Don Quinn wrote: Am I the only one confused why people buy into doubly dense displays and then want to dumb them down by making elements on them twice as large?  That seems wasteful. Scoot your chair closer to the screen. I hold an iPhone 4 closer to my face than a 2nd gen iPod touch. It is no big deal. They look the same that way. The retina display does not introduce a new issue. Dot pitch has been increasing for years. We see people that will adjust their LCDs to a non-native resolution (ie: running 1024x768 on a 1280x1024-capable display). Or they will adjust their system settings to display larger fonts. Instead of buying the right monitor for their needs and eyesight, they misuse an expensive display. I would love to have the pixels that they are not using. A pixel is a terrible thing to waste.

You show a complete lack of understanding of the problem, and what the Retina display brings to the table. It's not just a higher density display — it's roughly double the resolution. You even said it, but did you think it through? According to your suggestion, we should run the display at the double resolution and deal with half-sized UI elements. Can I say, "yuck!"? Just TRY to use Photoshop with buttons this small:

http://d.pr/i/LVTH (screenshot of Photoshop CS6 on my rMBP at the highest resolution) Squeeze that into a 15in. laptop screen and you'll see the problem.

Most are smaller than my mouse pointer. Some apps that don't support the display are completely unusable. I tried playing Team Fortress 2 soon after getting my rMBP and found that the settings UI is so small it's impossible. The doubled resolution isn't so we get more screen real estate — it's so we get super-crisp images and a level of detail in the photos and graphics we work on that parallels printed work. Hell, I'd settle for just getting the workspace Retina supported. I don't care if the UI is grainy, I just want my photos and prints to be crystal clear.

I'm STILL waiting on word (any word at all) from Adobe that even HINTS on Retina support. I refuse to purchase software because odds are, it'll be in 6.5 and I'll have to purchase all over again. I'd go Creative Cloud but I'm not paying $50/mo for ugly software from a company who could be a bit more loving to the consumer. Also, I just can't afford it. I'm unfortunately stuck waiting with just Pixelmator (which is Retina supported already... ahem) until Adobe says something. ANYTHING. Instead, you could hear a pin drop in the silence. WE JUST WANT TO KNOW

It would be interesting to see a screen dump of photoshop from your laptop.  A quick and dirty calculation suggests the tool icons are going to be about 3mm (1/8 inch) across.  If you could upload a screen dump, and give us the physical width of your screen, we could duplicate it on our own monitors. 

I have just had a browse through some of the apps on my iPad3, and in all fairness, I can read the tiniest of print without a problem, and I have dreadful eyesight.  I am wondering if the superb contrast and high DPI of a small retina display would overcome the limitations of size. 

The wording of those articles bothers me somehow...  As though a specific change is being made just for the devices with Retina displays.

I can imagine that maybe they have some idea that a special flag to just double the number of pixels to draw things might be enough.  That would do the job, but it would still leave all the folks who'd like the UI elements to be resizable for accessibility reasons out in the cold.

-Noel

There have been so many posts here asking that Adobe upsize Photoahop's tool icons.  That was for the newer monitors with WQXGA and similar resolutions, where the tool icons are tiny enough.  A quick Google found a 15 inch Apple laptop with an incredible 2,880 by 1,800 display.   Photoshop Tool icons are going to be just a few milimetres wide on such a display.   But I see there is a fix on the way http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/?NewsID=3363267