4 ms·

After spending about six years with a Macbook with a retina display, going to even 1080p feels like a step back.

notacoward 6y ago
I'm on a three-year-old MBP right now. Next to me is my new IdeaPad Slim 7. Other than Slim's screen being a bit smaller, I hardly notice a difference.
mroche 6y ago
It's a tad ironic (to me) because unless you max out the scaling of the display, none of the MacBook displays have an effective resolution >= 1920x1080. Apple has been defaulting to a fractional scaling the past few years rather than true Retina which is 200% scaling, but even then it falls short[0]. However, 200% scaling is crisp and I can appreciate it. I just don't like losing all that real estate. And the fractional options on MacBooks aren't bad, but I can see text fuzzing out when it's not on the real Retina resolution. So when I'm running without an external display I do bite the bullet and deal with the lower resolution because otherwise I can feel my eyes straining. [0] Model | Physical | Max | Default | Retina 16" | 3072x1920 | 2048x1280 | 1792x1120 | 1536x960 15" | 2880x1800 | 1920x1200 | 1680x1050 | 1440x900 13" | 2560x1600 | 1680x1050 | 1440x900 | 1280x800
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I use a '15 MBP with Windows for work and usually use it at 125-150%. Almost nothing looks blurry. I can't imagine it being worse on macOS. At home I use a 4k 15" XPS with Linux on 1,7x scaling and nothing looks bad either. I assume app support is there for the former case and it's not for the latter, so I can pretty well recommend 4k screens at that size.
  - chrismorgan 6y ago
    I’ve heard that macOS fractional scaling seriously is rendering at one size, and then upscaling or downscaling it to the target size. I’m not certain this is true because I haven’t confirmed it myself and it seems such an obviously stupid idea (and though it’s certainly easier, no one else does it that way because it’s such a terrible idea), but I’ve heard people saying this at least three times (twice on the internet, once in real life), about text not being crisp at fractional scaling. I dunno.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      It is always rendering at integer scale and always downscaling to target size (upscaling would result in blurriness; upscaled apps are only those that support only @1X scale). Just take a screenshot of your desktop and check it's resolution, then compare to physical display resolution. Apple uses output scaler of the final, composited image. It's not stupid; it is a solution that you can implement without support at application side and is relatively simple. Going Android way means, that all apps have to support random scales, which means they have to ship with assets for that.
      - chrismorgan 6y ago
        Both upscaling and downscaling result in blurriness, though upscaling will generally yield slightly worse results. But downscaling is still going to yield a result drastically inferior to rendering at the correct size. It totally butchers pixel-perfect lines, for example. It’s the sort of hack that would be awful on low-resolution displays, and only becomes even vaguely tolerable on high-resolution displays because it’s still somewhat better than a low-resolution display for a lot of what people are using their computers for, even if for others it renders it legitimately unusable. If this really is true, I remain utterly baffled, and I maintain my position that it is an obviously stupid idea. Doing it that way just makes no sense to me. The visual result is way worse, it’s more resource-demanding and thus slows things down a little, and it doesn’t really simplify anything for app developers anyway—the only difference is that you have an integer