Credit to Apple for raising the hardware game with the introduction of a ‘Retina Display’ in their “all new Macbook Pro” (aka the ‘Macbook Pro Pro’).
It’s the highest resolution notebook display ever produced, cramming in more than 5 million pixels (the average HD TV has around 2 million); sporting an resolution*of 2880*x*1800; and boasting some 220 pixels per inch.
But such a high pixel density display creates a problem for OSes like Ubuntu which haven’t, as yet, needed to add support for super-sharp “retina” screens.
“At*204 DPI the unity launcher will be by default 48/204 inches, or 6mm wide (tweakable to sizes between 4mm and 8mm). The top panel would be 3mm high.”*Alan Bell writes on the Unity Mailing list.
To illustrate quite how ‘odd’ things would look, Bell adds an image how Unity would*look if run on a Retina display Macbook today (albeit scaled by a factor of 4):
Not so awesome, right?*
The ‘good news’ is that Apple’s*throw-down*has served to jump-start discussions on how Ubuntu should adapt to such displays.
And with the inevitable flood of high-resolution laptop and desktop screens on the way it’s a*discussion that is best had sooner rather than later.
Further discussion, and some technical solutions, can be found*in this mailing list thread.
Image credit: Alan Bell



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