Pupil looks like a nice app to switch between multiple resolutions on a Retina MacBook Pro. The core feature of the app is a configurable menubar item that can list the resolutions you use the most, letting you instantly switch between them.
I can’t try Pupil because I don’t have a Retina MacBook Pro. However, Roman Loyola’s review at Macworld is positive. Pupil is $5 and there’s a free trial available.
I also like how you can “test” Pupil’s menu on the website.
With a press release published this morning, Apple has announced they have updated the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines with new prices and faster processors.
Apple is making the MacBook Pro with Retina display faster and more affordable with updated processors and lower starting prices. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now starts at $1,499 for 128GB of flash, and $1,699 for a new 2.6 GHz processor and 256GB of flash. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now features a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, and the top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook comes with a new 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of memory. Apple today also announced that the 13-inch MacBook Air® with 256GB of flash has a new lower price of $1,399.
Thanks to @setteBIT, here's a quick rundown of the changes: the 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display is now $200 and $300 cheaper for the 128 GB and 256 GB (with SSD) models, respectively; the CPU has been bumped from 2.5 GHz to 2.6 GHz. The price difference in Euros is €250 and €350. The 13" MacBook Air with 256 GB SSD is now $100 cheaper (€150).
The 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display was announced on October 23, 2012 – 113 days ago; the 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display was announced at WWDC '12 – 247 days ago.
In the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Apple sold 4.1 million Macs. It's unclear whether Apple might have been able to lower the prices of Retina MacBook Pro (while offering faster performances) due to possible reductions of component prices (i.e. high-resolution displays), but the timing is interesting: just a few days ago, Apple and other tech companies (such as Adobe) were summoned to appear before the Federal Australian Parliamentary Committee that has been investigating IT pricing in Australia. In response to the inquiry, Adobe promptly dropped the price of its Creative Cloud service.
This post by John Gruber prompted me to fix a longstanding annoyance of MacStories that, for some reason, we had forgotten about: making the favicon Retina-ready.
Old (non-retina) favicons are 16 × 16 px; a retina favicon is thus 32 × 32 px. The lazy way to support retina is to replace your old 16 px favicon.ico file with a 32 px file, and allow non-retina browsers to scale the image. The proper solution, however, is create a single favicon.ico file containing two icon resources: one 16 × 16, the other 32 × 32. ICO files support other resolutions as well, but I see no practical utility in doing so.
Gruber goes on to detail how he used Icon Slate to produce a single .ico file containing both resolutions of the icon file. I have been using Icon Slate for quite some time now, and I highly recommend the app. It is, essentially, a more powerful, modern Icon Composer that makes it easy to package icons containing files at multiple resolutions (I’ve been using iconutil to package .icns file, and I’ve also tried this automated method by Jono Hunt). If you’re a designer (or developer dealing with icon files), I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to try Icon Slate.
Thanks to Gruber’s reminder (and the good work of @aylys), our site’s favicon — the little red bookmark icon in the address bar — is now updated for Retina displays. If you, like me, use Google Chrome on iOS, you can see the updated favicon on a Retina device by switching to tab view in the browser.
Earlier today I indirectly asked on App.net and Twitter if there was a way to automate the process of converting sets of icons for non-Retina and Retina devices. On its developer documentation, Apple recommends using iconutil and tiffutil to convert application icons and graphic resources, respectively. Once you’ve packaged, for instance, .png files inside an .iconset folder, you should fire up the Terminal, and run the command for the .iconset folder you want to convert. How about automating the process for batch conversion of multiple files?
As it often turns out, if you can think about it, then someone likely already blogged about it. Jono Hunt wrote a drag & drop utility earlier this year to do just that: select multiple .iconset folders, drop them onto the app, receive converted .icns files.
Apple have changed the way you should compile .icns files used for Mac application icons. Instead of using Icon Composer you should now use the “iconutil” Terminal command with .png images contained in folders with the .iconset extension. I created an AppleScript droplet to simplify the process. Just drag the .iconset folder containing your .png files on to the app to easily create a retina ready .icns icon.
Jono has also released versions of the script that work with Alfred and Automator. He also build a counterpart for tiffutil, available for download here.
If you have a new MacBook Pro with Retina display, you’ve likely stumbled upon the issue of sharing screenshots that are too large in size for friends or coworkers who don’t have a Retina Mac yet. Or, perhaps you’ve wanted to be able to take both 1x and 2x screenshots for, say, a blog post served to Retina and non-Retina devices.
RetinaCapture is a new, free utility for Mountain Lion that does just that: it enables you to easily take crisp screenshots at both resolutions, at the same time. On a Retina Mac, just fire up the app, and choose whether you want your screenshot to be at 1x, 2x, or both. You can take a normal screenshot, timed screenshot, capture a window or a portion of the screen. Hit the button, and save your image. If you’re saving 1x and 2x files at the same time, the app will offer two naming schemes to name your images correctly. Either at 1x or 2x, screenshots will always be crisp and detailed.
RetinaCapture is available here for free. As a side note, if you’re not on a Retina Mac, you can test the app’s 2x mode by enabling HiDPI using Quartz Debug.
Released in February, Photoshop Touch, Adobe’s mobile version of the popular desktop photo editing software, has been updated today to include Retina support on the third-genereation iPad.
