
MacOS Mojave removes subpixel anti-aliasing, making non-retina displays blurry - laurentdc
https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8wpk18/macos_mojave_nukes_subpixel_antialiasing_making/
======
gnachman
I released a build of iTerm2 last year that accidentally disabled subpixel AA
and everyone flipped out. People definitely notice.

But the reason I’m sad is that this wonderful hack was short lived:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vfBq6vg409Zky-IQ7ne-
Yy7o...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vfBq6vg409Zky-IQ7ne-
Yy7olPtVCl0dq3PG20E8KDs/edit)

My pet theory is that macOS is going to pull in a bunch of iOS code and iOS
has never had subpixel AA.

~~~
coldtea
> _My pet theory is that macOS is going to pull in a bunch of iOS code and iOS
> has never had subpixel AA._

Some Apple engineer said on reddit that it's because subpixel AA is not so
useful in Retinas and HiDPI, but slows down processing and complicates
pipelines.

So it's part of the move to Metal and increasing graphics performance, even if
it means external lo-res monitors will suffer.

~~~
admax88q
> but slows down processing and complicates pipelines.

Rendering in monochrome is also faster than true 32-bit color, but we use
32-bit color because it provides a better experience to the user who is the
ultimate consumer of the graphics pipeline.

~~~
glup
I actually use Nocturne pretty frequently to turn my screen monochrome if I am
doing stuff outside of iTerm or my text editor — I find the use of color
unmotivated and distracting in most programs, and especially websites

~~~
killjoywashere
Here, here for Nocturne! I use it at night, switching to monochrome red night
mode, and brightness down to the last setting. Sometimes in the morning I
forget and think the screen isn't working.

~~~
alanh
It’s "hear, hear."

------
ridiculous_fish
ex-MacOS SWE here. Subpixel antialiasing is obnoxious to implement. It
requires threading physical pixel geometry up through multiple graphics
layers, geometry which is screen-dependent (think multi-monitor). It
multiplies your glyph caches: glyph * subpixel offset. It requires knowing
your foreground _and_ background colors at render time, which is an unnatural
requirement when you want to do GPU-accelerated compositing. There's tons of
ways to fall off of the subpixel antialiased quality path, and there's weird
graphical artifacts when switching from static to animated text, or the other
way. What a pain!

Nevertheless there's no denying that subpixel-AA text looks better on 1x
displays. Everyone notices when it's not working, and macOS will look worse
without it (on 1x displays).

~~~
omarforgotpwd
"Listen guys the code for this is a mess. Can you just buy the new Macbook?"

(love my latest gen Macbook Pro, but this is the classic problem with Apple's
approach to product design)

~~~
coldtea
> _" Listen guys the code for this is a mess. Can you just buy the new
> Macbook?"_

More like:

"Listen guys, the code for this is a mess AND slows your graphics down even
when it's not needed. We already have had Retina displays for 6+ years
already, and Hi-Dpi displays are the norm these days for third party too, so
there's no reason for everybody to suffer from old tech, like there was no
reason for everybody to have a floppy disk or CD-ROM on their laptop just
because 5% had a real use for it. Part of the way it is with Apple, and has
always been is that we move fast, and cut things off first. Until now, this
exact tactic got us from near bankruptcy to being the #1 company on the
planet. So, if you don't like it, don't let he door hit you on your way out".

~~~
lexicality
> Hi-Dpi displays are the norm these days for third party

Are they? Nearly every monitor in my company's mainly mac based office is a
1080p dell. All the monitors I personally own are 1x.

I would even go so far as to say that the majority of people who want to buy a
monitor for doing text based things (ie business) will buy a bog standard
monitor.

~~~
jchw
It's taken a while party because of cost and perhaps a bit more because of the
horrible ways Windows and Linux deal with HiDPI. You wouldn't want
heterogenous DPIs or non-integer scales on those platforms. On Linux it seems
heterogenous DPI is still very experimental and ugly. On Windows some apps are
buggy and others are ugly when dealing with heterogenous DPI. On Windows non
integer scale does actually work, but it makes some apps size things
horrifically. Needless to say Microsoft's multiple approaches to DPI scaling
have made a mess, and Linux never really had a unified way of dealing with it.

If you're on a MacOS platform, with the current price of HiDPI IPS displays,
the time is right to grab just about anything. If you're on Windows or Linux,
it's still a great time so as long as you're keeping all monitors the same DPI
and probably integer scale.

