Nice comparison with Retina display vs. former screen resolution

[M A V I C]

Lew Zealand wrote: IMO, Retina displays don't mean much for pictures and mean almost nothing for moving images but mean everything for reading text. This is simply your biology working. You can't distinguish nearly as much detail in moving images as you can in static images, and you can't distinguish nearly as much detail in low contrast images (pictures) as you can in high contrast images (text, as high as contrast can get: black & white).

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

[space-time]

M A V I C wrote:
...

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

is 12 point = 12 pixel on retina? or there is some scaling going on?

[lost in space]

Apple's come a long way in graphics, no? The first Mac had about the same pixel density as an Imagewriter.

[M A V I C]

space-time wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
...

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

is 12 point = 12 pixel on retina? or there is some scaling going on?
I'm not talking points, I'm talking pixels. The question is, is 12px = 12px on a retina display. And if it's not, that's going to make web geeks lives very difficult. They probably won't care enough so Apple has to be doing something about this.

[tuqqer]

M A V I C wrote:
I'm not talking points, I'm talking pixels. The question is, is 12px = 12px on a retina display. And if it's not, that's going to make web geeks lives very difficult. They probably won't care enough so Apple has to be doing something about this.

I've been wondering this same thing. I can get confused by pixel talk, but I do remember that the standard file image for webs is (used to be?) 72dpi. I presume here that "dots-per-inch" means the same thing as "pixels-per-inch." Since the number of pixels per inch is now changing radically with these retina displays, I wonder what the new standard will be.

Then again, I may have parts of this confused.

[Lew Zealand]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=space-time]
[quote=M A V I C]
...

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

is 12 point = 12 pixel on retina? or there is some scaling going on?
I'm not talking points, I'm talking pixels. The question is, is 12px = 12px on a retina display. And if it's not, that's going to make web geeks lives very difficult. They probably won't care enough so Apple has to be doing something about this.
According to Apple's information about the MBPR on their website, Apps have to be upgraded to scale the fonts to the normal 12 point size correctly. On the Retina display set to 1440x900, with an updated App such as Safari and most Apple Apps, that 12 point font is the same size as on the regular MacBook Pro, it is just 4 times sharper.

This is the same thing as when you print out a 12 point font on a printer and it comes out at 12 points high, even though on a 600DPI printer that 12 point high font will be many dozens of printed dots high.

On non-updated Apps, such as Chrome at this time, the computer does the same thing but the graphics engine which does this scaling is imperfect which results in somewhat blurry text (see the review of the MBPR @Anandtech). Updated Apps will fix this and do the printer-style rendering correctly.

[M A V I C]

Lew Zealand wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
[quote=space-time]
[quote=M A V I C]
...

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

is 12 point = 12 pixel on retina? or there is some scaling going on?
I'm not talking points, I'm talking pixels. The question is, is 12px = 12px on a retina display. And if it's not, that's going to make web geeks lives very difficult. They probably won't care enough so Apple has to be doing something about this.
According to Apple's information about the MBPR on their website, Apps have to be upgraded to scale the fonts to the normal 12 point size correctly. On the Retina display set to 1440x900, with an updated App such as Safari and most Apple Apps, that 12 point font is the same size as on the regular MacBook Pro, it is just 4 times sharper.

This is the same thing as when you print out a 12 point font on a printer and it comes out at 12 points high, even though on a 600DPI printer that 12 point high font will be many dozens of printed dots high.

On non-updated Apps, such as Chrome at this time, the computer does the same thing but the graphics engine which does this scaling is imperfect which results in somewhat blurry text (see the review of the MBPR @Anandtech). Updated Apps will fix this and do the printer-style rendering correctly.
Ok, I'm trying to be very clear about this: The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values.

I get that apps, icons, yada yada... are scaled by the OS (or can be), but what about web sites? If an image is 110px x 110px, on a non-RD MBP that will be 1" by 1". On a newer one, it'll be 0.5" by 0.5".

So for text, if the font is set to 12px (and I specifically mean PIXELS, not POINTS, as px is MUCH more common), on a non-RD MBP that's 0.109" tall at 220ppi (the RD display), that's 0.055".

I'm not talking about apps, not talking about printing... specifically websites (and pixels.)

If they upscale the images so they are displaying at higher res than they're made, they'll look bad. If they then keep the text scaled at the same proportions as the images (since they're all in px), the text will be impossible to read at the same distance.

I don't see how they can do this without causing a problem one way or another.

[Lew Zealand]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=Lew Zealand]
[quote=M A V I C]
[quote=space-time]
[quote=M A V I C]
...

The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values. For example, 12px. It'll be MUCH smaller on a retina display than on a traditional LCD. Seems like that would make it much harder to read.

is 12 point = 12 pixel on retina? or there is some scaling going on?
I'm not talking points, I'm talking pixels. The question is, is 12px = 12px on a retina display. And if it's not, that's going to make web geeks lives very difficult. They probably won't care enough so Apple has to be doing something about this.
According to Apple's information about the MBPR on their website, Apps have to be upgraded to scale the fonts to the normal 12 point size correctly. On the Retina display set to 1440x900, with an updated App such as Safari and most Apple Apps, that 12 point font is the same size as on the regular MacBook Pro, it is just 4 times sharper.

This is the same thing as when you print out a 12 point font on a printer and it comes out at 12 points high, even though on a 600DPI printer that 12 point high font will be many dozens of printed dots high.

On non-updated Apps, such as Chrome at this time, the computer does the same thing but the graphics engine which does this scaling is imperfect which results in somewhat blurry text (see the review of the MBPR @Anandtech). Updated Apps will fix this and do the printer-style rendering correctly.
Ok, I'm trying to be very clear about this: The majority of font sizes on the web are set in px values.

I get that apps, icons, yada yada... are scaled by the OS (or can be), but what about web sites? If an image is 110px x 110px, on a non-RD MBP that will be 1" by 1". On a newer one, it'll be 0.5" by 0.5".

So for text, if the font is set to 12px (and I specifically mean PIXELS, not POINTS, as px is MUCH more common), on a non-RD MBP that's 0.109" tall at 220ppi (the RD display), that's 0.055".

I'm not talking about apps, not talking about printing... specifically websites (and pixels.)

If they upscale the images so they are displaying at higher res than they're made, they'll look bad. If they then keep the text scaled at the same proportions as the images (since they're all in px), the text will be impossible to read at the same distance.

I don't see how they can do this without causing a problem one way or another.
The iPhone does this correctly on web pages already. It takes a 12 pixel font (as specified by the web page), which is rendered from a scalable Truetype (or other) font, and instead scales the Truetype to a nice smooth 24 points high and then displays it on the screen. Images are scaled up as well though they look a little blockier (usually not very noticeable).

The MBPRetina does the same on Apps which are upgraded to do this. You don't get a tiny, unreadable 12 point font, you get a 24 point font which, when displayed on the Retina screen, shows up on the screen at a 12 point height, at full resolution.