Perhaps, though, this is the kind of kick Adobe needs. Photoshop, for instance, was built on Carbon until CS5, and needed some tricksy memory tampering to keep the whole session from being a swap exercise. (Even on Windows, I've found that if I didn't already know what the dialog contents were, I'd never figure them out half of the time -- the text doesn't fit into the space they've allotted for it, even for single-line legends.)

The features and ecosystem keep me there, but their underpinnings have lagged, and apart from the splash screen (which is now "creative" but butt-ugly), they haven't spent a whole lot of time making sure the GUI works on any machine, let alone on Retina-type displays.

Being able to judge adjustments for print at near-print-size has always been a major hole in the feature set. That's not Adobe's fault—until very recently, there were only a handful of automobile-expensive monitors requiring special interface hardware that could provide such a function—but they should have realized that if the subject ever came up, designers, ADs and photogs would be all over it in a flash. That doesn't take a JREF challenge winner to predict—the phone-sized hi-rez monitor should have been a clue that it was just around the corner. It should have already been in the pipes, even if it wasn't ready for prime time for the launch of CS6.

There's little chance this kick Adobe into action. They're moving slower and slower (and subscriptions are a license to snooze). It makes me very worried it will be 3-4 years before CS is in line with retina (instead of 1-2).

FWIW - I don't see how retina can be solved easily: Apple kinda screwed it. Mainly, how do you show 1x pixel accurate content on a device that won't do 1x pixels?

So you're complaining that the rMBP doesn't thrill you because Adobe's software has not been upgraded to take advantage of the retina display yet?

You must think the Tesla is non-thrilling because there are not yet ubiquitous charging stations.

You must think 4G handsets are non-thrilling because there is not yet enough 4G coverage.

You must think Thunderbolt is non-thrilling because there are not yet enough devices that support it.

To summarize, you think something is not "thrilling" because the world at large is not ready for it yet. This "keep doing what we've always done" approach really bugs me, and is not a good way to think if you have any interest in progressing and actually making anything better.

These are the kinds of comments I downvote. You come off as a petulant child.

FWIW, Thunderbolt is crap, precisely because it's been almost two years and there's still not a fucking thing to plug into it.

What planet are you living on? Apart from the Thunderbolt display, there's lots of storage devices available. If you don't want storage but something else, you can get Thunderbolt to PCI expansion boxes that you can plug your favorite card into.

So what's your problem?

The post you downvoted was correct. Saying you are underwhelmed by an improved technology just because it's new and unsupported is just silly.

Why would I want a PCI adapter box? I could've done that with Firewire (400 or 800). I want some native devices.

I haven't seen any other laptops shipping with TB interfaces, either (but I'll confess to not having looked thoroughly.) This is probably what's keeping native devices from being more numerous.

What native devices do you want to see? What kind of devices do you want that would need Thunderbolt speeds, and aren't on the market today?

Could you have gotten Thunderbolt speed with Firewire? No.

For slower data rates you have USB (2 and 3). So what's your point?

2 years? I purchased the first MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt when it was first released just last year. It's just over a year old.

Considering that there's a pretty good chance that you'll need a 1x monitor to accurately preview pixel-accurate work like web graphics even after Adobe offers full support, I'm not sure that your rant laying the entire problem at Adobe's door is addressing the actual problem.

Won't turning off HiDPI just make the monitor "normal" - eg you have 4 pixels per 1 "normal" pixel, but it's not like the image will look worse because of that?

"Thrilling"? You've misread me again.

In the near-term, as you point out, Photoshop is useless on a Retina display (unless you're driving it at full @1x resolution.) I'm glad I've got my trusty old Samsung 213T at home.

Even _when_ Adobe gets around to adding Retina support in CS6, it's clear we'll still need access to @1x monitors to ensure that we're shipping the pixels we think we're shipping.

In the long-term, it's hard to predict the adoption curve for high DPI displays. Especially where the web is concerned, I'm convinced that designers and developers will need to support and test for @1x displays for many years to come -- perhaps a decade or more?