I don't want a "Retina display", I want a true 1920x1080 on my 15" MBP.
Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution, which is not. A "Retina display" of 2880x1800 is just a "better" 1440x900.
Give me the option to choose between double pixels and real pixels and I'll buy thee.
I'm having the same concern. I use all 1920 x 1200 in my standard workflow. I'm concerned about the lack of a 17" model, as this screen's physical width is just about the minimum that can support two side by side pages at comfortable reading font sizes. Pixel density is high enough already that I'm not persuaded more pixels will make smaller fonts any more comfortable, and 15" simply doesn't approximate two 8.5" x 11" pages side by side no matter what the resolution is. (Put two 8.5" x 11" pages over your 17" MBP screen; note they only hang off the edge by about a half inch.)
Full screen apps with the magic pad swipe between them mitigates this somewhat for apps like Mail, Sublime Text, or Terminal, but 1440 x 900 is a poor choice for dual page word processing.
That said, after development, my second most common activity is photo triage and editing. For this, the 15" retina display could present a far truer representation of what can be expected in the final print.
But I'm concerned about the "less glare" feature. I've also always and only purchased the matte screens. They have no glare, and no false brilliance from the glossy screen. For photo editing for print work, the matte screens have always felt more accurate. I'm curious if they've gone to a single screen surface, based on glossy, but with somewhat less glare. I'm not sure I'd be interested in that.
On the plus side, a MBP 17" only fits in carry on bags that can't quite go in a commuter jet's overhead bin, while the 15" will fit easily in most any commuter jet compatible bag.
That said, the iPad 3 64GB with iPhoto and SnapSeed can ingest and edit a great deal of photos even at today's DSLR resolutions. On recent trips, I carry an iPad 3 plus a Nextodi external portable photo HDD with integrated card reader. I edit one day's worth of photos on the iPad, while archiving the full memory cards on the Nextodi.
17" models seem to be disappearing all over. Lenovo has dropped them from all product lines except the "Essential G." System76 has dropped their 17" model. Since I've been thinking about getting a 17" Linux laptop this is getting a bit annoying.
Another 17" lover here. I think when I get one of these new ones -- which I will have to, at some point, I guess -- I'll also get a dental loupe so I can really use the resolution.
Windows has had High DPI mode for quite awhile. Not sure if that will be compatible with the new MPB, but it should help. Too bad most windows apps are fairly broken in high DPI mode.
I've tried using the 125% and 150% DPI modes in Windows 7 on a 1080p display and the support is still rather primitive. My HP ENVY 15 actually shipped with 125% mode enabled by default. Lots of icons, graphical elements, and many fonts become blurry/pixelated when enabled.
I'm guessing a reason we haven't seen high DPI screens from Dell/HP/Sony/etc is partially because the Windows OS doesn't really support it that well just yet. Hopefully things have changed in Windows 8.
"Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution"
I think you've confused "resolution" with "my preferred resolution". The new MBP has both a higher density and a better resolution then what you're looking for. You may be disappointed but I bet Apple thinks it can make more money by selling 2880x1800 MBPs.
It really depends on how OS X chooses to impose upon how the pixels are used. If the new "retina" desktop is merely a 1440x900 point desktop with much sharper fonts and artwork (much like how the retina iPhones are merely 320x480 point views), then this isn't necessarily desirable to someone who truly wants the higher-resolution workspace.
Care to explain? The "retina" iPhones have pixel dimensions of 640×960, where each pixel is composed of a red, green, and a blue cell. The OS UI widgets have been updated to display well on this new physical resolution. What do you mean by "how the retina iPhones are merely 320x480 point views"?
On those devices, Apple simplified the way UI layout is done by fixing the usable coordinate system at 320x480. As an app developer, you position things on retina devices no differently than on non-retina devices; placing a button at (160, 240) puts it at the center of the screen in both cases. The higher resolution / DPI is only used by the low-level font and graphics toolkit. As far as the developer and user are concerned, the device has a 320x480 "desktop" either way.
You can imagine an alternative scenario to this in which everything on the screen is half as big as it used to be yet equally detailed, with four times as many icons fitting on the home screen as before. This is what it would be like if the full resolution of the retina display were utilized just to provide more real estate instead of more detail.
Scaling to 800x600 on a 1024x768 screen looks awful. I'm not sure that scaling a 2880x1800 screen to 1920x1080 is going be distinguishable from native resolution for anyone with eyes more than 15 years old.
No, there are 2880x1800 pixels. If you want to use the full screen to show 1920x1080, you are non-native and the math doesn't even out since there aren't half pixels. Now if they had gone 3840x2160...
That's a real flaw, a old 15" MBP with 1680x1050 would practically be a better choice. This is just dumb, that a 2880x1800 display is worse than a 1680x1050 display because of the way the software handles these resolutions. Unless I'm missing something...
That's interesting... I didn't realize this until you said it. I currently have the 15" MBP at 1680x1050. Buying the new retina display would be a downgrade in screen real estate, since it would show an equivalent 1440x900. Sure it would be crisper, but when I'm developing on my laptop, it's all about screen real estate.
In the worst case, the OS widgets will take up more space than you'd like. But for development most of your display is text, and you'll be able to significantly reduce the font size and maintain readability.
How so? The new one has a physical resolution of 2,880 × 1800 pixels. The density is higher, so text can be scaled smaller and still be legible. Are you questioning how large UI widgets will appear?
You'll eventually get better than 1920x1080 on your Retina MBP, because apps will adapt to the HiDPI APIs, and then you can scale all the critical parts (text views, graphics views, etc.) to be as tiny as you like and still get high-quality, and the same settings will work on the old non-Retina display but just look worse.
I.e., the approach they've taken is fully scaleable from current resolutions to high resolutions, but it'll take some cooperation from third-party software.
