Originally Posted by
tphinney
Some perfectly reasonable replies, thanks folks. (Except for the one guy trying to start a platform war.)
Just to explain more clearly, because there is some lack of understanding: “Retina” is a specific OS screen mode on macOS, that invokes a bunch of particular things. It does not have a simple direct correlation on Windows; the operating systems just work differently. On Mac, you can be at the same number of pixels either in retina mode, or not, and they are radically different. “Retina” is not only a branding buzzword for high resolution. (Although of course Apple gets mileage from the branding, I am just saying that it also has a specific technical meaning.)
When an app is not Retina savvy, running it on a Mac in Retina mode gives a similar effect to running the same monitor/screen in Windows, but at half its native resolution. Everything is the right size, but blurry. So making things bigger is not a helpful solution, as they are already the “right” size.
On Mac, one can get the same effect as running the app on Windows—by using semi-hidden system options or third-party tools to set the screen res to be the same resolution, but non-Retina.
Doing that while FGU is running does not help. The app just gets very small. Crisp, though.
BUT, doing the screen res change to non-Retina 4K, and then launching the app does something very interesting. The app internal features run as if it was a Retina app running at the previous settings! That is, it is scaled to the right size, with the right number of pixels, and twice as big as when I changed the res after. Text elements are text-based and crisp, and other stuff seems tolerable so far.
Of course, the OS resolution is different, so there are issues like the system menus are microscopic and the mouse is twice as hard to move. But clearly the underpinnings are here. Basically, it seems the app does have a Retina mode on macOS, it just isn’t wired up correctly right now. I don’t know exactly how hard this is to fix, but I suspect it is not crazy hard. Certainly nowhere near the absurd amount of work of supporting Retina mode from scratch if you haven’t already been working on it.
I took the advice of just emailing support, but I will have to update them with this additional news.
I probably won’t be posting here again. This is supposed to be a leisure activity — I don’t need to be attacked because somebody doesn’t like my choice of hardware.