According to MacRumors, the recently seeded developer preview of Mac OS X Lion may include support for ultra high resolution “Retina Displays” for upcoming Macs, in addition to other new features and additions. What’s interesting with this, though, is how it is being achieved: resolution independence.
Resolution independence is the beautiful idea that while the number of pixels (DPI) in your screen increases, the size of text, graphics, and other baselines will not decrease, but remain constant. Essentially, you get a higher quality, more detailed view of everything on your screen without things appearing to be physically smaller.
Apple already does this with the iPhone 4, where the number if pixels is increased, and developers can choose between doubling the pixels in the application, or (the higher quality option) providing much higher resolution imagery within their apps, enabling the user to see a more detailed image of higher quality.
Does this mean that ultra-high resolution displays may be coming in future Macs (perhaps the redesigned 2012 MacBook Pro?) or in Apple future displays?