~~~
damnyou
The only HiDPI monitor I'm willing to use is $2000. I consider 60hz to be
unacceptable for work.

~~~
coldtea
> _I consider 60hz to be unacceptable for work._

Well, the vast majority of the people consider 60hz totally acceptable for
work - and work fine with it.

For the huge majority of the people refresh ration > 60hz isn't even a
concern.

Better resolution on the other hand is a marked improvement (either as more
screen real estate or as finer detail retina style).

~~~
iknowstuff
You're absolutely right, but I'd wager it's mostly because they haven't been
exposed to 120Hz yet. The moment Apple introduces a 120Hz screen on their
iPhones, people are going to want it everywhere. Much like HiDPI displays.

~~~
coldtea
They have it on the iPad IIRC.

But isn't that more for quick moving stuff, like games or (in the iPhone)
quicker visual response to pen input and such?

For regular computing (reading webpages, editing stuff, programming, watching
movies) I don't see much of a difference.

Heck, movies are 24p and we're fine with it.

~~~
iknowstuff
I absolutely love scrolling on 120Hz displays. It feels so much more natural
when the letters aren't blurry as they move under your fingers. Indeed, the
iPad Pros have the feature, but they aren't nearly as popular as iPhones. I
tried on the Razer Phone, can't wait to have it on mine.

------
SCdF
I hope we are all somehow misunderstanding how terrible this is.

The idea that they would downgrade the display support so that non-retina
monitors--- and let's be serious, that is _nearly all_ monitors that people
dock into at work or at home-- are going to look worse in Mojave, is almost
too absurd to be true.

I want to see this for myself.

Does anyone know if you can simulate this now, without installing the beta? Or
if you can install or somehow use the beta without nuking what you already
have?

 _Edit_ : I am still on Sierra, because the buzz around High Sierra made it
sounds like it was a bad idea to upgrade. This is sounding more and more like
Mojave is a no-go as well.

~~~
quipper
You can simulate this by going to System Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font
Smoothing When Available and unchecking it.

It also makes Retina-class devices look far worse. The fonts on my 5K iMac
became much less readable after this change.

~~~
zaroth
I do not think this is an accurate way to simulate the issue reported. This
simulation will look worse than the actual issue, which is not present on 4K+
displays.

~~~
comex
Yeah – on Mojave that checkbox still exists and unchecking it still makes
fonts look different (less bold).

~~~
dolguldur
that's good to know! Then the difference shouldn't be that big on Retina
displays.

I just compared on High Sierra and it's mostly that without subpixel AA types
look thinner

------
mortenjorck
This is the software equivalent to moving exclusively to USB-C. 18 months
after the 2016 MacBook Pro, the vast majority of hardware currently in use
still requires a dongle, and 18 months from Mojave's release, the vast
majority of external monitors in use will still look blurry without subpixel
AA.

Someone at Apple really seems to believe in pain as a motivator. And it may
work in the short term, but in the long term, it always drives customers to
other platforms.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Someone at Apple really seems to believe in pain as a motivator._

I think they simply believe they're large enough player to make such calls
unilaterally, and that the rest of the industry will follow. And I fear they
might be right - such decisions enter into the calculations of more
"commoditized" vendors like peripheral manufacturers when they design next
iterations of their products.

I mean, that's why removing the headphone jack is such a big deal even for
people not using iPhones. Not just because we sympathize with iPhone owners -
but because Apple is big enough to make this stupidity a new standard
everywhere.

~~~
blackhaz
With MacOS, I believe, they still know they're the best. As much as I'd want
to move away from Apple because of their recent maneuvers, there's nothing
that comes close to MacOS - it just works great. Users will see more
appreciation if other Unix-like operating systems will catch up on their GUI.
Once a BSD or Linux (I'd really want it to be a BSD!) gets a great UI, I'm
switching.

~~~
KerrickStaley
GNOME is great, I personally like it as much as macOS. Try running it on
Fedora. The latest Ubuntu also ships GNOME by default but I haven't tried it
and I'm not sure if it's a tweaked version (if it's tweaked it's surely for
the worse).

~~~
noja
Gnome really is great. It's very simple though. If you transition to a search
based launcher then you won't go back.

------
wodenokoto
One guys dell monitor doesn't - subjectively - render input from a beta OS as
pretty as it did the non-beta, and suddenly everybody is bringing out the
pitchforks.

If you read through the comments, you'll find this link buried, which shows a
developer showcasing the difference in the new AA. Basically font-smoothing is
grayscale-only in Mojave.

* [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/209/?time=1...](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/209/?time=1683)

If I take a screenshot of some text and zoom in, I can see the colours, just
like in the video. If I zoom back to normal size and change the saturation to
zero (only greyscale) I cannot see a change in sharpness of the text on my
2009 macbook pro.

