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"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 appr

"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)

pdpi 8y ago
It’s less “the code for this is a mess”, and more “the code for this can’t be anything but a mess”.
- marktangotango 8y ago
  The gp’s exposition is explicit but makes no sense to me, in a scenegraph architecture all that would be very straightforward for example.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > It’s less “the code for this is a mess”, and more “the code for this can’t be anything but a mess”. Ok. But so what? As a customer that's not my problem, and Apple has a HUGE war chest to pay developers to maintain the mess. I have nothing but 1x displays externally and this makes Mojave a non-starter.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Ok. But so what? As a customer that's not my problem, It is. Customers pay for code debt too -- with bugs, slow performance, and slower moving features.
- admax88q 8y ago
  I really don't believe that subpixel rendering is such an inherently complex problem that there is no clean way to implement it. From the OP it sounds more like its a pain to implement due to the number and design of abstraction layers in the modern macOS graphics stack.
noblethrasher 8y ago
Meh. I see their point. Subpixel AA was about using software to simulate better hardware. But, at the end of the day you really do want the better hardware so that you can use your software budget to simulate an even better generation of hardware. Repeat ad-infinitum, modulo scaling limits. Pretty sure this is what Alan Kay means when he says that people who are serious about software will make their own hardware.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Maybe we could wait with the step where we don't simulate better hardware until (almost) everybody has upgraded to hardware where that is unnecessary.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Well, now is close to that time. Everybody who cares for graphics already has a Retina Mac or a hi-dpi display.
    - jordache 8y ago
      > Everybody who cares for graphics already has a Retina Mac or a hi-dpi display. Elementary level of product owner analysis I must say. Proactively constraint your product into a niche category.. tsk, tsk.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Proactively constraint your product into a niche category.. tsk, tsk. Yeah, it hasn't been working for Apple this past 2 decades. They're only near the $1 trillion mark, could have been way better...
  - jchw 8y ago
    One problem: people have no good reason to. The software folks have a good reason to remove subpixel AA; it's a hack to get better horizontal spatial resolution out of cheap monitors. The users have no reason, however, to buy better, now reasonably-priced, displays that would make subpixel AA unnecessary. By removing subpixel AA at a time when HiDPI monitors are cheap, Apple is probably doing us a service. In a few years, hopefully everyone will be on a DPI that can render nice text. You may think it's unnecessary, but consider complex glyphs like Hanzi and Kanji, which really don't get enough mileage out of subpixel AA really. I know it's pretty irritating to suggest that forcing users to buy new hardware is doing them "a service." But really, I see no conflict of interest here. Apple themselves probably hasn't shipped a 96 DPI display in half a decade, and they don't even sell their own external displays, so they don't stand to gain that much here other than software performance.
coldtea 8y ago
>"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 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      The only HiDPI monitor I'm willing to use is $2000. I consider 60hz to be unacceptable for work.
dilap 8y ago
It's not like tech debt has no cost. This is engineering effort that can be spent in other places; it's lots of other tasks that become easier because this complication doesn't need to be supported. It's reasonable to argue that'll turn into real benefits in the software in other ways.

"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)

pdpi 8y ago

It’s less “the code for this is a mess”, and more “the code for this can’t be anything but a mess”.

marktangotango 8y ago
The gp’s exposition is explicit but makes no sense to me, in a scenegraph architecture all that would be very straightforward for example.
AlexandrB 8y ago
> It’s less “the code for this is a mess”, and more “the code for this can’t be anything but a mess”. Ok. But so what? As a customer that's not my problem, and Apple has a HUGE war chest to pay developers to maintain the mess. I have nothing but 1x displays externally and this makes Mojave a non-starter.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Ok. But so what? As a customer that's not my problem, It is. Customers pay for code debt too -- with bugs, slow performance, and slower moving features.
admax88q 8y ago
I really don't believe that subpixel rendering is such an inherently complex problem that there is no clean way to implement it. From the OP it sounds more like its a pain to implement due to the number and design of abstraction layers in the modern macOS graphics stack.

noblethrasher 8y ago

Meh. I see their point. Subpixel AA was about using software to simulate better hardware. But, at the end of the day you really do want the better hardware so that you can use your software budget to simulate an even better generation of hardware. Repeat ad-infinitum, modulo scaling limits. Pretty sure this is what Alan Kay means when he says that people who are serious about software will make their own hardware.

adrianN 8y ago
Maybe we could wait with the step where we don't simulate better hardware until (almost) everybody has upgraded to hardware where that is unnecessary.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Well, now is close to that time. Everybody who cares for graphics already has a Retina Mac or a hi-dpi display.
  - jordache 8y ago
    > Everybody who cares for graphics already has a Retina Mac or a hi-dpi display. Elementary level of product owner analysis I must say. Proactively constraint your product into a niche category.. tsk, tsk.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Proactively constraint your product into a niche category.. tsk, tsk. Yeah, it hasn't been working for Apple this past 2 decades. They're only near the $1 trillion mark, could have been way better...
- jchw 8y ago
  One problem: people have no good reason to. The software folks have a good reason to remove subpixel AA; it's a hack to get better horizontal spatial resolution out of cheap monitors. The users have no reason, however, to buy better, now reasonably-priced, displays that would make subpixel AA unnecessary. By removing subpixel AA at a time when HiDPI monitors are cheap, Apple is probably doing us a service. In a few years, hopefully everyone will be on a DPI that can render nice text. You may think it's unnecessary, but consider complex glyphs like Hanzi and Kanji, which really don't get enough mileage out of subpixel AA really. I know it's pretty irritating to suggest that forcing users to buy new hardware is doing them "a service." But really, I see no conflict of interest here. Apple themselves probably hasn't shipped a 96 DPI display in half a decade, and they don't even sell their own external displays, so they don't stand to gain that much here other than software performance.

coldtea 8y ago

>"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 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    The only HiDPI monitor I'm willing to use is $2000. I consider 60hz to be unacceptable for work.

dilap 8y ago

It's not like tech debt has no cost. This is engineering effort that can be spent in other places; it's lots of other tasks that become easier because this complication doesn't need to be supported. It's reasonable to argue that'll turn into real benefits in the software in other ways.