scaling factor rather than a float scaling factor; but all code is still having to perform scaling mappings, and using floats would change roughly nothing (though the changes required in your APIs may need to propagate through a few levels, and GUI libraries will have to decide how to handle subpixel alignment). Windows and Android have both done it properly, so that supporting fractional scaling is no burden whatsoever for developers. You talk of having to ship assets for arbitrary scales, but that’s not a reasonable argument: GUI libraries should always choose the most suitable version of a resource, and scale it to the desired size themselves if it doesn’t match exactly. The result of taking the proper approach is that users of fractional scaling may get icons being rendered poorly, but images, text, vector graphics, &c. will be rendered precisely and crisply. Meanwhile, this other behaviour people are saying Apple is doing is just guaranteeing that everything is rendered poorly. Surely they’re not actually doing this? Is it perhaps a case of them having erred in making Retina support integral scaling only, but they’ve since made a better version that supports fractional scaling that each app can opt into, but they just haven’t insisted on everyone fixing their stuff yet? (And remember, Apple’s in an excellent position to do such insisting—they do it regularly.) —But as you say, screenshots are scaled at the next integer, which would suggest that yeah, they’re actually doing this mangling system-wide, and there’s no per-app recourse. Thanks for that explanation. I just find it hard to believe that Apple would truly butcher things this badly. Even if they’ve been known to do weird things a bit like this before, like killing off their text subpixel rendering with no stated justification, to the clear detriment of low-DPI users (and it may still be worthwhile even for high-DPI users). I can’t check any of this because I don’t use a Mac. There may even not be a macOS device within a kilometre or two of me.
nobleach 6y ago
I have both a 15" MacBook Pro (2018 model) and a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 open in front of me right now. I have 20/20 vision and it really is not striking me as that much better. I spend quite a bit of my day in a terminal and the remainder looking at the web, so font rendering definitely matters. Even with Linux's abysmal font-rendering, the mac really doesn't feel like it has the edge.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  > Linux's abysmal font-rendering Wait, what? It's somewhere in the middle between Windows (too pixel-fitted) and macOS (too blurry). FreeType, slight hinting, LCD filtering on is the best font rendering that I know.
  - nobleach 6y ago
    And it jumps around to which version it's going to use. Which means that my terminal can suddenly look gorgeous, and Slack can look like hot garbage!
- driverdan 6y ago
  Your vision may be worse than you think. It's easy to distinguish between those resolutions, especially when looking at smaller text.
  - nobleach 6y ago
    Hmmm, as an engineer, I have my vision checked every year. While a difference is discernible, it's not enough that I'd "miss it" if I didn't have a retina display. (I just ordered a Dell XPS 15 this weekend, I purposely left if at FHD as I didn't see the need for 4K on a laptop)
- pedrocr 6y ago
  20/20 vision is only average for the population when you get to 60. So most people here will see significantly better than that. At 20/20 1080p is probably enough. Most people will enjoy a 1440p screen and 2160p will have marginal gains but it may be helpful to be able to use 2x scaling instead of needing fractional steps. But that depends on how you drive it.

