such.Anyone familiar with the market knows that Microsoft is a big kid nurtured by monopoly and ripping off corporations. The 'big game-changing release & failure' every few years just doesn't allow manufacturers to be first-adopters. Only OSX stays up-to-date, and only Apple may use OSX thanks to either IP or special-order hardware.
If Asus, Acer, or Toshiba were to shell out the cash to get a portion of the first batch and mass-produce some laptops w/ "retina display"; they'd just have a deficit. Apple is a designer; not a innovator. Anyone who makes that mistake is a fool.
MrSpadge - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
It's not only about thinking about it, it's about building it and reaching out to make people buy it. It's hard to do this without the "Apple hype", no matter how good and innovative the product may be.