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Double-resolution icons in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion hint at Retina Macs

By Katie Marsal

Published: 09:50 AM EST (06:50 AM PST)

More evidence that high-resolution Retina display Macs are in Apple's near future has been discovered in an early developer build of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Double-resolution icons were found in "unexpected places" of Mountain Lion by a source who spoke with Ars Technica. Their inclusion was interpreted to suggest Apple could release Retina display MacBooks as soon as this summer.

One double-resolution icon was found in the new Messages application. In the second developer preview of Mountain Lion, released a week ago, some icons are incorrectly displaying at twice their normal size.

Their appearance in the latest build of Mountain Lion led the source to suggest that new MacBooks equipped with Retina displays could appear as soon as this summer, to coincide with the release of OS X 10.8.

Evidence of Retina display Macs cropped up in February when Apple released OS X 10.7.3 with new high-DPI user interface elements. Specifically, a number of cursors in the operating system were updated to scale to larger sizes on higher resolution screens.

Apple added HiDPI modes to OS X Lion last year, but they were previously only accessible by installing Xcode. HiDPI is modeled after the UI resolution doubling that Apple does with its Retina display iPhones, the iPod touch and the new iPad.

Rumors began to crop up late last year that Apple is preparing new versions of its MacBook Pro lineup with double-resolution displays. The resulting display for a 15-inch MacBook Pro would be 2,880 by 1,800 pixels.

Support for higher resolution Macs will come with Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors. Those chips will support up to the 4K resolution, which allows 4,096-by-4,096 pixels per monitor.

So does that mean my hi-res 15" anti-glare screen will be updated to 3360 X 2100? or are they simply gonna do away w/ hi-res once Retina hits the laptops? maybe Ultra-Retina? Can't wait for the 5120 X 3200 30" Dell Ultrasharp... that requires the 8GB quad GPU graphics card, and a flux capacitor in the Mac Pro to drive it....

they've been working on this sort of thing for several revisions of the os

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I feel about these hi res screen the same way as I do about paying out the &*( for speakers that unless compared side by side you probably won't hear the diff. I love my AIR and am happy with the res on all my macs. If the AIR gets heavier or thicker it isn't a deal for me. I wouldn't want the heat it might cause or the increase in thickness and weight. Mac res is great. I enjoyment quotient is small.

Once you use a retina display for any length of time, you'll never go back.

I'm really loving the text display on my New iPad.

At the rate my (former 20/20) vision is deteriorating, I will welcome higher res desktop displays!

this is the revolution I've been waiting for. speed is important but now that we're all (mostly) happy about the speed of machines, it's time to that they become much more detailed (resolution-wise)

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Lux Interior
I'm really loving the text display on my New iPad.

At the rate my (former 20/20) vision is deteriorating, I will welcome higher res desktop displays!

care to explain? some people with poor vision cannot make a differennce between a normal resolution and a retina display.

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space-time

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Lux Interior
I'm really loving the text display on my New iPad.

At the rate my (former 20/20) vision is deteriorating, I will welcome higher res desktop displays!

care to explain? some people with poor vision cannot make a differennce between a normal resolution and a retina display.

Yeah, I agree. I use reading glasses for just about any size font indoors. When I'm outdoors in good sunlight, I can read extremely tiny fonts with no problem without glasses. My eyes are stopping down, and the size of the circles of confusion on my retina are getting smaller.

I would say the circle of confusion is the same but you have a higher depth of field due to the small iris

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mattkime
they've been working on this sort of thing for several revisions of the os

My thoughts exactly.

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RIP, Greg the DogSitter. You are missed.

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space-time

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Lux Interior
I'm really loving the text display on my New iPad.

At the rate my (former 20/20) vision is deteriorating, I will welcome higher res desktop displays!

care to explain? some people with poor vision cannot make a differennce between a normal resolution and a retina display.

I can still read without glasses and I find the New iPad to be much easier on the eyes.

I guess if you're legally blind it might not help.