1. LCD panel grade - panels are graded when they’re manufactured and Apple buys the ‘A’ quality panels while others including manufacturers tend to use a mix of different graded panels or buy the cheaper ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade panels which have uniformity issues and other perceptible defects. Back in the day Dell ultrasharps were famous for the ‘panel lottery’ where you weren’t sure what quality you’d get.
2. Other aspects of panels - There’s a lot of little things that go into making them that can affect quality including polarizers, backlight guides, anti glare, how they’re bonded, etc. Apple does a lot of investment in display tech (they did the first bonded lcds afaik which meant the pixels seemed like they were on top of the glass vs behind) and they doesn't skimp on quality parts.
3. Text rendering - At the software layer I believe Apple renders text a bit differently than Windows, and as of a few years ago killed text antialiasing, tho I’m not up to date on whether that results in qualitative difference vs Windows.
4. Target PPI - All Apple devices are made at target ppis - Mac around 227, iPad 264, iPhone 326 (lcd) - 480 (oled) - all of which correspond to a near equivalent size to our eyes when factoring in target distance from eyes for different form factors (e.g. phones closer, tablet middle, computer farther). Windows & Android devices are all over the place on this, offering tons of different scale factors that may affect.
5. Color correction - supporting ~100% P3 gamut colors on all modern displays along with the software to support it
6. Whole stack software optimization - when you control hw & sw, you can eke out a bit more qualitative improvement. For instance, knowing the panels are of a certain PPI and quality of color repro means you can pick UI colors (various greys etc) with much higher confidence, can create your own custom fonts that look great on them, etc, versus a sort of 'web safe colors' lowest common denominator equivalent you're stuck with on platforms like Win/Android with a lot of variance in device quality.
Basically: you get the best visuals when you control the whole stack and invest in premium everything.
Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal. That could explain a lot of it. Not to mention the factors you reference, aka antialiasing, smoothing, font rendering, and probably lots more.
> Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal.
That's correct. But here i am not comparing the quality ofthe UI element. I am don't particularly like MACOS design language and prefer windows 11 and ubuntu gnome visual esthetics.
In my experience Apple stuff looks great and fails spectacularly.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-16-m1-scree...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/please-help-scratched-s...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-m1-13-inch-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/comments/s4i03g/macbook_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/sns4j4/i_scratc...
There's plenty of laptops with better and different screens, including several OLED ones that run at smoother refresh and produce much more vibrant and less eye painful colors. The fact that you haven't seen them isn't a testament of Apple skill, it's just a reflection of you not walking into anything that's not an Apple store.
I have a 2012 unibody MBP with a matte screen (the last model before the retina line). That thing looks so much better than my 2021 HP EliteBook it's not even funny. Sure, the HP has higher resolution (1920x1080 vs 1680x1050), but the viewing angles are poor (it's a 14" panel, but there is no single position from which you can see it completely OK, the colors always change when you move the slightest). The blacks are a darkish grey. The reds are actually orange. This wasn't a cheap pc, either. It also has the 8 bit panel. Some SKUs only have dim, 6 bit ones. It cost almost as much as a 14" M1 when my company bought it (it's a work laptop, I would never have bought this crap with my own cash). The only other metric except from resolution by which it beats that 11 yo macbook is that it's very bright, to the point of being actually usable outside if the sun doesn't shine directly on it.
There are many PCs with glossy coating. We also have a different model of elitebooks at work that have those (x360 line). That's an atrocious shitshow. Except for a completely dark room, you'll always see some random reflection instead of the actual screen content. My 2013 retina MBP does better outside than these poor excuses for a panel do inside.
There are PCs that somehow do manage to look decent. A friend's Dell XPS comes to mind, though it doesn't look as good as an MBP. But these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.