I hate bullshit marketing terms. Like, it’s just a DVD burner, do we really have to call it a “Superdrive”? What happens when that’s obsolete, we upgrade to Superduperdrives? I get “Retina Display” though.
Now I’ve been obsessing over higher-resolution computer displays for years. PC users have enjoyed 130+ppi laptops for ages; until just a couple months ago only the highest-end Macbooks got them. It appears that Apple has been waiting until they could add “resolution-independence” features to the Mac OS, so the screen resolution could get higher but screen contents would remain the same size and smoother (unfortunate for those of us who find the buttons too large already). A resolution-independent UI was first promised as a feature for 10.4, then postponed to 10.5, and they didn’t pretend that it would be ready for Snow Leopard.
Existing attempts at resolution-independence take the form of scaling applications, and you can even play with it right now. But bugs abound; scaling is a kludge.
I think Apple has come to the conclusion that incremental increases in screen resolution and app scaling are a waste of effort, and are instead picking a simple standard — and that’s what “Retina Display” really means. No resolution-independence, no scaling, just a fixed standard where an inch is 326 pixels and any better would be pointless so let’s call it a day and move on. I’m betting that this standard starts on the iPhone, will probably be part of iPad 2, and will come to Macs with 10.7. Legacy apps would of course operate in a pixel-tripled mode, similar to iPhone apps on the iPad.
It’s easier to sell to consumers. “High-res iMacs” are relative and meaningless to the layperson. “New iMacs with Retina Display” are a selling point.
