As Apple continues to put their attention on Retina displays for their devices, which will no doubt result in the company bringing Retina resolution to their entire Mac lineup (and their displays), developer Daniel Jalkut notes (via Shawn Blanc, TUAW) that Apple now requires the icons for every single app submitted to the Mac App Store to be at least 1024×1024 pixels.
That’s a lot of pixels for an icon – it’s more pixels than were in the 24-inch display for the first Windows computer I ever built from scratch (and that was just over 10 years ago)! Nevertheless, it’s hardly surprising. The requirement ensures that icons will remain at an appropriately high resolution for some time to come.
At present, developers cannot physically upload their apps for submission to the Mac App Store without these jumbo icons – and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple begins requiring these icons for all updates submitted to the Mac App Store as well!
