Unable to configure to native resolution on LCD of retina macbook pro

Supported resolutions

• Retina, Ratio 16:10

  • 2880 by 1800 pixels

• scaled, Ratio 16:10

  • 1920 x 1200 pixels
  • 1680 x 1050 pixels
  • 1280 x 800 pixels
  • 1024 x 640 pixels

According to the official tech specs by Apple.

How does the scaling work?

According to an article in AnandTech:

Selecting any of these options gives you the effective desktop resolution of the setting, but Apple actually renders the screen at a higher resolution and scales it to fit the 2880 x 1800 panel. As a result of this scaled rendering, there can be a performance and quality impact.

There is a new option to configure the resolution in the system settings. While you actually change the resolution, Apple only refers to the visual impact of the settings.

So basically changing the resolution offers:

1. Large text, but much crisper.
2. More space for visual content (and smaller text), but not as sharp.
3. Something in-between (default retina).

(original picture from AnandTech)

Note:

Due to the imprecise definition of "retina display", this answer may seem confusing, because at the top Apple speaks of 2880x1800 as retina, but the picture suggest something different.

Images and icons look about the same because of integral scaling. But text in non-Retina apps looks clearly worse. The difference is that on a non-Retina display, text uses sub-pixel rendering. But with Retina, old apps use full-pixel anti-aliasing instead. (Those full pixels are then multiplied perfectly with integral scaling.) Not quite sure what Retina text on a Retina display uses, it's hard to eyeball.

Separately, other resolutions look pretty good. The highest is 1920x1200. The trick is they are also rendered in double-resolution (3840x2400) and then scaled down for the display (2880x1800). Because there are so many tiny pixels, the result is acceptable, but the optimal setting is definitely sharper.

So Retina apps at 1920 look pretty good, and non-Retina text at 1920 has smaller and slightly fuzzier full-pixel anti-aliasing.