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If you've managed to get your hands on one of Apple's new MacBook Pros, you'll have spotted that most apps don't look that great on it yet.
The high-pixel-density Retina display runs at a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800, allowing for four times the number of pixels as the previous model. But most software isn't built for resolutions that high, so Apple has doubled up the pixels on old apps. On the one hand, that means you can still use those apps, but on the other hand it means that edges are jagged and don't look great.
Unfortunately, the only thing that'll fix that is a software update from the developer of the app. That's going to take some time, but already some developers have started pushing out updates that enable Retina resolutions for their apps on the new Macbook Pro. We've rounded up ten of the best.
Chrome - £Free
OS X's in-built web browser, Safari, already has Retina support, but plenty of Mac users prefer Chrome for its tight Google integration and range of extensions.
Chrome announced support for Retina resolutions in its "Canary" nightly releases in June 2011, and the functionality has since graduated to the weekly "Developer" builds. To enable it, grab the Dev channel edition of Chrome for Mac here -- it'll replace any existing version of Chrome that you have installed.
Parallels Desktop 7 - £64.99
Some people like to use a Mac but still have access to Windows software. You can dual-boot into Windows with boot camp, but a more elegant solution is to virtualise a Windows installation using Parallels.
Parallels Desktop allows you to run both Windows and OS X applications side-by-side, complete with full file system integration. It even supports graphically-intensive apps, like games. The Retina support works across both Mac and Windows applications.
Tweetbot - £Free
For some reason, Twitter's official Mac app hasn't been updated for Retina resolutions. Until the company gets its act together, grab Tweetbot instead.
Right now, the Retina edition of Tweetbot is a public alpha, complete with all the bugs, crashes and incomplete bits that you'd expect. But hey, at least the corners are sharp. Right?
Sparrow - £2.99
Sparrow is a minimal e-mail client for OS X which includes deep integration for Gmail. The latest version adds support for both Mountain Lion and Retina resolutions, along with a small pile of other features.
If you want a quick, elegant email client, which looks fantastic at the new MacBook Pro's high pixel densities, look no further.
VLC - £Free
Quicktime's all very well, but you'll regularly come up against media files that just won't play. VLC might not look complex, but it's packed to the gills with all the codecs, resamplers and format support that you could ever want. You'll have a difficult time finding something that it won't play.
Even better, version 2.0.2 supports the Retina display, not only making the buttons and menus prettier, but also allowing resolutions up to 4K to be played happily.
Transmission - £Free
Skulking about acting like Bittorrent is only full of unlicensed content would do the protocol a disservice, because there's plenty of entirely legitimate content on there too. The Pirate Bay regularly promotes creators who willingly offer their content up for free over Bittorrent.
But if you want access to that content, you'll need a Bittorrent client, and you're in luck, because the 2.6 update to Transmission added full Retina resolution support. That means you can download freely-available 1080p videos of Norwegian train-rides in glorious high pixel density.
Coda 2 - £49.99
Coda 2's comprehensive compilation of an editor, a terminal, a CSS tweaker, file management and versioning into one bit of software has won the hearts of web developers worldwide, but staring at text all day long is made so much more pleasant by the high resolution of the Retina display, enabled in the latest version of the software.
The upgraded app has also tweaked a huge range of features, from its UI, to its text editing, file management, clips, and even the ability to use an iPad as a live preview window with Diet Coda.
Reeder - £2.99
Another task that demands you stare at text for long periods of time is your RSS feed reader, and there are relatively few apps that permit the crisp text of Retina resolutions.
Thankfully, the sleek, simple Reeder is one of them. It syncs fully with both Google Reader and Readability, and can also save articles to Instapaper, Pocket, Pinboard, Delicious, Evernote and Twitter. If you use RSS feeds, you're going to want this.
Sublime Text - £Free-to-try
Version 2.0 of Sublime Text has graduated from beta with full Retina resolution support and more than a hundred tweaks and improvements over previous editions of the text editor.
It's free to try out, and there's no time limit on that evaluation, but if you love it then you should probably buy a £38 license for continued use. It's only fair, after all.
Pulp - £6.99
Scanning through the days news has never been crisper. Pulp turns your favourite websites into a digital newspaper, pulling in content and letting you browse through headlines, previews and photos to find what you want to read more about.
A full-screen mode lets you read without distractions, and multi-touch gestures let you whizz through the content. Best of all, it's fully customisable, allowing you to choose how you want to read the news. ---
Got a favourite Retina-ready app that we've missed from this list? Tell us about it in the comments.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
