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> Funnily enough, Apple disagreed withtthis author and changed the way their subpixel algorithm worked years ago, so the author's preference clearly wasn't what

> Funnily enough, Apple disagreed withtthis author and changed the way their subpixel algorithm worked years ago, so the author's preference clearly wasn't what the majority were expecting. Apple only changed it due to the prevalence of “retina” displays. When the pixel density of your screen is high enough, sub-pixel rendering stops making sense (your normal pixels are already small enough). You can just apply normal anti-aliasing and get the same result. This also has the advantage to remove all the super special font rendering code from your code base, no need to percolate font data through your entire rendering pipeline, just so you can do sub-pixel rendering in your final compositing and scaling step. Just push normal pixels, and treat everything the same. All of this doesn’t change the fact there might be situations where sub-pixel rendering still makes sense. It’s just the OS X no longer supports it.

nerdponx 5y ago
> All of this doesn’t change the fact there might be situations where sub-pixel rendering still makes sense. It’s just the OS X no longer supports it. Is that why fonts all look bad when I plug an external monitor into my Mac?
- sgerenser 5y ago
  If that external monitor is less than ~180ppi, like most monitors, then yes.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Yup, I have 1080p monitor (SyncMaster BX2431) and it looks like shit when connected to my MBA. It kinda clean up the blurriness if I increased the UI scaling. So it look less shit but it still looks shit.
lloeki 5y ago
> When the pixel density of your screen is high enough, sub-pixel rendering stops making sense I wonder if the prevalence of Retina displays across the Apple product line coupled with the prevalence of rotatable displays from iOS devices made them go towards something consistent across the board: because 90deg rotations really doesn't play well with subpixel rendering, doubled down by having to handle four different orientations with a single font and have it display consistently on a single device, it makes sense to go with simplicity and walk the antialiasing route, and since you have Retina basically everywhere, well, just flick the switch everywhere as well. I seem to recall (years ago, so memory may fail me) some blog post explaining how dropping subpixel rendering also allowed for some major cleanup in the Cocoa/CoreSomething rendering code.

nerdponx 5y ago

> All of this doesn’t change the fact there might be situations where sub-pixel rendering still makes sense. It’s just the OS X no longer supports it. Is that why fonts all look bad when I plug an external monitor into my Mac?

sgerenser 5y ago
If that external monitor is less than ~180ppi, like most monitors, then yes.
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
Yup, I have 1080p monitor (SyncMaster BX2431) and it looks like shit when connected to my MBA. It kinda clean up the blurriness if I increased the UI scaling. So it look less shit but it still looks shit.

lloeki 5y ago

> When the pixel density of your screen is high enough, sub-pixel rendering stops making sense I wonder if the prevalence of Retina displays across the Apple product line coupled with the prevalence of rotatable displays from iOS devices made them go towards something consistent across the board: because 90deg rotations really doesn't play well with subpixel rendering, doubled down by having to handle four different orientations with a single font and have it display consistently on a single device, it makes sense to go with simplicity and walk the antialiasing route, and since you have Retina basically everywhere, well, just flick the switch everywhere as well. I seem to recall (years ago, so memory may fail me) some blog post explaining how dropping subpixel rendering also allowed for some major cleanup in the Cocoa/CoreSomething rendering code.