~~~
1897235235
>Basically font-smoothing is grayscale-only in Mojave.

This is actually better for me. I wrote to Steve Jobs a long time ago and
asked him if he could switch to gray-scale font smoothing because the tricks
they use with colours don't actually work with people like me who are red
green colour blind. The end result was that text on apple products looked
terrible to me and I couldn't use any of their products until the retina
displays came out. In windows, you can use grayscale font smoothing easily.

Anyway, he replied "we don't have any plans to do this" or something like
that. Turns out I won in the end.

~~~
dchest
Very strange, this has been configurable in System Preferences > General
(currently "Use LCD font smoothing when available", previously there were more
choices) for ages.

~~~
baggyfounder
I don't think that setting switches between grayscale and subpixel anti-
aliasing.

~~~
dchest
It does. [https://imgur.com/a/8g9AsqA](https://imgur.com/a/8g9AsqA)

------
ghusbands
Subpixel AA only works when you know exactly what the output pixel layout is,
when you aren't being scaled by some other technology and when you aren't
showing the same thing on disparate displays, and it requires you to adapt
whenever the screen rotates, which is common on tablet-style devices. Also,
some people (like me) can see the discoloration it imbues. So I'll be glad to
see it go.

(Attempts to disable it tended to get various results in various operating
systems, but rarely consistently disabled it)

~~~
Demiurge
Really? Somehow that 'only' has included every LCD monitor I've used for more
than a decade. Windows AA is more aggressive, but it is still a huge
improvement over the jagged over-hinted font rendering you get without
ClearType.

No AA makes sense for DPI greater than about 300, but for anything less, with
visible pixels, which is probably most non-4K monitors, I would bet most
people prefer AA on. In general, people always prefer AA for 3D and all sorts
of other rendering, at lower DPI.

So, this is a typical Apple decision to abandon anyone who doesn't have the
latest device from them.

~~~
agildehaus
> So, this is a typical Apple decision to abandon anyone who doesn't have the
> latest device from them.

And those who bought a Macbook Air from an Apple Store yesterday.

~~~
erikpukinskis
What about today? Are they updating all the Airs with retina displays?

------
tandav
MacBook Air.

PDFs looks very blurry and dirty since High Sierra (Mojave too). In
Preview.app and in Safari. You can compare it if open PDF in Chrome (looks
sharp in chrome). [https://imgur.com/a/TRpk1Oi](https://imgur.com/a/TRpk1Oi)

fonts on some websites looks blurry
[https://imgur.com/a/o450Mlr](https://imgur.com/a/o450Mlr)

~~~
colinjoy
So are you saying the High Sierra PDF rendering catastrophy is not a bug but a
precursor of this „feature“?

If that is true and the blurred text is going to be the new normal, I do not
see how any professional user looking at type all day long can stay on their
platform.

~~~
tandav
Every time I open PDF I think about install El Capitan back. One thing that
stops me is picture-in-picture mode. I use it heavily on youtube and it is
only in Sierra and later.

~~~
galad87
El Capitan had the same issue on my mac. It was fixed in High Sierra, and came
back in High Sierra.

------
baxuz
The problem is that there are no external 2x displays on the market (apart
from the recalled trainwreck that was LG ultrasharp 5k):
[https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/](https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/)

Scaling is horrible on MacOS since it basically bumps up the 1x resolution to
the next integer multiplier and then does a per-frame raster resize leading to
performance drops, blurry edges and other render artifacts.

Meaning that your only reasonable option was to run a 1x monitor without
scaling. Now they killed that option too.

Basically what they did, if your primary work machine was a MacBook hooked to
a 27" display — is tell you "Buy an iMac and use Continuity".

I mean, I'm all up for removing subpixel antialiasing at the point where
everyone is running a 220+ppi monitor. However, we're not at that point yet.

This is a horrible move that may cause me to drop the Mac as a development
platform, since I'm looking at text for 8+ hours a day, and I'm not planning
on shelling out 3k€ for an iMac or 2k€+ if they get back into the display
business, just to fix something that they broke.

