Here Come the Retina Macs Apple Reportedly Adding Pixel Doubled 4K Monitor Support to OS X
You know how the latest version of OS X is 10.9.2? If you're running it, apparently you're exactly point-one versions away from "Retina" 4K support  also known as "pixel doubling"  in OS X. That's according to a beta tester who posted a screen capture of the new setting, per the just-released beta version of OS X 10.9.3 to Twitter last night. , KhaosTs monitor is a Dell UP2414Q, according to his screenshot. That makes it a Dell UltraSharp 24 Ultra HD monitor, according to Dell, with a native resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels. That's 4K resolution, or what passes for 4K, since the marketing department won that particular spec-branding tug of war match "3840K" sounds even kludgier than "1080p". KhaosT says OS X 10.9.3 adds MST Multi-Stream Transport support  a standard that allows you to daisy-chain multiple monitors  and "the option for a user to select Retina resolution for 4K displays" running at 60Hz. That's another way of a referring to something sometimes loosely referred to as "pixel-doubling." Let's talk about that for a moment. I've been running a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro since Apple debuted its 2880 by 1880 3K? laptop screens in 2012, and that's basically what the configuration panel's looked like in OS X for me all along an option to choose "Scaled," allowing you a range of selections from 1024 by 640 pixels up to 1920 by 1200, or "Best for display.", In my 15-inch rMBP's case, the latter's 1440 by 900, but my LCD's native resolution is 2880 by 1880  twice the functional resolution. If you run at "Best for display," you're basically getting 2880 x 1880's worth of gorgeous imagery within the bounds of 1440 by 900 of functional real estate, thus the ultra-sharp "Retina" look whereby your eyes no longer discern individual pixels. If you're running OS X on an older Mac Pro, or outputting to an external display from a MacBook laptop Retina or no, recent versions through 10.9.2 only allow you to run at un-doubled resolutions of up to 4096 by 2160 pixels. 4096 by 2160 looks decent enough on a really, really big monitor, say 30-inches or more, but on anything smaller, the interface looks itty-bitty. And since earlier versions of OS X top out at sub-60Hz refresh rates, posing issues for motion-related interface features or applications, standard support for 60Hz is also a big deal. In short, Apple looks to be rolling improved and more versatile 4K monitor support into OS X for pre-late-2013 Mac Pros as well as the MacBook Pro lineup for those using the latter with external monitors.