Going Retina: How Developers Convert Apps to Work on the New Retina Display

When you dream of computers, do you dream of high-resolution displays? What about 5.1 million pixels on a screen that is almost comparable to the resolution of the human eye? A screen where the picture is as detailed and sharp as the scenery outside your window? Whether or not you've got the cash for it, you can't deny that the MacBook Pro with Retina display is one of the most impressive notebooks ever built. But unlike the iPad's vast library of Retina-ready apps, the Retina Mac apps are lagging a bit behind. More often than not, owners of the new MacBook Pro have to adjust the dimensions for apps that haven't been updated. Developers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to convert, however, and they're starting to do what's necessary to make their applications shine on Apple's new vivid display.

Upgrading an application for the Retina display can be a tedious task, though it really depends on how the application was originally created. Images are two-dimensional or consist of vector graphics; the former can be fairly low resolution, while the latter shouldn't need any changes if done correctly. Developers who choose the low-res, two-dimensional route must redraw all of the images in the application to make them twice as large. "This requires a lot of work in an image editor of your choice," says CTO of IGG Software, James Gillespie, which publishes iBank, a personal finance app for the Mac. "We use Pixelmator, Photoshop, and Illustrator in-house, but we also contract out a lot of graphics work."

Once the new images have been created, Gillespie says that incorporating them into the application is an easy task, thanks to Apple's framework. "The hardest part is making sure that everything lines up correctly onscreen. This can only be done by looking at every version of every screen in the app and making sure that it looks correct." IGG Software's developers have found issues where vector graphics didn't line up quite right on the Retina display, which meant having to go back and change code to fix it.

Fortunately, the end result is worth the work. "I think the biggest triumph so far was when we went to the Retina MacBook Pro and launched iBank. The reports looked beautiful."

The other part of the challenge is coming up with designs that will translate well to the Retina's high-resolution display. "The best designs often include tiny details that only Retina users with the keenest of eyes would notice," says Jack Hirsch, Product Manager for the Mac version of Evernote. "Our greatest challenge was trying to catch every single image and rendered graphic in our applications. Some of the images were very old and needed to be redesigned completely."

For game developers, conversion requires a little more than simply dumping out low-resolution images for high-res ones. For Aspyr, a company that ports games to the Mac, the difficulty of the process differs by title. "It's dependent on the title and is typically focused on if the resolution is supported already in game, how the user interface scales at this large of a display, and game performance at higher resolution," says Elizabeth Howard, Director of Business Development. Depending on the scenario, a game can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to redevelop. Fortunately for Aspyr, it already has titles that are fit for the MacBook Pro's ginormous resolution, old favorites such as Quake 4, Doom 3, Prey, and Call of Duty.

Lastly, developers lament the fact that Retina-compatible applications must still be made to work well with a variety of lower resolutions. Creating software that can automatically detect and adjust to either the MacBook Pro's Retina screen, an external monitor, a TV, a projector, and so on can be just as challenging as re-creating graphics. "Dimensions and hard-coded numbers get mixed up and objects onscreen can behave erratically," says Hirsch.

The difference between the Retina-and non-Retina-compatible versions of Evernote is readily apparent.

Of course, developing for the new MacBook Pro's screen isn't an entirely foreign process, since many developers have been working with the Retina display on the iPad. But desktop applications present a few more challenges, such as ensuring that windows are resizable. "The challenge is really balancing the development requirements of this support with the ongoing development efforts toward new release titles," adds Howard.

For many developers, having a Retina-ready application has always been high on the priority list. "We saw the Retina MacBook as an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to providing our users with a truly beautiful application, even on the world's most demanding display," says Hirsch.

Adds Gillespie: "I don't think that when choosing a finance application that Retina support is very high on their list of must-have features. But I think for a lot of people it will be an extra 'delighter' that the application just looks great."

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Original Page: http://www.maclife.com/article/columns/going_retina_how_developers_convert_apps_work_new_retina_display

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Regards,

Derik Chan