~~~
ricardobeat
I use a display in the 'red zone' described in the article (a Dell P2415)
daily paired to a retina MBP; there are no issues coming from not being an
even multiple, it's the sharpest monitor I've ever had.

~~~
baxuz
I recently worked on a 4k 24" monitor (~180ppi) on a 2017 MBP.

The text was either too small when rendered at 1x, or the framerate dropped to
a crawl when using a scaling option. Everything was rendering at under 60 fps.

Plus I could clearly see the rendering artifacts when scrolling, mentioned in
the article.

------
galad87
Here's a comparison, so we can comment on he actual difference:

[http://www.framecompare.com/image-
compare/screenshotcomparis...](http://www.framecompare.com/image-
compare/screenshotcomparison/KWL7NNNX)

~~~
kevingadd
Unfortunately on my high-dpi monitor I can't get that page to display the
screenshots at 1:1, so I can't see the difference due to filtering :/

~~~
spiralganglion
Enlarge the page using browser zoom. Subpixel AA will make the text look red
on one edge and cyan on the other. Without it, the text is perfectly
greyscale. This is visible even with extensive bilinear filtering.

------
kccqzy
Okay, this might be an unpopular opinion but I've always actually preferred
plain AA (grayscale), not subpixel AA. That's especially on a low-res screen.
I discovered this preference back in the flip phones days when a certain J2ME
reading app offered a choice between grayscale AA and subpixel AA. I
immediately noticed that for subpixel AA, there is a lot of red and blue even
when the text is black on white. Those colors just make me nauseated.
Grayscale AA makes the text a bit more blurry, but I can actually read that
text for hours without feeling nauseated.

When I was using Ubuntu, I was offered four choices for font rendering. The
subpixel rendering choice also looked terrible to me.

On macOS Safari (maybe Chrome too) exposes a CSS property called -webkit-font-
smoothing. Many websites set this to antialiased, including many built by me,
because I truly think this antialias mode looks the best.

~~~
mackal
From a comment someone else made, I'm gonna guess you're red green color blind
:P

------
xucheng
In addition to the MacBook Air and normal non-4K external display, it seems
that this will also affect projectors. Therefore, it seems that presentation
using macOS Mojave will only make your slides/keynote look bad and less
professional. Moreover, the projector is not something you can upgrade. It is
usually preinstalled in whatever venue where you give your presentation, and
totally outside your control.

~~~
saagarjha
I doubt that many people will be able to tell the difference in your
presentation if they're sitting twenty feet away.

~~~
ksec
Oh no no, on low res projector even if it is twenty feet away it is still
definitely noticeable.

------
valine
Apple said during WWDC that the change was made to support a wider variety of
display technologies and scaling modes. It’s an odd choice considering they
still sell the non-retina MacBook Air.

~~~
wvenable
It's kind of a funny definition of support.

~~~
derefr
Forcing app developers to live with the same lowest-common-denominator
aesthetics that most users see, will make them more likely to raise the bar
for the aesthetics on lowest-common-denominator devices.

It's the same reason that video game developers shouldn't be allowed to have
powerful GPUs. They need to be testing how the game looks (and works) for most
people, not for a group of people only slightly larger than themselves.

~~~
infogulch
Do you think most developers are using a non-retina screen? Compared to the
general population I bet they skew very heavily towards newer, retina
machines. Which means they'll barely notice anything. This is just plain
lowering the bar, not raising the average.

~~~
jedberg
I'd say most developers are docking with an external screen, and there are
very few external screens that are retina. So yeah, I'd say most developers
are using a non-retina screen.

~~~
cerberusss
> I'd say most developers are using a non-retina screen

I don't see this as a problem with 4K screens starting at 260 euros (~ US$
306).

~~~
djsumdog
If you work as a dev in a company, they're not going to be issuing 4k screens.

~~~
cerberusss
So get your own monitor. I understand that many employees make the decision
that they will not pay for equipment, to be true. However it's still a
decision.

------
chx
The intent is to provide users with a sense of pride and accomplishment for
buying new devices.

~~~
Sholmesy
Can we not just meme here please? This doesn't belong on HN.

------
nine_k
One thing that I noticed when I had to switch from a Linux desktop to an MBP
is how much worse text anti-aliasing is. The crispness just isn't there,
especially at smaller font sizes.

