New Macbook Pro Retina Display Support

[takii]

So the new macbook pro was just released a few days ago and as you guys already know 3rd party applications that aren't made for the retina display specifically will look pretty shitty when you get close to the screen. I'm really hoping Ableton works on the new screen support soon.
Retina enabled Ableton would look sexy

[stellan0r]

you are right, but more for the hardware/software issue.

the only real advantage for Ableton is and will always be true screen real estate. Not pixeldensity, only inches of screen space (with the right resolution) really matters

If I would run Live on 2880x1800 or whatever on a 15.4" screen, I would need glasses

correct me if i'm wrong

[takii]

Yeah the only reason I opted for the retina display was the increase in screen space. I felt ableton was way too small for me using 1440x900 space wise everything was too big. But now it's perfect other than the pixel density issue. I can see everything.

I took some screenshots of what it looks like.

Retina Scaled


1680x1050


1920x1200

[think2x]

Thank you for posting those screenshots! I was looking all over the place for a screenshot of Ableton on the new display!

I'm really torn between the bottom-spec Retina and the top-spec classic. I just can't help but wonder how long it will take developers to update their apps for the retina display (~months?), let alone the frickin' web (~years?).

[Komodovaran]

Thank you for posting those screenshots! I was looking all over the place for a screenshot of Ableton on the new display!

I'm really torn between the bottom-spec Retina and the top-spec classic. I just can't help but wonder how long it will take developers to update their apps for the retina display (~months?), let alone the frickin' web (~years?).

Forever. There are still quite a few apps not updated for the Retina iPad. Expect the much more fragmented nature of a full desktop OS to take forever to adapt to the Retina MBP.

[JMFOne]

Any new Retina owners on here?

I'm about to get one I think. The classic is undoubtedly a better spec machine but the quiet fans, cooling, thinner design and reduced glare make me think the retina is just nicer to actually use.

Any one having trouble with any plugins working with it?

[edporras]

Just loaded it on my new work machine running Lion (still waiting for my ML code). The only third-party plugin I've tested it is Ozone and it works great.

I am more worried about some plugins keeping up with OS X updates. Here's hoping I won't regret my switch to software.

[robadelph]

Any new Retina owners on here?

I'm about to get one I think. The classic is undoubtedly a better spec machine but the quiet fans, cooling, thinner design and reduced glare make me think the retina is just nicer to actually use.

Any one having trouble with any plugins working with it?

I haven't had any trouble with plug-ins. All of them work great, even FM8 and Massive. The extra work space you can get from scaling the screen is amazingly convenient, and as for Retina scaling Ableton looks the same as it does on an old display; no better, no worse. You can just tell the difference when you pull up your dock or do anything on any app that is Retina optimized. It is 100% usable (or at least so far it has been for me) so far.

[gohome14]

Does the screen really matter that much?? I would recommend the glare resistant screen or anti glare as they called in the apple store, I have one, Mid 2010 (anti glare) great buy never have do tilt the screen to see what your looking at no lights at clubs will shine brightly in your face from its reflection either. Yes it does loose the cool glossy finish but it was worth it.

[verstaerker]

i totally like the retina display ... on apps like Aperture it's simply a new experience and Ableton Live would totally rock with this new resolution!!

[nezzyidy]

Ableton does look worse on the Retina Display. I compared side by side with my pre-unibody intel macbook pro (15 inch) able Ableton looks significantly more fuzzy on the retina screen for all text and graphics like knobs. The grid lines look fine.

Personally, I wish didn't get the retina display. The two things I do most on my computer is browse the web and use ableton. The web looks terrible - all graphics (jpgs/gifs) look notably more fuzzy than on my older macbook screen. Text (on safari at least) looks super crisp (I hate that word) but any text rendered as an image still looks bad. Of course ableton looks worse too. I don't do much photo editing but photoshop I think is not retina ready, and I never watch movies on my laptop screen because I use my hdTV for that. I really have no use for this screen. The OS X icons in finder looker super nice, but that doesn't comfort me enough.

[d_dbaudio]

I've got one MacBook Pro Retina since a couple of months, it came at a modest premium as the replacement to a MacBook Pro 15 non-Retina that couldn't be repaired but was still under warranty; I thought it silly not to take advantage of the offer, and decided to run the risk.

Yes, if you keep the display set to "Best for Retina" setting, Ableton Live looks fuzzy. As does Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, Adobe Photoshop, Avid ProTools and countless other applications, too. I agree.

And yes, it will probably take forever before ALL applications are re-designed to look OK at Retina resolution, literally: some never will, it ain't worth the effort small developers shall put into it, they simply won't see a reason to it and won't do it.

Speaking of Ableton Live, though, of all display settings I rate the "Best for Retina" among the most useless ones: I feel more comfortable with the 1680x1050 that my MBP 15" had (on its hi-res anti-glare display), while the 1920x1200 proved to be the icings on the cake in my experience (for all mix tweaking and playback sessions). On the side, I'm closer to being 50 than I am to 40, and wear prescription progressive lenses.

May I take the occasion to share with you, here, all the beneficial features of the MBP-Retina that were thrown into the box?

Fans, for instance, are really hard to trigger compared to my older MBP-nonRetina: I can push all tracks and plenty of FX here and there, see the CPU load get to 80% and keep it there for ages before I start to hear any hiss; it's the whole aluminum case that gets hotter, and in more places, before fans start to spin in an audible way. Neatly done, that's how I hoped it to be.

Speakers, the built-in ones, are a real surprise compared to the old MBP-nonRetina: I find it now possible to tweak some dialogues, process spoken word files or put together playlists at soft levels, with more spectrum audible than ever, and take a 10 or 15 minutes break from headphones if I'm at private quarters.

External display options are another plus, here: provided one has an HDMI input, I'm able to drive 3 external displays plus the internal, built-in one, in 1920x1200 mirror-mode (presentations and lectures) or discrete/stand-alone (office work or video-artwork-animation). Honestly, I couldn't care less of the fuzziness at Retina resolution with the wealth of options I'm able to access with this, although I understand that the user who just uses the built-in display and wants to take full advantage of the new toy features (and not in expanded-screen-estate-mode) can just be frustrated.

And, skeptical as I was, the performance in terms of stability with the firewire dongle attached to the thunderbolt port is indeed very reliable, and I got away with latencies that seemed impervious to my previous setup; of course, these little things are a real pain to carry around and remember each time you set home somewhere and move again out of it at the end of your session... but they work, and surprisingly well, too.

Sure, the MacBook Pro Retina it's a very expensive piece of hardware per se, but my 2011 MBP with 15" hi-res display was spec'd with the upmost options and did not come cheaper than this at all; would I have bought this Retina without the chance to "cash-in" four-fifths of its value with the non-functioning wreck of my previous machine... that's another question, it deals with the liquidity one has in his/her pocket at a given moment, and this hasn't got anything to do with what the value of the thing itself.

To me, in my workflow, this is the by far the best laptop I even had, and the all-rounder machine with the widest range of applications possible. With a fuzzy image at Retina resolution on Ableton Live, too, that I don't experience in my day-to-day operations.

[psyndrome]

If Retina Display Support would be extreme more memory and processor intensive it's a bad thing. If not, welcome.