When the new iPad came out in early March, early adopters lamented the fuzziness of graphics and images of the then just-released Photoshop Touch; the lack of high resolution mode was particularly concerning because, as the market leader when it comes to photo retouching and image creation, many thought Adobe would do better, shipping a version of its app ready for the Retina display (as many indie developers did).
Today’s version 1.3 brings Retina display support with updated graphics (though some menus, like the font-picking one, are still low-res), and support for high resolution images; the app now supports images up to 12 megapixels and allows you to work on them maintaining the highest quality settings. Admittedly, while the app could produce and edit on the iPad’s Retina display, working with surrounding fuzzy UI elements wasn’t the best experience, and it’s good to see Adobe (finally) improving the app with up-to-date features.
Alongside support for the Retina display, Photoshop Touch 1.3 brings two new effects, faster animations (the app does seem snappier in navigating content), integration with Photo Stream, and addiitonal minor fixes and improvements.
Adobe Photoshop Touch is available at $9.99 on the App Store. Check out our original review of the app.
Back in October 2011, we wrote about the release of Pixelmator 2.0, a hugely popular and award winning image editing application for the Mac. New features to version 2 gave us new drawing tools, shape settings, new heal and retouching tools, an improved type tool and more. Pixelmator was one of the first major success stories of the Mac App Store with $1,000,000 in sales for the first 20 days.
The retina-ready Pixelmator 2.1, code named Cherry, was released this morning with even more new features. Version 2.1 adds a new Effects Browser, several new effects like vintage and miniaturize, a new smart Alignment Guide system and more.
Pixelmator has always been great at helping everyone access the benefits of image editing, said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. And now, with all the amazing new features, as well as Retina Display, Mountain Lion and iCloud support and the app’s affordability, Pixelmator 2.1 is definitely the best way to tap into creativity.
New Features
The new Effects Browser is slick; the palette works in a way that as you move your mouse over a selected effect, there’s a vertical line that animates and shows the effect’s intensity inside the Effects Browser. It’s a lot like the way Apple does it with iPhoto groups and iMovie clips. There are some excellent effect presets in here too and they can all be combined to give you great results. The guides work a lot like InDesign CS6 in that they show centers, alignment measurements and more. The share menu works exactly as advertised and feels very much at home running on OS X Mountain Lion. iCloud support will be very handy for editing on multiple Macs, working on one machine then having the ability to reopen it on another. Version 2.1 runs very well on my 2007 iMac running Mountain Lion, I haven’t had any issues.
Pricing and Availability
Pixelmator 2.1 is available exclusively from the Mac App Store for a limited-time price of $14.99, a great savings off the usual price of $59. It is also available as a free update for existing users who have purchased it from the Mac App Store. If you’ve been thinking about buying this great app, $14.99 is a great price and an excellent update to the already great app.
For more information on Pixelmator 2.1, head over to the Pixelmator website. If you want to be a better Pixelmator user, they have a wonderful tutorial site as well.
Ryan Block did some math over at gdgt, and came up with a great analysis of the future of Retina displays on the Mac, and estimated resolutions and PPI counts for various upgrades. He notes how, assuming Apple will bring the Retina display to other Mac models and the external Thunderbolt display, the low-end 11-inch MacBook Air could actually be the most peculiar change due to its high pixel density.
Now, one area where things get a little wonky for Apple is in the MacBook Air line of devices (as you’ll see below). The current, non-Retina display on the 13-inch Air actually has the same resolution as the 15-inch MacBook Pro (1440 x 900), thus giving it a much higher pixel density (127 PPI) than, say, the 13-inch Pro (113.48 PPI).
And as it happens, the humble 11-inch Air actually has the highest pixel density of all the non-Retina computers Apple currently makes, with a PPI of 131. That’s pretty damn high for Apple’s lowest-end laptop.
According to recent speculation, the 13-inch MacBook Pro could be the next model to receive a Retina upgrade in October. At WWDC, like the “regular” 15-inch version, the 13-inch MacBook Pro received a speed-bump upgrade with new processor and faster graphics. Apple said they view thinner and Retina-ready devices as the future of laptops, so it only makes sense for the entire MacBook family to get a high-resolution display eventually.
Read Ryan’s analysis here for a full comparison of every Mac model (including iMacs) against proposed Retina resolutions.
Other World Computing’s Mike H. has posted a photo showing the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro running three external displays simultaneously (via MacRumors). Including the built-in Retina display set at “best for Retina” in System Preferences, the new MacBook Pro can run four displays at their native resolutions — OWC tested two iMacs as external monitors via Thunderbolt, and an additional LG display connected via HDMI. In their tests, ”moving images and media didn’t create any lag” and video playback was possible on all four displays.
As noted by Steve Streza in his extensive review of the device, the Retina MacBook Pro is also capable of automatically downscaling apps to non-Retina resolutions even if you move an application’s window between two displays:
If you connect a second display, it’s probably not going to be a Retina display (at least not yet). Luckily the OS seems to handle this all magically, and downscales the window appropriately and without any input. If you drop the window halfway between the two displays, the one half on the Retina display will be high-resolution, and the other half is downscaled. In other words, it just works.
The Retina MacBook Pro has been well-received among reviewers, albeit computer repair firm iFixit gave the device a low repairability score due to Apple’s decision to not make it user-serviceable, causing a controversy that Richard Gaywood elegantly summarized at TUAW.
Copyright 2013 MacStories
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