Certainly the MBP has a high-res screen and can live without it, but it's
highly reflective, and anti-glare external monitors provided by most employers
are mere FHD, and most fonts become unpleasant and hard to read without anti-
aliasing on them.

Maybe anti-aliasing was just hard to implement nicely in OSX graphics stack,
they struggled with it, and decided to remove it.

I suspect that most of Apple's "proper computer" sales are laptops where they
put a retina display anyway, and if you shell out $2k for a laptop, you can
afford to spend $300 for a 4K external display.

In other words, they (correctly) decided that theirs is the premium segment,
and that segment can afford to switch to retina-only hardware.

~~~
baggyfounder
>I suspect that most of Apple's "proper computer" sales are laptops where they
put a retina display anyway, and if you shell out $2k for a laptop, you can
afford to spend $300 for a 4K external display.

My old windows computer is dying and I am thinking about getting a new mac. It
seems the choice is a $2200 imac, or a $2700 mbp + a $1000 4k 21.5inch
monitor.

LG is one of the very few companies that sells 4k 21.5inch and 5k 27inch
monitors. Even 4k 24inch monitors, which I am guessing you are referring to,
are quite rare. They are also not really approved by Apple. I mean, 4k 24inch
will make everything look too big I assume, and 4k 27inch isn't retina
quality.

So what exactly are we supposed to do? There are no external monitors to buy.
Apple doesn't sell any, and the 3rd party solutions are few and far between.
Maybe they want everyone to buy an imac and a mbp...

~~~
nine_k
Fortunately, there are a quite few Windows-oriented machines with very decent
specs now; some of them have an explicit Linux option, too.

21-22" 4k monitors are indeed pretty rare; 23-24" 4k are more widespread. I
would gladly buy a 15-17" 3k / 4k display, like another laptop screen, but
they seem to be absent from the market for some reason, despite the wealth of
ready-made LCD panels for them.

~~~
wilsonnb2
Because most people buying monitors want something bigger than a laptop
screen.

------
glhaynes
This seems certain to be related to integration of UIKit-on-macOS ("Marzipan")
apps. (UIKit has never had subpixel antialiasing.)

~~~
mpweiher
The reason being that it tends to want to push pre-rendered bitmaps around,
and sub-pixel anti-aliased pre-rendered bitmaps don't work well under
rotation...

------
ghostcluster
High Sierra's Metal rewrite of windowserver still has serious bugs nearly a
year after shipping, even on a brand new MacBook Pro.

They managed to ship 10.13 with bugs like this that made it into the Ars
Technica review: [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif)

------
dragonshed
I still use a non-retina 13-inch from 2012, as well as an Ultrawide monitor
(3440x1440), both of which I apparently wont be using with macOS Mojave.

I can't help but think this is just another in a long line of paper cuts
endured by professional users causing them to switch to a Windows machine.

~~~
zbraniecki
Or you know... Linux. Whatever. It's 2018.

------
quipper
Signed up for HN (again) just to vent about this terrible news. This is a
change that will be hard for me to live with, and I will probably end up
selling all my Apple gear.

This is the same change/downgrade that occurs if you go to System
Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available.

I did this and the fonts on my 5K iMac display looked horrible. Just
atrocious. My plan is to not upgrade to Mojave, and then within a year or so
sell all my Apple gear and move back to Linux.

I don't understand Apple's thinking, but I believe a lot of people will do the
same.

~~~
pixard
This doesn't affect retina devices so your 5k iMac will look the same it does
now...

~~~
quipper
It does affect Retina devices. That's the whole point. I made the same change
that Apple is going to make and the fonts looked far worse (almost
unreadable). You can observe the same if you have an Apple device by going to:
System Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available.

Apple is removing sub-pixel anti-aliasing for all devices, not just non-Retina
ones.

~~~
eknkc
Try the beta before venting. It’s not the same thing.

~~~
quipper
Downloading the beta now, but have seen screenshots of both (here and
elsewhere).

~~~
read_if_gay_
I've been on the beta for a couple days (using a 2016 12" MacBook) and I
haven't noticed anything. There's a visible difference when I disable LCD font
smoothing in settings, but not much changes besides fonts appearing somewhat
thinner.

------
hyko
Subpixel font rendering was a cool hack back in the day, but it’s no match for
high dpi monitors. Personally I could never get past the color fringing
artefacts. Bill Hill himself talked about it as an interim measure to get
people reading on screen.

