New Macs’ Resolutions

Drang sez:

Microsoft has universal settings to change the size of UI elements. Even X Windows allows you to set a screen dpi for fonts. Apple has nothing. With screen resolutions increasing at an accelerating pace, this has to be addressed soon.

This is the type of thing that would have been solved already had Apple deigned to continue developing OS X at the same time it developed iOS. OS X resolution independence is news from from, what, 2005? It could have been fully implemented, had there been the will.

I just don't buy the idea that a company like Apple couldn't have found the attention and resources to set up a trusted OS X team to continue development over the past several years in parallel to iOS. Which is one of the core reasons why I continue to think OS X is an EOL'd OS.

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It's funny. The day when the new MBA was announced, my first reaction was that it was a nice machine for my needs. I like thin client laptops that still have the local power to execute with teh snappy. And it seemed to fit that bill at a reasonable sticker price.

But my second reaction that day was that the DPI issue was a major red flag on the box.

Even if you're not using a second display, having an abnormally high DPI on an OS that isn't written to fully deal with high DPI's in going to cause multiple problems. There will be easy workarounds for some of those problems, cumbersome workarounds for others of the problems, and no workarounds at all for others of the problems.

(I'm a fan of non-glossy screens on laptops, and I was really annoyed that I couldn't get one on the 15" MBP without also getting a high DPI screen as part of the package. Instead, I just spent less money and got a 13" MBP.)

I love pixels, but the DPI issue is what made me get a low-DPI 15" MacBook Pro instead of the high-res one or a 17". It’s disappointing that mobile display hardware is finally getting good but I can’t really take advantage of it due to software limitations.

This seems like a personal thing, but I bought a high-res 15" MBP and I don't have an issue with UI size (Michael has seen screenshots of the 9pt bitmap font I use all over the place :). Content size is a different matter - I do find it a bit of an issue when I need to read large amounts of text, but thanks to Safari's page zoom support this is pretty trivial. Also, many apps support using multitouch zooming and even those that don't, like Microsoft apps, typically support some alternative (e.g. Control-scrolling).

None of this is an argument against Apple getting their act together with high DPI support, but I still think the situation is reasonable with the current display resolutions.

@Nicholas To clarify, using a high-res MBP by itself is fine. I don’t really mind the smaller UI. The problem is that most of the time I’m using it next to an external display with a normal DPI. And the MBP is on an iCurve, off to the side, much farther away than if it were on my lap. I like my 9pt bitmap fonts on the main display, but with a high-res MBP those same fonts would be unreadable (at least for my eyes). With a 20+ difference in DPI, either you’ll be wasting space on the external display (using larger fonts than necessary) or the text on the internal one will be too small.

"Content size is a different matter - I do find it a bit of an issue when I need to read large amounts of text, but thanks to Safari's page zoom support this is pretty trivial. Also, many apps support using multitouch zooming and even those that don't, like Microsoft apps, typically support some alternative (e.g. Control-scrolling)."

It all depends on your workflow, of course.

For me, the big bugaboo is that I'd quickly lose my sanity if I started working in my word processor at anything but permanent 100% zoom. And I spend a lot of my laptop time in my word processor. And I've got plenty of preexisting documents. My potential workarounds are cumbersome to implement and raise future compatibility issues.

Apple knows its audience, and I'm sure this isn't a deal-breaker for well more than 90% of their clientele. For the typical heavy web browser user, this isn't an issue at all. For the edge cases like me, Cupertino sez: just don't hold it that way.

BTW: thanks for Pester. Only piece of freeware that earns a spot on my primary rig Dock. And thanks for ICeCoffEE back in the day.

"None of this is an argument against Apple getting their act together with high DPI support"

I can live with an OS that doesn't have perfect development execution. I'm just not sure I can live with a deprecated OS...