Your experience with 1080p, 3k, scaling, and MacBook Pro?

[kingkickolas]

Hey all, so I'm fairly sure I'm going to be buying the 3k version of the M5 Pro. But I want to know what the experience is using 2880x1620 resolution on a 15.6" panel.
 
I want to use the 3k display at native res and no scaling to maximize screen real-estate, so that I can have lots of tabs and windows and programs and stuff open side-by-side.
Do you think text and things will be adequately visible?
To what extent can I multitask like this on a 1080p screen?
 
Also, if text is usually really small on hi-res screens, why do things usually look normal or reasonably sized on 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pro Retina displays?
Does the MacBook have a default scaling set that it doesn't tell its users about or something? I never bothered to look up because I'm an ass?
 
 
Sorry for all the questions!
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

[Glenwing]

Hey all, so I'm fairly sure I'm going to be buying the 3k version of the M5 Pro. But I want to know what the experience is using 2880x1620 resolution on a 15.6" panel.

 

I want to use the 3k display at native res and no scaling to maximize screen real-estate, so that I can have lots of tabs and windows and programs and stuff open side-by-side.

Do you think text and things will be adequately visible?

To what extent can I multitask like this on a 1080p screen?

 

Also, if text is usually really small on hi-res screens, why do things usually look normal or reasonably sized on 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pro Retina displays?

Does the MacBook have a default scaling set that it doesn't tell its users about or something?

 

 

Sorry for all the questions!

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

 

By default, the 2880x1800 MBPr 15 scales to 1440x900-size by default, and the 2560x1600 MBPr 13 scales to 1280x800 by default. Things will be TINY without any scaling. Personally, scaling to 1920x1200 is as far as I can go.

[Swndlr]

as a razer blade user (res of 3200x1800) i can tell you first and foremost that scaling and mirroring to another display is poo and takes more effort than it should

[TacticlTwinkie]

Scaling isn't broken in OSX like it is in windows. Apple made sure to fix that before they put a super high res screen in a laptop. So all the things scale nicely in OSX on a macbook retina. I imagine windows would be hard to use at native res. It would be just too tiny to be practical. You could run at an easily scalable res, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of such a nice screen. And scaling is still broken in windows, so you won't get a consistent experience.

[MrSuperb]

Does the MacBook have a default scaling set that it doesn't tell its users about or something?

actually it does quite exactly tell you what it will look like

[kingkickolas]

By default, the 2880x1800 MBPr 15 scales to 1440x900-size by default, and the 2560x1600 MBPr 13 scales to 1280x800 by default. Things will be TINY without any scaling. Personally, scaling to 1920x1200 is as far as I can go.

 

actually it does quite exactly tell you what it will look like

-snip-

 

-snip-

 

Yeah that's fair enough. I've just never seen anyone adjust it, and I didn't really bother to look it up.

Updated my post appropriately! >.<

 

Scaling isn't broken in OSX like it is in windows. Apple made sure to fix that before they put a super high res screen in a laptop. So all the things scale nicely in OSX on a macbook retina. I imagine windows would be hard to use at native res. It would be just too tiny to be practical. You could run at an easily scalable res, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of such a nice screen. And scaling is still broken in windows, so you won't get a consistent experience.

 

It's still a mystery to me how that works.

Doesn't the app developer pick out their fonts and glyphs and decide how (or if) their program scales?

How can an operating system correctly scale an image or font in an application if the app doesn't provide the object in a certain resolution?

Oh well, that's a question for another thread I guess.

as a razer blade user (res of 3200x1800) i can tell you first and foremost that scaling and mirroring to another display is poo and takes more effort than it should

 

Okay this is interesting! That's a 14" screen right?

If it's just barely readable at no scaling, that might be okay for me since my screen is slightly bigger (15.6") and slightly less res (2880x1620).

So maybe it can be acceptable!

I think I'll ask one of my mac friends to set their res to native and see how it looks!

That should give me a lot more information.

[MrSuperb]

Doesn't the app developer pick out their fonts and glyphs and decide how (or if) their program scales?

How can an operating system correctly scale an image or font in an application if the app doesn't provide the object in a certain resolution?

Oh well, that's a question for another thread I guess.

Yes an app developer does pick out fonts. but fonts and objects don't have a fixed size in terms of pixels.

In Xcode you preferably use image sets (not single images) and point in your code to this image sets (which CAN contain various versions of the same image. i.e different resolutions).

There are basicaly three different levels of 'resolutions' defined in OSX/iOS/XCode right now 1x(Standard) 2x(Retina) and 3x(Retina HD)

Depending on what scaling factor your current machine/phone uses the appropriate image gets loaded.

Images always get scaled to the container they sit in.

not all application support retina resolutions (but most that are still somehow updated).

edit: oh also you can now just use vectorized images as image assets and they get rendered to png in runtime

[kingkickolas]

Yes an app developer does pick out fonts. but fonts and objects don't have a fixed size in terms of pixels.

In Xcode you preferably use image sets (not single images) and point in your code to this image sets (which CAN contain various versions of the same image. i.e different resolutions).

There are basicaly three different levels of 'resolutions' defined in OSX/iOS/XCode right now 1x(Standard) 2x(Retina) and 3x(Retina HD)

Depending on what scaling factor your current machine/phone uses the appropriate image gets loaded.

