Exactly! A moveable desktop. I still have a 17", it’s heavy and huge. Thought of getting an MBA, but I guess the new MBP will feel like a feather compared to my MBP 17"!
Heh, all right, all right, I’m just saying. 
It is a lovely machine, no doubt about that. Text looks amazing on it - their claims about it looking like magazine text is spot on.
I just wish they’d update iWork or iBooks Author - I don’t quite understand why Apple hasn’t updated all its apps to take advantage of the Retina display, especially its office apps.
Hey Keith,
When you get a chance, can you give Aeon Timeline a spin on the retina display and let me know how bad they look.
I can neither afford to buy a retina display, or pay for someone to update the graphics, so… hopefully, not too bad!
Hi Matt,
As far as I can see, it’s just the toolbar icons that look fuzzy. At some point you’ll want to replace them with PDF template files, most likely. But for now almost every other app has the same problem, including Pages, iBooks Author etc…
All the best,
Keith
Hello Keith,
Did you also take a look into the different scaling modes besides the “Retina” option with Scrivener? Or did you even try to run the desktop in the native resolution of the panel? Sadly I won’t be able to get my hands on my RMBP until next month, but I’m already curious if it’s worth to create preferences for the native desktop setting to avoid blurred research images. 
Hi Keith,
I want to add to that question. I have also heard that the adjustable scaling modes can be used to make everything smaller. By doing so it is claimed more can be fit on the screen. What I read also claims things will look fuzzier. This confuses me since I thought things would be sharper. When you get a chance please try the setting for items being scaled to be smaller and let us know the results. Can you place two full windows side by side and read them well enough to use them this way? Is it sharper and very readable?
Thanks for being our spy!!!
John
I haven’t tried the other scales yet, but will take a look tomorrow (I’m on MBA at the moment). Scrivener won’t require any preferences, though - it’s up to OS X to decide what images to use once they are built in.
Test is rendered by the OS, not by graphic files, so no update is required to make it look good. The only graphics that require updating are those that rely on image files built into an application package; anything drawn using code (such as text) doesn’t need any updating. (Because the program just says, “draw a curve here”, and on a Retina display OS X will use twice as many pixels - or four times as many pixels, rather - to draw it.)
Keith,
Many people are saying text in pages looks really bad. They are saying it looks worse than text on the regular macbook pro screen using pages. Many many people are reporting that scaling is introducing distortion and the pixel gap is different which causes trouble also.
Are you certain text in Scrivener and pages looks just as good as it does on a non retina pro? A surprising number of people are saying this is absolutely not the case.
I was actually referring to the desktop in full native display resolution with my statement about preferences. I doubt that 10-12pt fonts in the Binder or Corkboard at 2880x1800 look great for longer sessions of work even if you are near-sighted like me. However after reading through various forums, I’m not really convinced yet that these scaled desktops via oversampling are a good idea by Apple until every program is Retina optimized, so I’m thinking about the native desktop size without scaling to the 2x mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no way to adjust the dpi of your desktop in OS X like in Windows!?
I think the way it renders fonts by size is that it tries to produce the actual point size as it would be printed, rather than just taking the 12pt = x pixels from a lower resolution display and just displaying those pixels. So in other words, it is a 12 point character, not an x pixel character, and thus more comparable to what a 12pt character looks like when you print it out. Then the increased resolution is used not to fix more characters on the screen, but rather to increase the fidelity of the line drawing within the characters. The problem with graphics though is that pixels cannot have their fidelity increased internally like that. They have to be expanded in size, and that is an ugly process. It’s either that or showing the image at its native size, which is going to be very tiny on a high resolution monitor. You’d have buttons that you could barely see in some places.
Anyway, this is all why, years ago, Apple wanted to push toward non-raster interfaces, where everything is drawn using a mechanism very similar to how fonts are drawn: mathematical instructions to create the curve, rather than drawing the curve with dots. Unfortunately “vector” graphics are much more expensive computationally speaking, so that never really went anywhere, and now their strategy is just making bigger and bigger graphics. Trading RAM for CPU, essentially.
