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> OSX will happily use 3840x2160. Are you sure your limitation is not somewhere else? Yes, it will use it, but it looks terrible. Even the native system UI is

> OSX will happily use 3840x2160. Are you sure your limitation is not somewhere else? Yes, it will use it, but it looks terrible. Even the native system UI isn't designed for it, let alone Cocoa-based third-party applications or third-party applications that don't use Cocoa.

vetinari 9y ago
Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back. > Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. The situation gets even worse when you're talking about applications designed for X11[0], which I could forgive, but on the other hand, those applications scale just fine on Linux. By contrast, all of this works out-of-the-box in (for example) Unity. I don't have to deal with dialog boxes that are out of proportion with the system bar, or text that's impossible to read unless I squint on some applications but perfectly readable on others. [0] We could get into a debate about whether XQuartz really counts as "cocoa" or not, but I'd rather not.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    > I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back. I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable. OSX defaults to "best" resolution for the given display. In case of this monitor, it is 3840x2160, but - it will tell you is 1920x1080 and use it in HiDPI mode. Like this: http://imgur.com/a/infej http://imgur.com/a/infej Once you change resolution, it will remember, what you changed it to on that specific display, and will use it next time you connect to it. > I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. In my experience, they scale perfectly. The ones that are non-HiDPI aware, are scaled by the system to the proper size (and thus are pixelated). XQuartz is another matter. It should be taken behind the barn and shot long time ago. Running X11 apps is better done using a linux vm. However, what I don't understand, why you have wrong scale. XQuartz is a not DPI-aware app, thus it is scaled by the system.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable. It has nothing to do with the cable. I've had this issue on every single 4K monitor I've used with these laptops - which is at least three different monitors, with different cables - and it even manifests with HDMI 4K output (at 30Hz). All of these setups work perfectly fine with my XPS 13 running at 4K on Linux. I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable. Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
      - vetinari 9y ago
        > I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable. Because that's not the experience everyone else is having. That leaves possibility, that something is broken on your end. > Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference. I know how Linux handles HiDPI. See my comment about Fedora elsewhere in the thread.

vetinari 9y ago

Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back. > Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. The situation gets even worse when you're talking about applications designed for X11[0], which I could forgive, but on the other hand, those applications scale just fine on Linux. By contrast, all of this works out-of-the-box in (for example) Unity. I don't have to deal with dialog boxes that are out of proportion with the system bar, or text that's impossible to read unless I squint on some applications but perfectly readable on others. [0] We could get into a debate about whether XQuartz really counts as "cocoa" or not, but I'd rather not.
- vetinari 9y ago
  > I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back. I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable. OSX defaults to "best" resolution for the given display. In case of this monitor, it is 3840x2160, but - it will tell you is 1920x1080 and use it in HiDPI mode. Like this: http://imgur.com/a/infej http://imgur.com/a/infej Once you change resolution, it will remember, what you changed it to on that specific display, and will use it next time you connect to it. > I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. In my experience, they scale perfectly. The ones that are non-HiDPI aware, are scaled by the system to the proper size (and thus are pixelated). XQuartz is another matter. It should be taken behind the barn and shot long time ago. Running X11 apps is better done using a linux vm. However, what I don't understand, why you have wrong scale. XQuartz is a not DPI-aware app, thus it is scaled by the system.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable. It has nothing to do with the cable. I've had this issue on every single 4K monitor I've used with these laptops - which is at least three different monitors, with different cables - and it even manifests with HDMI 4K output (at 30Hz). All of these setups work perfectly fine with my XPS 13 running at 4K on Linux. I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable. Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      > I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable. Because that's not the experience everyone else is having. That leaves possibility, that something is broken on your end. > Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference. I know how Linux handles HiDPI. See my comment about Fedora elsewhere in the thread.