Images always get scaled to the container they sit in.

not all application support retina resolutions (but most that are still somehow updated).

edit: oh also you can now just use vectorized images as image assets and they get rendered to png in runtime

Oh that's very interesting, thank you!

So essentially the difference is that an OSX/iOS/XCode app only allows the developer to choose 3 rendering resolutions for images, etc? Or for fonts, all font families in the Apple's development environments contain exactly 3 options for resolution?

What happens when a user manually zooms in on text? Do Apple's OS's handle this the same way as Windows, or is it again different?

Oh yeah, it would be nice if everything was vectorized too! But then scaling would appear exactly the same in OSX/iOS/XCode and Windows (right?).

This is also getting slightly off of the original intended topic.

We can start another thread if there is interest, or I'd love for you to suggest some sources to read up on this stuff if you want!

[MrSuperb]

So essentially the difference is that an OSX/iOS/XCode app only allows the developer to choose 3 rendering resolutions for images, etc?

as of right now, yes 3 different resolutions for the same image set(!) which are handled automatically. In theory you could use as many resolutions as you want, but you would have to manually handle those Also as I said before you can now use vectorized images.

an image in a native OSX/iOS application sits in a container e.g. UIImageView

Or for fonts, all font families in the Apple's development environments contain exactly 3 options for resolution?

nope. fonts are vectors and scaled however you want them to scale.

What happens when a user manually zooms in on text?

It just gets rendered probably.

Do Apple apps handle this the same way as Windows, or is it again different?

honestly I don't know how Windows scales (anything)

Oh yeah, it would be nice if everything was vectorized too! But then scaling would appear exactly the same in OSX/iOS/XCode and Windows (right?).

well ... you can't really vectorize everything.

[kingkickolas]

as of right now, yes 3 different resolutions for the same image set(!) which are handled automatically. In theory you could use as many resolutions as you want, but you would have to manually handle those Also as I said before you can now use vectorized images.

an image in a native OSX/iOS application sits in a container e.g. UIImageView

nope. fonts are vectors and scaled however you want them to scale.

It just gets rendered probably.

honestly I don't know how Windows scales (anything)

well ... you can't really vectorize everything.

Hm, okay now I'm slightly more confused than I was before.

Anyway, I'll look into it. Thank you!

[MrSuperb]

Hm, okay now I'm slightly more confused than I was before.

Anyway, I'll look into it. Thank you!

If you want to display an image in your imaginary app you put an image container in your UI.

That container can display images.

If you set the content of the container to an image set, then the app automatically decides which image to load out of the image set during runtime.

e.g.

1x - 2x - 3x

 

the thing is, that a picture will have the same display size on a 1920x1080 and on a 3840x2160 screen (set to 2x scaling "1920x1080 Retina").

but it will be sharper on the 3840x2160 screen.

 

the 1920x1080 screen will load creatful.png

the 3840x2160 screen will load creatful@2x.png

 

both gonna be displayed in e.g. a 63x63 unit (not pixel) container.

on a 2160p screen the container will be 126x126 pixels big.

on a 1080p screen the container will be 63x63 pixels big.

 

The 3x image is really only used for devices like the iPhone 6 Plus as of right now.

 

_____

 

UI scalling isn't really an easy task, because you run into lots of problems.

Apple choose the way to basically double all the standard resolutions

1440x900 became 2800x1800 (but looks like sharper 900p)

1920x1080 became 3840x2160 (but looks like sharper 1080p)

etc.

 

If I set the resolution to "like 2560x1440" on my 3840x2160 screen, then OSX actually renders a 5120x2880 (see 2x) image and scales it internally down to 3840x2160

[MrSuperb]

one could say, that Apple choose the "easy" way that works (for their limited selection of devices) and Microsoft is trying hard to find a universal solution, but isn't right there yet.

 

Also Apple makes it incredibly easy with tools like Xcode to develop applications for retina and non-retina at the same time

[kingkickolas]

If you want to display an image in your imaginary app you put an image container in your UI.

That container can display images.

If you set the content of the container to an image set, then the app automatically decides which image to load out of the image set during runtime.

e.g.

1x - 2x - 3x

-snip-

 

the thing is, that a picture will have the same display size on a 1920x1080 and on a 3840x2160 screen (set to 2x scaling "1920x1080 Retina").

but it will be sharper on the 3840x2160 screen.

 

the 1920x1080 screen will load creatful.png

the 3840x2160 screen will load creatful@2x.png

 

both gonna be displayed in e.g. a 63x63 unit (not pixel) container.

on a 2160p screen the container will be 126x126 pixels big.

on a 1080p screen the container will be 63x63 pixels big.

 

The 3x image is really only used for devices like the iPhone 6 Plus as of right now.

 

_____

 

UI scalling isn't really an easy task, because you run into lots of problems.

Apple choose the way to basically double all the standard resolutions

1440x900 became 2800x1800 (but looks like sharper 900p)

1920x1080 became 3840x2160 (but looks like sharper 1080p)

etc.

 

If I set the resolution to "like 2560x1440" on my 3840x2160 screen, then OSX actually renders a 5120x2880 (see 2x) image and scales it internally down to 3840x2160

I guess I'm just not sure how this is different from how Windows interacts with its apps.

As far as I know, it's the same.

But it's very late here, I'll get some sleep and think more about this tomorrow.