Apple’s new wallpaper suggests Retina display iMacs coming soon
OS X Mavericks’ blue and green wave image is exactly four times the resolution of the current 27in iMac screen – why?
If you followed yesterday’s OS X Mavericks announcement, you’ll no doubt have noticed that Apple showed off a brand new default wallpaper: a blue and green ocean wave, clearly inspired by Mavericks’ surfer bay naming roots.
No big deal, you might think – but it turns out that this wallpaper, which can be downloaded from the Apple website now, has a resolution of 5120 x 2880. That’s exactly twice the width and height of the resolution of the current screens used in the 27in iMac and 27in Thunderbolt Display.
On Twitter, designer Marvin Scharle noted that this resolution, on a 27in screen, could be classed as a Retina display. The suggestion is that, at some point in the next few months, we’ll be seeing iMacs and Thunderbolt Displays with Retina-quality screens.
Apple has some previous in this regard: when it released the developer preview of OS X Lion back in 2011, there was a hi-res (3200 x 2000) wallpaper that wouldn’t be fully utilised until the first Retina display MacBook Pro arrived in 2012.
[Via Apple Insider]
Sam Kieldsen
Contributor 
