3 ms·

While I believe Mac OS X has had some resolution independence since at least 10.5, I believe as of today it's still "not ready", and to say it's been there sinc

While I believe Mac OS X has had some resolution independence since at least 10.5, I believe as of today it's still "not ready", and to say it's been there since the beginning is a bit of a misdirection. It's a work in progress. Having said that, I'm really glad iPhone 4 is taking this direction of clarity over "you can shove more stuff on screen". Imagine if you really had all the pixels for your interface: trying to read or (more importantly) tap on something would be nearly impossible unless it was blown up anyway. Looking forward to new screens like these in all devices.

potatolicious 16y ago
You're right. Mac OS X has the underpinnings of true resolution independence, but it is as of right now not accessible to most users (you have to hack a plist to get it, and there are some very glaring problems, which explains why it's not enabled by default). To claim that OS X is resolution independent is a bit disingenuous - for the lay user OS X less resolution independent than Win7.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  IIRC, the underpinnings of resolution independence were there since the time it was sold with black cubic computers. At that time, NeXT used DisplayPostscript. When Apple decided to base its new OS on NeXT technology, they replaced it with something more royalty-friendly (DPS licensing was quite expensive). Solaris also used DPS and had a couple demos with it (last time I played with them was on Solaris 2.5). NeWS was also based on PostScript, something that, legend says, made writing apps for it very... uncomfortable.
- zokier 16y ago
  Kinda sad considering OSX's history
- contextfree 16y ago
  FWIW, on Windows WPF, Silverlight, and I think Direct2D were designed from the ground up to be resolution independent, with everything vector-based and all dimensions expressed in "virtual pixels", but a lot of programs still use GDI, which is pixel-based. So it looks like the situation is roughly the same on Windows and OSX: new APIs are resolution independent, but until their use becomes more widespread people won't benefit much.

potatolicious 16y ago

You're right. Mac OS X has the underpinnings of true resolution independence, but it is as of right now not accessible to most users (you have to hack a plist to get it, and there are some very glaring problems, which explains why it's not enabled by default). To claim that OS X is resolution independent is a bit disingenuous - for the lay user OS X less resolution independent than Win7.

rbanffy 16y ago
IIRC, the underpinnings of resolution independence were there since the time it was sold with black cubic computers. At that time, NeXT used DisplayPostscript. When Apple decided to base its new OS on NeXT technology, they replaced it with something more royalty-friendly (DPS licensing was quite expensive). Solaris also used DPS and had a couple demos with it (last time I played with them was on Solaris 2.5). NeWS was also based on PostScript, something that, legend says, made writing apps for it very... uncomfortable.
zokier 16y ago
Kinda sad considering OSX's history
contextfree 16y ago
FWIW, on Windows WPF, Silverlight, and I think Direct2D were designed from the ground up to be resolution independent, with everything vector-based and all dimensions expressed in "virtual pixels", but a lot of programs still use GDI, which is pixel-based. So it looks like the situation is roughly the same on Windows and OSX: new APIs are resolution independent, but until their use becomes more widespread people won't benefit much.