Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilikepi | Hacker News Reader

We have an old iMac running 10.11. I use an old version of Numbers on it, and it regularly prompts me to say there is a new version of Numbers available. If I search for Numbers in the App Store, it says it requires 10.13 or higher. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

View on HN

Lucky guy, 10.11 is the last to decently display PDFs. I am still on 10.11 only because of that (I am an academic, reading and writing papers).

I'm unaware, what is the issue with later versions?

Likewise. On 10.14 here - what are the issues?

I suspect GP was referring to anti-aliasing for low-res displays, but I’m not sure. I’ve certainly heard that complaint about Preview specifically.

https://www.howtogeek.com/358596/how-to-fix-blurry-fonts-on-...

The issue is that subpixel antialiasing is removed, which affects both retina displays and, more heavily, the non-retina display.

In 10.12, Apple reimplemented its PDF renderer. With that, the subpixel antialiasing was removed. This affects all apps that use it (Preview, Safari, Quicklook, etc.).

In 10.14, Apple turned of subpixel antialiasing in the rest of the operating system (dialogs, buttons, etc.). However, this can be re-enabled by running:

  defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

In 10.15 and 11.0, subpixel antialiasing is completely gone, and can't be re-enabled.

And there isn't a way to use the 10.11's PDF renderer in 10.12 onwards. However, at least a little bit of luck (until 10.13, maybe 10.14): with above setting you find subpixel antialiasing in some a third party PDF apps that were compiled using the 10.11 frameworks, like PDFpen 9 or PDF Expert 2.4.15.

I wonder if you tried to download it though if it would give you the latest version for your os.

If I click "Update", I get a spinner in the upper left of the App Store window, but nothing appears to happen otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com