Microsoft Doesn't Care Much for the New MacBook Pro with Retina Display

A dismayed customer of Apple’s and Microsoft’s reaching out to the Office for Mac team got a turndown when he asked about the possibility of seeing Office 2011 updated to support the new MacBook Pro with Retina display.

Calling the viewing experience “dreadful,” James says he isn’t enjoying the Microsoft Office productivity suite on the new MacBook Pro from Apple.

He asks if there’s any update on the horizon, even though (admittedly) “the retina market is a small one.” He argues that, “along with others, have paid good money for this otherwise very good product,” presumably referring to the MacBook Pro.

Leaving no hope for the customer in question, the Office for Mac team replied, stating, “Outlook for Mac 2011 already supports Retina Display and the remaining apps will have the same viewing quality as on any non-Retina device.”

The Microsoft team added, “Unfortunately at this time, we cannot comment on any future updates regarding supporting Retina on Word, Excel or PowerPoint… Hope that helps!”

Hardly, but at least James got his answer.

Apple unveiled the MacBook Pro with Retina display on June 11, this year, to high acclaim.

The computer features all flash storage and quad-core processors in a thinner and lighter aluminum, unibody enclosure. However, it’s still the Retina display that counts as its killer feature.

Apple says the screen found on its latest Pro laptop is the world’s highest resolution notebook display. It boasts no less than 5 million pixels, which is actually 3 million more than an HD television.

In fact, the Retina display’s pixel density is so high (220 ppi) that the human eye cannot distinguish individual dots from a normal viewing distance.

This is why text and graphics look much sharper, and more vivid. Of course, you need to develop software that takes advantage of all this swag, and Microsoft apparently doesn’t want in.