OSX Lion Retina desktop, amazing

[MrX8503]

Air display just updated their app to support Hidpi mode in OSX Lion. I just tested it on my iphone4 and it looks amazing. I'll test it out on my iPad3 later today and report back here on performance.

If you want to experience a retina desktop environment, this is a way to preview it. Hopefully retina MBPs will be upon us mid this year. Can't wait to have a work environment that supports this natively.

Air display is $10 at the appstore, so its not cheap, but I feel like its definitely worth it if you have an iPad3 plus MBP combo.

 

[amdhunter]

I haven't been able to figure out how to set the resolution higher than 1280x800 on Lion with Air Display. How'd you get it to work?

(Granted, I didn't try very hard.)

 

[MrX8503]

You have to update the app and update the Mac app. After that's done you have to click on air display in system pref and enable it.

Finally click on display and select HiDPI.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I can understand testing this on the iPad 3 but what does the iPhone 4 prove?

 

[fr]

So HiDPI on an iPhone 4 would be 480x320?

 

[MrX8503]

I tested it on the iPad 3 and it looks awesome. There are some performance hiccups because its over wifi, but it does indeed work.

You have the option of displaying native 1536p, or 768p with HiDPI enabled.

The difference is that at native everything is sharp, but very small. You gain real estate in this mode. The second mode is HiDPI, which is more akin to retina. You gain sharpness in HiDPI, but no real estate.

Both modes are sharp, but the native state has better performance than the HiDPI mode. In OSX Lion, some artwork is retina ready and some aren't, so its very interesting to see Apple in the transitioning stages to retina for the desktop.

If you want to see what a retina desktop OS looks like, this is the closest thing we have. I'm quite certain this is where desktops are headed, especially with the recent release of Microsofts high res display presentation slide.

So HiDPI on an iPhone 4 would be 480x320?

For some reason the iPhone 4 display settings aren't coming up. But I'm assuming its 480 HiDPI or native. It seems like HiDPI doesn't work on the iPhone4, but native does.

Something else I've noticed is that text in Safari is retina, but its pixelated in other browsers. Looks like apps have to be written to support HiDPI mode.

 

[MrX8503]

Review of the app here.

http://www.macstories.net/news/air-display-gets-hidpi-mode-support-on-ipad-retina-display/

 

[TheStu]

As others have pointed out, since you sit further away from your monitor on your computer than from your iPhone or iPad, a fair number of Apple's displays don't need a whole lot to cross over into 'Retina' territory. If you are looking for pixel doubling... that may take a while.

 

[runawayprisoner]

That and there's this:

As also noted by Wayne Sang, only some Apple apps and system resources/controls seem to take advantage of HiDPI mode right now.

I think HiDPI will have to wait until app developers decide to officially support it.

 

[MrX8503]

Yeah, I don't think Apple is gonna shoot for pixel doubling. They'll probably just bump up their screens high enough so that its retina at a certain distance.

Software is going to have to be updated too. Even text aren't rendered properly in browsers other than Safari. Retina support seems to be more prominent in the Apple apps and almost non existent in 3rd party apps.

 

[Subyman]

There's issues with images as well. All of a sudden, images on a website are now 2x smaller. The webmaster will have to update to include larger resolution images to support the higher DPI/PPI. It will be a while before devices with a DPI much higher than 100 provide a smooth internet browsing experience on most websites. This is definitely a problem with fixed width websites of say, 1000px. Instead of spanning the screen, they are crunched a small region.