3 ms·

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 o

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.

pvg 8y ago
This isn't 'no AA'.
agildehaus 8y ago
> 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.
- eric-hu 8y ago
  There's a two week return window for MacBooks.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  What about today? Are they updating all the Airs with retina displays?
badsectoracula 8y ago
Personally i prefer to disable antialiasing and if possible use bitmap fonts designed for clarity. Sadly almost nothing supports properly bitmap fonts these days (assuming it supports them in the first place - i think only GDI and X11 core does, but those are increasingly ignored by programs) and even when you can find support, finding good bitmap fonts is hard because it looks like most bitmap fonts are converted from outline fonts - but with jaggies. As for what i consider a good bitmap font, in Windows MS Sans (the one you could find in Win9x, it was removed in later versions of Windows and aliased with MS Sans Serif which is an outline font), plain Courier and Fixedsys. On Linux i like the console font that you get when booting Debian (not sure what is called) as well as the Terminus fonts. On X11 i like the helv* fonts (usually registered as adobe helvetica - honestly, why is font registration on Xorg such a clusterfuck?) and some of the Fixed fonts (the smaller ones mainly, the larger are a bit too jaggy). On Mac... pretty much all of the original Macintosh fonts. I also like the "WarpSans" font that OS/2 (and eComStation) has, it is very compact and i like compact fonts (although i'm not fan of a few details, like the w being a bit too jaggy).
- chungy 8y ago
  > On Linux i like the console font that you get when booting Debian (not sure what is called) That's probably Unifont: http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html The exact font used is configurable but Debian uses Unifont by default.
  - badsectoracula 8y ago
    Yes, it looks like it.
1897235235 8y ago
> but it is still a huge improvement over the jagged over-hinted font rendering you get without ClearType. There is no font smoothing at all (the jagged fonts), and then there is grayscale font smoothing, and then there is coloured font smoothing. Apple is switching from coloured to gray-scale, which like OP, is great for me personally as I can see all the colours in the other approach.

pvg 8y ago

This isn't 'no AA'.

agildehaus 8y ago

> 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.

eric-hu 8y ago
There's a two week return window for MacBooks.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
What about today? Are they updating all the Airs with retina displays?

badsectoracula 8y ago

Personally i prefer to disable antialiasing and if possible use bitmap fonts designed for clarity. Sadly almost nothing supports properly bitmap fonts these days (assuming it supports them in the first place - i think only GDI and X11 core does, but those are increasingly ignored by programs) and even when you can find support, finding good bitmap fonts is hard because it looks like most bitmap fonts are converted from outline fonts - but with jaggies. As for what i consider a good bitmap font, in Windows MS Sans (the one you could find in Win9x, it was removed in later versions of Windows and aliased with MS Sans Serif which is an outline font), plain Courier and Fixedsys. On Linux i like the console font that you get when booting Debian (not sure what is called) as well as the Terminus fonts. On X11 i like the helv* fonts (usually registered as adobe helvetica - honestly, why is font registration on Xorg such a clusterfuck?) and some of the Fixed fonts (the smaller ones mainly, the larger are a bit too jaggy). On Mac... pretty much all of the original Macintosh fonts. I also like the "WarpSans" font that OS/2 (and eComStation) has, it is very compact and i like compact fonts (although i'm not fan of a few details, like the w being a bit too jaggy).

chungy 8y ago
> On Linux i like the console font that you get when booting Debian (not sure what is called) That's probably Unifont: http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html The exact font used is configurable but Debian uses Unifont by default.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  Yes, it looks like it.

1897235235 8y ago

> but it is still a huge improvement over the jagged over-hinted font rendering you get without ClearType. There is no font smoothing at all (the jagged fonts), and then there is grayscale font smoothing, and then there is coloured font smoothing. Apple is switching from coloured to gray-scale, which like OP, is great for me personally as I can see all the colours in the other approach.