I'm on a three-year-old MBP right now. Next to me is my new IdeaPad Slim 7. Other than Slim's screen being a bit smaller, I hardly notice a difference.

mroche 6y ago

It's a tad ironic (to me) because unless you max out the scaling of the display, none of the MacBook displays have an effective resolution >= 1920x1080. Apple has been defaulting to a fractional scaling the past few years rather than true Retina which is 200% scaling, but even then it falls short[0]. However, 200% scaling is crisp and I can appreciate it. I just don't like losing all that real estate. And the fractional options on MacBooks aren't bad, but I can see text fuzzing out when it's not on the real Retina resolution. So when I'm running without an external display I do bite the bullet and deal with the lower resolution because otherwise I can feel my eyes straining. [0] Model | Physical | Max | Default | Retina 16" | 3072x1920 | 2048x1280 | 1792x1120 | 1536x960 15" | 2880x1800 | 1920x1200 | 1680x1050 | 1440x900 13" | 2560x1600 | 1680x1050 | 1440x900 | 1280x800

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
solarkraft 6y ago
I use a '15 MBP with Windows for work and usually use it at 125-150%. Almost nothing looks blurry. I can't imagine it being worse on macOS. At home I use a 4k 15" XPS with Linux on 1,7x scaling and nothing looks bad either. I assume app support is there for the former case and it's not for the latter, so I can pretty well recommend 4k screens at that size.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  I’ve heard that macOS fractional scaling seriously is rendering at one size, and then upscaling or downscaling it to the target size. I’m not certain this is true because I haven’t confirmed it myself and it seems such an obviously stupid idea (and though it’s certainly easier, no one else does it that way because it’s such a terrible idea), but I’ve heard people saying this at least three times (twice on the internet, once in real life), about text not being crisp at fractional scaling. I dunno.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    It is always rendering at integer scale and always downscaling to target size (upscaling would result in blurriness; upscaled apps are only those that support only @1X scale). Just take a screenshot of your desktop and check it's resolution, then compare to physical display resolution. Apple uses output scaler of the final, composited image. It's not stupid; it is a solution that you can implement without support at application side and is relatively simple. Going Android way means, that all apps have to support random scales, which means they have to ship with assets for that.
    - chrismorgan 6y ago
      Both upscaling and downscaling result in blurriness, though upscaling will generally yield slightly worse results. But downscaling is still going to yield a result drastically inferior to rendering at the correct size. It totally butchers pixel-perfect lines, for example. It’s the sort of hack that would be awful on low-resolution displays, and only becomes even vaguely tolerable on high-resolution displays because it’s still somewhat better than a low-resolution display for a lot of what people are using their computers for, even if for others it renders it legitimately unusable. If this really is true, I remain utterly baffled, and I maintain my position that it is an obviously stupid idea. Doing it that way just makes no sense to me. The visual result is way worse, it’s more resource-demanding and thus slows things down a little, and it doesn’t really simplify anything for app developers anyway—the only difference is that you have an integer scaling factor rather than a float scaling factor; but all code is still having to perform scaling mappings, and using floats would change roughly nothing (though the changes required in your APIs may need to propagate through a few levels, and GUI libraries will have to decide how to handle subpixel alignment). Windows and Android have both done it properly, so that supporting fractional scaling is no burden whatsoever for developers. You talk of having to ship assets for arbitrary scales, but that’s not a reasonable argument: GUI libraries should always choose the most suitable version of a resource, and scale it to the desired size themselves if it doesn’t match exactly. The result of taking the proper approach is that users of fractional scaling may get icons being rendered poorly, but images, text, vector graphics, &c. will be rendered precisely and crisply. Meanwhile, this other behaviour people are saying Apple is doing is just guaranteeing that everything is rendered poorly. Surely they’re not actually doing this? Is it perhaps a case of them having erred in making Retina support integral scaling only, but they’ve since made a better version that supports fractional scaling that each app can opt into, but they just haven’t insisted on everyone fixing their stuff yet? (And remember, Apple’s in an excellent position to do such insisting—they do it regularly.) —But as you say, screenshots are scaled at the next integer, which would suggest that yeah, they’re actually doing this mangling system-wide, and there’s no per-app recourse. Thanks for that explanation. I just find it hard to believe that Apple would truly butcher things this badly. Even if they’ve been known to do weird things a bit like this before, like killing off their text subpixel rendering with no stated justification, to the clear detriment of low-DPI users (and it may still be worthwhile even for high-DPI users). I can’t check any of this because I don’t use a Mac. There may even not be a macOS device within a kilometre or two of me.

nobleach 6y ago

I have both a 15" MacBook Pro (2018 model) and a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 open in front of me right now. I have 20/20 vision and it really is not striking me as that much better. I spend quite a bit of my day in a terminal and the remainder looking at the web, so font rendering definitely matters. Even with Linux's abysmal font-rendering, the mac really doesn't feel like it has the edge.

ahartmetz 6y ago
> Linux's abysmal font-rendering Wait, what? It's somewhere in the middle between Windows (too pixel-fitted) and macOS (too blurry). FreeType, slight hinting, LCD filtering on is the best font rendering that I know.
- nobleach 6y ago
  And it jumps around to which version it's going to use. Which means that my terminal can suddenly look gorgeous, and Slack can look like hot garbage!
driverdan 6y ago
Your vision may be worse than you think. It's easy to distinguish between those resolutions, especially when looking at smaller text.
- nobleach 6y ago
  Hmmm, as an engineer, I have my vision checked every year. While a difference is discernible, it's not enough that I'd "miss it" if I didn't have a retina display. (I just ordered a Dell XPS 15 this weekend, I purposely left if at FHD as I didn't see the need for 4K on a laptop)
pedrocr 6y ago
20/20 vision is only average for the population when you get to 60. So most people here will see significantly better than that. At 20/20 1080p is probably enough. Most people will enjoy a 1440p screen and 2160p will have marginal gains but it may be helpful to be able to use 2x scaling instead of needing fractional steps. But that depends on how you drive it.