Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how font hinting would solve this problem. The resolution of the Apple Watch is 326ppi, so the pixel grid doesn't matter so much.

Seems like the different San Francisco variants were designed to solve problems due to the physical dimensions of the letterforms at small sizes, not anything to do with a pixel grid.

View on HN

The DPI may be high, yes, but the number of actual pixels is still quite low. Looking it up, I see that the smaller watch has a 272x340 display and the larger has a 312x390. That's either 92k or 122k pixels to work with -- about 1/3 VGA -- over the entire display. At those scales, hinting is absolutely relevant unless perhaps you're only displaying a few relatively large words.

It's less than an inch across, and viewed typically at arm's length. Yes, you're only displaying a few relatively large words. They're not trying to display 80 column text on a watchface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com