But you are correct, the Mac doesn’t have a global DPI setting for tweaking font size. It tries to handle all of that automatically based on perceptive scales.
Well, I’ve tested at the scaled resolutions, and they don’t look quite as good as the standard resolution. Text is a little fuzzier at the scaled resolutions, although not pixellated and by no means bad.
The standard resolution is far better, though. Also, as Ioa says, the standard resolution is not tiny. In the past, again as Ioa says, one pixel has been used to represent one point. There are 72 points in an inch. But if one pixel is taken to represent one point, then the more pixels you put into the same screen size, then the smaller the representation of an inch will be on screen - i.e. it won’t really be an inch on screen. What Apple are now doing is separating these two measurements, so that one point may be represented by more than one pixel. In so doing, they can keep on screen sizes consistent. So, on the MacBook Pro with Retina display, 12-point text is the same size as 12-point text on paper.
As for Pages and scaling, as far as I can see, the text looks great. The only programs that will have problems are those that use non-OS X text systems - I’ve heard Word doesn’t look great, for instance, but haven’t installed it yet.
Also, I should add, that even though the text is a little fuzzier when you scale the size of everything up via the Preferences, it is far, far better for those with poor eyesight than the past solution of just having to lower the resolution to make everything bigger. That makes the text blocker and uglier than the very slight fuzz on the Retina display. Moreover, for programs that have the right graphics, apps are crisp and sharp (aside from the slight text fuzziness) even when everything is large, so you don’t have to put up with hideous blocky graphics just because you are short-sighted.
All-in-all, I’m really looking forward to this coming to the MacBook Air. And now I’m off to write the second brief for our graphics designer…
All the best,
Keith
Thanks for that detailed reply. I placed my order again yesterday. I have continued to read on the forums and I am as always amazed by how differently people perceive similar things. Its very confusing. I had heard word looked really bad and I need to use it but pages should do for now. I don’t like a white background but I have read pages can have a colored background through a work around.
Thanks for taking the time!!!
John
I wonder how IA Writer looks like. The whole point of the app is how nice and readable the text looks in it
just checked the retina look at an apple store, writing a few sentences with textedit. disturbingly pretty. almost a distraction!
I have ordered one and it occurred to me that it could be a distraction if it looks too good. I’m hoping once I spend a good bit of time on it the shiny penny aspect will be forgoten enough to not be a problem. On my macbook air 13 the screen is just fuzzy enough to annoy me a good bit. So I guess both can be distracting in their own way. The benefit of the retina will be that I can use it much longer with much less eye fatigue. Each time I use it I may get distracted at first and then get into what I am doing.
That’s my thinking at the moment!
The distraction won’t last for more than a few minutes. And then you will enjoy all its glory productively! Good for you.
Thanks for the support. It helps!!
KB,
How do colored backgrounds look in places like the editor? Are they drawn by osx and as a result achieving the level of sharpness the display can provide?
I’m not really sure what you mean there - a coloured background is just a colour so looks the same on any display.
As for sharpness and distraction, I just realised what the sharpness and smoothness of the text on the Retina display reminds me of: looking at an iBook screen in 2004 after having spent all my time on Windows. It’s that sort of difference: a bit of a revelation. I can’t wait for Retina displays to come to the Air.
That’s what I’m waiting for; and I don’t mind doing so as it will be a while before high-res looks good and not a hybrid whenever software with low-res icons comes up. But otherwise, I’m done with the laptop form factor I think. I don’t need extra power on the go, and so something super small and basic like an MBA11 is just fine by me. At home I’d rather have something I can tear apart and fix or upgrade if I need to, and this MBP is just about as far away as you can get from that. Frankly I’m not even sure why they are calling it an MBP—the specs I guess, but it’s really more of a MacBook in terms of being an appliance type computer.