Since the display is small (i.e. the pixel density is high), if I were to run OSX without scaling, everything would extremely tiny. That's the reason you need s

Since the display is small (i.e. the pixel density is high), if I were to run OSX without scaling, everything would extremely tiny. That's the reason you need scaling. But you're still running at native resolution, so there's no blurring. Think of this like vector graphics. You can enlarge them without getting pixelation. This is, I think, what scaling does.