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Comment by quipper | Hacker News Reader

Signed up for HN (again) just to vent about this terrible news. This is a change that will be hard for me to live with, and I will probably end up selling all my Apple gear.

This is the same change/downgrade that occurs if you go to System Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available.

I did this and the fonts on my 5K iMac display looked horrible. Just atrocious. My plan is to not upgrade to Mojave, and then within a year or so sell all my Apple gear and move back to Linux.

I don't understand Apple's thinking, but I believe a lot of people will do the same.

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> but I believe a lot of people will do the same

No they won’t. People don’t notice this stuff. I pointed out the weird font smoothing issue in Finder to my best mate – a professional photographer – and even then she barely had any idea what I was on about.

This doesn't affect retina devices so your 5k iMac will look the same it does now...

It does affect Retina devices. That's the whole point. I made the same change that Apple is going to make and the fonts looked far worse (almost unreadable). You can observe the same if you have an Apple device by going to: System Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available.

Apple is removing sub-pixel anti-aliasing for all devices, not just non-Retina ones.

Try the beta before venting. It’s not the same thing.

Downloading the beta now, but have seen screenshots of both (here and elsewhere).

I've been on the beta for a couple days (using a 2016 12" MacBook) and I haven't noticed anything. There's a visible difference when I disable LCD font smoothing in settings, but not much changes besides fonts appearing somewhat thinner.

I installed Mojave beta on my MacBook Pro. It is the same thing. The fonts look identical to toggling off the setting "Use LCD font smoothing when available" in High Sierra. And by the same thing, I mean they look very bad in Mojave.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparis...

Thanks. The fonts are noticeably blurrier/less defined in the Mojave capture.

Come on, no they're not. Those screenshots are virtually identical.

Maybe this person's eyesight is better or worse than yours, or perhaps just different. You might be surprised what some people are bothered by, or trained to spot, that others aren't...

Here's a possibly better comparison, because it annoyed me that the windows weren't aligned: http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparis...

Thanks for the improved comparison.

Zoomed in on my 10" iPad Pro the main thing I notice is kerning differences.

Thanks, that's much better. I think it shows that Mojave renders the fonts clearly better: check out for instance 'll' in 'ullamco'. Generally, almost identical pictures though.

No it’s not the same as disabling lcd font smoothing. Try the public beta if you don’t believe it.

Mojave beta installed, and the fonts look equally atrocious. They are blurry, indistinct...and just bad. One of the reasons I bought a 5K iMac (three of them, actually) was to have great fonts. I am beyond angry that I will now have to sell them.

Can you post some screenshots? I find hard to believe that fonts on a retina display can be blurry and indistinct, when the antialiasing text weight is almost the same.

Screenshots available below. This is the only screenshot I took beforehand, so sorry it has some cursing in it:

http://www.technologyasnature.com/screenshot-comparison

Looks like Safari ignores the "LCD font smoothing" setting (I assume that was a webpage in Safari). How does the normal UI looks like?

Those screenshots were both in Waterfox. I also tried in Safari (didn't take any shots, though) and the fonts looked identically bad in that browser as well.

The normal UI's fonts are also worse -- about the same as the browser screenshots. Fonts are indistinct and blurry, and very light. All the result of greyscale aliasing only, I presume.

Either Apple disable "LCD font smoothing" for retina displays, or there is a bug somewhere. Because in Mojave on a non retina screen "LCD font smoothing" has got the same weight as before. And on your screen it clearly doesn't.

I hope it is a bug. If the weight were the same, it'd at least perhaps be tolerable on a Retina screen. I know the technical reasons, but I just don't understand why Apple can't leave it alone for desktop systems.

They don't remove font smoothing. They switch it from subpixel level to grayscale only. Technically subpixel should produce better results then grayscale. But IMO the subpixel antialiasing in macos looks horrible. So you might not even see the difference as it looks exactly as horrible as before.

I'd be more outraged if Windows removed cleartype, because their subpixel font antialising actually works and is configurable.

Greyscale anti-aliasing is far inferior to sub-pixel. The fonts look much worse.

BTW, I did install Mojave beta and the fonts look just terrible even on a Retina display. Shockingly bad. I can't believe Apple is doing this. I just bought a new 5K iMac a few months ago. I wish it were still in the return period...but in other news, I am now selling all of my Apple equipment as it's pointless to have it. Without the great fonts I purchased it for, it's so much junk to me.

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