Understanding retina?

[Michaelius]

I got myself new Macbook and I'm trying to understand something.

Normally all resolutions in Mac are rendered at twice the resolution set in preferences and down sampled to 2560x1600 (in my case)

Now from what i've found some apps are retina aware and will use full available resolution when it makes sense for example for pictures ?

So in those cases we get GUI sized for chosen resolution but actual picture rendered like on 2560x1600 screen ?

I've tried running MBP at full 2560x1600 with third party apps but it was a bit too much

 

[AVT]

Just leave it at the default retina resolution and let the OS take care of everything. Some apps will appear a bit more pixellated (MS Office 2011, for example) because they don't support retina. Apps that do will simply look sharper. There are no settings that you should tinker with.