Apple continues to roll out Retina ready application icons in OS X, which many expect is heralding the fact that Apple is gearing up to release Retina displays for the Mac.
Hidden within the OS X 10.7.4 update issued on Wednesday is a Retina-display-caliber icon for Apple’s built-in TextEdit application. In OS X 10.7.3, the highest-quality version of the application’s icon was 512-by-512 pixels, but after updating to 10.7.4, its resolution has been doubled … The doubling of pixels in application icons suggest that Apple is planning to introduce new Macs with ultra-high-resolution screens, much like the Retina displays currently found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch lineup.
If true, this could be pretty exciting news, but it also provide a bit of a problem for citizens of the Internet. If you’ve spent any time using the new iPad and surfing the Internet, including our site, you know that normal web graphics are a bit blurry on non-Retina ready devices. Apple will face a huge challenge in convincing websites and app developers not on the Mac App Store to provide readers and customers with Retina-ready applications and websites. It’s easy to encourage iOS developers that rely solely on one platform to upgrade their apps, but when you’re trying to convince the tech world on a whole to upgrade their websites, no matter if they’re Mac users or Windows users, it’s going to be a difficult proposition to achieve. Cinema Displays aren’t ubiquitous currently, and unless the entire monitor industry is getting ready to go Retina, it’s going to be hard to get the tools needed for designing these apps into developers’ hands.
Image Credit and Via: Apple Insider
