Backblaze and Retina Support for Macs

Retina display support has been available on the Mac since 2012, but believe it or not, it was only this year that we really started to see a critical mass of our customers who expressed interest in seeing our app optimized for the new displays. Well, we responded: We’ve added Retina display graphics to the Mac Backblaze client. The change first appeared in the 4.1 update released in June.

Retina display is Apple’s name for screens on its devices that are a much higher resolution than the average. Retina displays offer text and graphics without the jaggy, pixelated lines you see on lesser displays. Apple says that makes it easier to read and view text and graphics, helping to reduce eye strain. One thing’s for sure: Mac users love their Retina displays. We should know. We use a lot of Macs around the office, and many of our customers are Mac users, too.

Retina displays weren’t always on the Mac. In fact, they first got their start on the iPhone 4. Apple added Retina displays to the iPad beginning in 2012. That same year they updated the MacBook Pro with a sleek redesign that added a Retina display, too. When Apple released the MacBook in 2015, it had a Retina display. Many iMacs ship with Retina displays. The writing is on the wall: Apple’s putting Retina displays on anything it can.

Here are a few before and after screenshots to give you a sense of how we’ve spruced things up.

The new graphics the Backblaze preferences windows sport look their best on higher res Mac screens, but even the regular displays on MacBook Airs and other Macs benefit from the sprucing up. The graphics are prettier!

At the end of the day, Retina graphics are eye candy: They won’t make Backblaze run any faster or better on the Mac, though it is worth noting that 4.1 introduced some other cool new features, too, such as an editable exclusion list, which are prettier on a Retina display…