Here he is talking about the original implementation of ClearType:
[https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/TheChannel9Team/Bill-Hill-
Ho...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/TheChannel9Team/Bill-Hill-How-does-
ClearType-work)

Joel Spolsky on the different sub pixel AA approaches taken by Apple and
Microsoft:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-
ant...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-anti-
aliasing-and-sub-pixel-rendering/)

------
quipper
I just installed the Mojave beta on my Macbook Pro. The fonts are just as
blurry as if I toggle off "Use LCD font smoothing when available" in High
Sierra.

So the contention that it won't be the same in Mojave is disproven. Even on
Retina displays, disabling sub-pixel anti-aliasing leads to blurry, indistinct
fonts.

~~~
saagarjha
Mojave doesn't ship with subpixel antialiasing. The "LCD font smoothing"
checkbox disables greyscale smoothing.

~~~
quipper
I know Mojave doesn't ship with subpixel anti-aliasing. That is my whole
complaint.

My point was if that box is checked in Mojave (that is, greyscale anti-
aliasing is on) the fonts still look atrocious. Sorry if that was not clear.

------
asadkn
From perspective of Web Designers and Web Devs who obsess over font-rendering,
the way I see it:

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; will be the default now as opposed to subpixel-antialiased. And you will no longer have control over it.

Seems like it DOES affect Retina displays too. That's a bummer as quite a lot
of fonts get too thin without subpixel-antialiasing even on MBP Retina.

------
vesak
I've been using Linux for 2 decades, and this year I moved to MacOS, with the
newest MacBook and a 5K iMac. Everything pretty much just works, is much
prettier by default than I ever got my Linux installations to be.

Given my experiences, I have full trust that the MacOS engineers will do good
stuff with Mojave too, at least eventually. I still like Desktop Linux,
though, and sincerely wish it will be as good some day. It most definitely is
not today.

------
ivirshup
Am misreading this thread, or was this one person's complaint on reddit about
beta software (with a single commenter saying they've seen the same behavior)?

Are there any more cases, or could this be a bug? Cause it seems like a bug to
me.

~~~
mpweiher
The change was also announced at WWDC.

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/209/?time=1...](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/209/?time=1683)

------
PakG1
Oh my goodness. And here I was thinking that I'd love the next macOS due to
its alleged focus on stability. What the heck....

------
blt
I never upgraded past Mavericks. It seems that the OS has been going downhill.
Thinking about installing Ubuntu on my MacBook.

------
userbinator
I'm not surprised, Apple loves removing configurability and thinks "one-size-
fits-all". It would be far better to make the font rendering settings more
configurable instead, but sadly this trend is not limited to only Apple.

...and I'm saying this as one of those for whom any form of antialiasing is
blurry, subpixel being worse (my eyes water and feel dizzy after prolonged
exposure), preferring AA off and pixel fonts with sharp, high-contrast edges
instead. Let people have the font rendering they want.

------
kzrdude
Seems like a further shift from user friendliness towards consumer
friendliness. That is, alienating core and power user in favour of larger
consumer masses.

------
update
So what's the solution here? Buy a new monitor if we want to use up-to-date
versions of macOS?

Anyone who uses Apple's FCPX or Logic knows we'll have to update to Mojave
because eventually we'll try to open the latest version of said software and
be told "You must be running Mojave to open this"

I'd really ditch Apple because of stunts like this, but I really love Logic
and FCPX so I'm stuck with it.

------
frou_dh
Nothing like some frothy sight-unseen outrage on a Saturday morning.

------
mark-r
I wonder what panel technologies this is supposed to improve? The only one I
can think of is a portrait rotated LCD.

~~~
ken
PenTile, RGBW Quad, etc -- basically everything except plain old RGB stripes.
Of all the possible display layouts, SPAA really only works with one (or it
has to be re-designed for each, which realistically will never happen).

