Ask HN: Does Anybody Run Windows/Visual Studio on their Macbook Pro Retina?

2 points by mcdevhammer 11 years ago | 8 comments

I'm seriously considering buying a Macbook Pro Retina 15" and plan on spending a lot of time in Windows, specifically with Visual Studio. I am a little concerned over threads where people have complained about "fuzzyness" when running Windows under non native resolution and scaling issues when using native (2880x1800) resolution with DPI scaling. Is there anybody who currently runs this setup and give feedback on their experience running Windows (either virtualized or in bootcamp)?

davesque 11 years ago |

I run Windows but not Visual Studio. I'm using bootcamp. It works fine.

When you're first running the installer, the dialogs/interface elements are tiny because of the retina resolution. However, once the full operating system boots up, text and interface automatically scale and look great. That's assuming you're running at the native display resolution. If you play games or whatever at non-native res, you do get some fuzziness from interpolation. Also, some applications appear to have issues with high-resolution and look pixelated.

Also, I've only been using Windows on my 15" retina macbook for a little while. There may very well be issues I haven't run into yet that could come up in the future.

pestaa 11 years ago | |

Sorry. I downvoted by misclicking. Didn't mean to.

JoshGlazebrook 11 years ago |

I run Windows 8.1 through Parallels with Visual Studio 2013 and I have not had any issues on my 15" 2012 rMBP.

I do need to point out that I had been using VMWare Fusion for Windows and everything was a bit "fuzzy" like you describe. But once I switched to using Parallels everything (especially text) was incredibly sharper.

I can't really give any recommendation for using Bootcamp. The last time I tried it the touch pad driver was horrible compared to using a vm within OSX. If that has improved since 2011(I think) someone let me know.

chrisbennet 11 years ago |

I'm currently running that setup but I use a 2nd 27" monitor as my actual work screen. I boot to Windows 8.1 (boot camp).

One downside is that it seems unable to take advantage of the high resolution mode (2680x1440?) of my external monitor so I have to run it at something like 1280x1024.

mu_killnine 11 years ago |

I am running Win8.1 + VS2013 on a late-2013 rMBP 15". It works great with Parallels (9, though 10 is out now).

One hiccup I did have was with Resharper. I had to update to v8.1 because v7 had serious scaling issues (the indicator at the bottom right was about 300x300px).

Otherwise, it's been fantastic to use.

jefflinwood 11 years ago |

I run Windows 8 under Parallels 8, and run Visual Studio + the Windows Phone 8 Emulator, and it runs fine on a MacBook Pro Retina 15. Visual Studio scales fine on the Macbook's screen, I haven't had any problems there at all.

It can be a little laggy if you have a lot of other things open on the Mac side, like Chrome.

partisan 11 years ago |

I am running Windows7 on VMBox on a Retina 15". I currently run the virtual machine headless and RDP into it. It works pretty well from a graphics perspective, but not perfectly overall, due to network issues, but I am only using this setup temporarily so I can live with it.

kogir 11 years ago |

I regularly boot to Windows 8.1 and use Visual Studio 2013 Update 3. It's great at native resolution, but also looks fine at 125% or 150% scaling.