The Shape of Everything
A website mostly about Mac stuff, written by Gus Mueller
Retina or Bust
Jun 21, 2012

I'm pretty excited that we finally have some beautiful Apple hardware with Retina displays so the OS X HiDPI dream is actually turning into reality.

Needless to say I'll be updating Flying Meat's apps to take advantage of this.

VoodooPad 5 already has HiDPI graphics baked into it already- for instance, the toolbar is completely ready for Retina and it looks great. There's just a handful of other places that need to be cleaned up and it's good to go.

Acorn is being "Retinafied" (@2xed? HiDPied?) for version 3.3, and this involves a bit more work because I'm just not going to update the graphics for it (that's the easy part!). Oh no- there's something a bit more awesome that's being worked on:

Acorn 3.3 will have a Retina Canvas

</Drama>

What's a "Retina Canvas" you ask? Good question! A Retina Canvas is when 1 pixel equals 1 physical dot* on your hardware display, even though all the other UI elements in Acorn are redrawn @2x. Acorn 3.3 will detect and make the necessary adjustments for display and input** so that it looks freaken' awesome on your Retina MBP. And Acorn 3.3 already looking pretty rad.

So that's the plan, and I hope to have it done soon. If you've got a Retina display and would like a sneak peek- you can download a beta of Acorn 3.3 with Retina Canvas today.

*Technically 1 physical dot equals 3 little RGB slivers. ** Retinal Canvas isn't just about dividing the bounds of the canvas in half pushing the pixels through. There are lots of other things to think about such as a window moving from a regular to Retina display, doing the right thing with fonts, and getting input geometry just right. *** Acorn 3.3 will of course be a free update if you already own any version of Acorn 3. **** Want to see a neat Preview.app bug? Make a selection in an image and then drag it from display 1 (regular DPI) to display 2 (which is HighDPI). Your selection now disappears. a