The stats I've seen are that most Mac users, as of this year, are on @2x
displays.

~~~
Lio
The real question is whether they’re on @2x disolays exclusively.

I have a Retina MacBook Pro I mostly use it plugged into a 27” Dell 1440p
monitor.

Every office I’ve worked in that provided Macs also provided a 1x monitor of
some kind. Never 4k or 5k.

------
the_mitsuhiko
Not cool at all. I don’t want a high dpi external monitor because it’s too
laggy. Very annoying change.

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sbarre
So is Apple going to stop selling the 21" iMac that has a 1920x1080 panel?

What about someone who buys one today?

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cJ0th
I so knew it! I even put a reminder in my calendar some time ago (not knowing
what the next update holds) to _not upgrade_ until I know for sure that my
experience won't get worse.

------
Philipp__
Ok, so what are options in terms of external displays? I guess this will make
my Dell 1080p monitor much less appealing... I planned to jump to 4k 24inch
anyway... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
kuon
That must be personal, but I always preferred grayscale AA.

~~~
copperx
What's the last time you got an eye exam?

~~~
kuon
I'm a pilot, so every year.

------
SZJX
Wow. The one biggest advantage my previous MBP had over my current Arch Linux
+ i3 setup on Carbon X1 is the natural support for HiDPI, as I connect my
laptop to external monitors all the time (The only other one is the built-in
dictionary). Now Apple are going in this direction further and further I
definitely don't see myself returning to Mac any time soon, or indeed ever.

------
timeimp
So THIS explains why the beta Apple News app on Mojave looks _so bad_ on my 1x
display...

------
coleifer
Wasn't typography Steve Jobs "big thing" he wanted to do well on the Mac?

~~~
iaml
Seeing mac screenshots with amazing font rendering was one of the things that
made me switch to mac. I guess I won't be updating past high sierra.

------
quipper
In other news, how is Linux's sub-pixel anti-aliasing lately? I haven't used
it in years, and never on a 4K or above display.

Since I will now be switching off Mac, Linux is looking likely again. It will
probably be two 27" 4K monitors.

~~~
livebsd
As of "lately" in the sense of "in the last 10 years", it was always great.
Freetype always had great rendering, on part and often superior to both
ClearType and OSX to my eyes.

I attribute the bad perceived performance of freetype to the lack of good
and/or commercial fonts.

The default configuration in most distributions is decent, but with little
tuning _everything_ can be changed to your taste. I ran with grayscale AA
since the beginning because I find the color fringing annoying.

I also used to like the bytecode hinter, but in the last years with my laptop
having 120+ dpi, I find the freetype autohinter to be actually superior as it
better preserves the letterform and provides sharper results even without
subpixel AA.

The settings can also be tailored per-font, and apply system-wide, with the
exception of some stupid QML and Electron apps.

~~~
quipper
Thanks for that detailed response. I last used Linux full-time as my main
machine in 2009 or so. It has indeed been a while. Good to know that it has
improved since that time.

------
nickm12
I'll be that guy and say that I don't like sub-pixel anti-aliasing—I find the
color fringes distracting. I turn it off wherever possible. That said, people
seem to like it so it's a shame the option is going away.

------
fireattack
It doesn't surprise me, since even Microsoft is slowly dropping ClearType.

------
jokoon
I don't know how you can justify making devices so expensive. It's almost like
buying Apple calls out for social status. That brand will always remind of
class warfare.

------
pibefision
Could be this a measure to combat hackintosh installed base?

~~~
saagarjha
How so?

------
gleglegle
This is sad. It should be an option when using 1x displays.

------
rbanffy
I'm betting Apple will launch a family of Retina desktop monitors.

Also, remember it's still beta software. People do public betas to surface
issues like these.

------
hn0
I must be the odd one out in that I actually prefer my fonts to look “soft”?

------
gigatexal
As long as they find a fix I’ll be happy. I want things to look crisp.

------
SEJeff
And here I was thinking I was just getting worse eyesight. Lovely.

------
jbverschoor
Since retina I disabled it myself

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Angostura
It’s a beta. Report it as a bug.

~~~
Lio
Its’s not a bug. It was announced as a change at WWDC. It’s believed to be a
consequence of the move to merge iOS code into macOS. iOS doesn’t support sub-
pixel antialiasing.

~~~
Angostura
That's no reason not to report it either as a bug or file as an enhancement
request.

------
some_account
Apple strikes again....they recently destroyed having two external displays
with a recent update, and now they mess up single screen external displays
too.

I have a MacBook Air connected to a 2560x1440 screen and fonts looks good. I
was looking forward to Mojaves dark mode.

Now I'm afraid to install Mojave. I understand that Apple wants to simplify
their code, but they can't just remove things before having an alternate
solution to a problem that exist.

Font rendering is really super important... I really hope they reconsider.

------
deevolution
Planned obsolescence

