Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

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I love this comment, I think you're completely right.

What I love most about this comment is how it caused me to reflect on what I use daily and get some amount of joy from.

When it comes to Apple products in particular I use an Apple Studio display at home, I use it for 10hours per day, every day, and honestly I have no complaints, it's probably one of the best bits of technology I use daily.

However, it's completely unsexy and has (at least on paper) extremely stiff competition. Not only that it was maligned by the tech media upon release.

Yet, it just subtlely benefits my life because the speakers are excellent, the webcam is servicable (the novelty of the fact it tracks you never truly wears off) and the size/pixel density is great.

It's weird that I'm waxing poetic like this about such a boring device, but that's kinda my point, your comment made me reflect about all the little tech around me that I use every day that just sort of shifted into the background. Quietly doing its job excellently.

Interesting. I have a Studio Display and it just feels like a huge compromise.

There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine, which isn't that much cheaper. My last monitor was a 27" LG QD-OLED 144Hz 4K display. I LOVED that display, but text wasn't sharp because of the Retina resolution problem.

I also have a semi-professional webcam setup and external speakers, so those being built-in does nothing for me.

I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?

macOS does support more than one “virtual” resolution, which I’d consider variable scaling. It’s admittedly less granular than Windows, but it works well enough for me. I have a 27” Acer Predator 4k120 display on my shop Mac, with the virtual resolution set to 2560x1440.

There’s only two scaling factors macOS can display at: 1x or 2x.

Anything in-between is rendering at a larger resolution and scaling it back down for the display, resulting in a non-pixel-perfect image.

Your shop Mac is rendering the UI at 5120 × 2880, then squishing that down for the Acer display. Which, apart from being more graphically demanding, ends up blurry and aliased.

What Windows does is actually just changing the pixel dimensions of the UI elements (in steps of 10% I think?), which Apple has never done.

> I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?

I’ve tried to adopt MacBooks twice over the last three years and both times this has been the dealbreaker for me. I was flabbergasted that MacOS didn’t have better support for it.

BetterDisplay lets you set fractional resolutions for any displays on Mac. While this seems like a compromise, it lets you scale the ui to you preferred size independently of the native resolution. I use my 5k display at 85% which is a bit easier on my eyes than native 100%.

I've tried a few apps including better display to find a better resolution for my portable 16 inch monitor. It does allow you to set the resolution you want, but it's a bit blurry.

No way to really fix it, it's just another Mac shortcoming. Using resolution to scale the UI is not a compromise, it's a mediocre workaround.

I'd call that a shortcoming of all hardware that isn't retina resolution, but I know how that sounds to anyone who isn't bought into the ecosystem.

To be clear, I criticize the hell out of the company on things that I think are truly bad. Their app store policies are a disaster. I get that gamers want framerates over resolution. I'm not a gamer and want the other thing.

It's a shortcoming of the software. Apple could claim it's a third-party issue if they didn't support arbitrary external monitors, but they do. As such it's entirely reasonable to expect a fallback solution for third-party displays that Just Works.

For my money, Windows is a terrible operating system but it embarrasses Mac and Linux thoroughly in this regard.

mac users love to repeat this but it's just nonsense. if you can plug another non-mac computer into the same display and get crystal clear, correctly scaled UI then the screen isn't the problem, the computer is.

Oh my goodness. This might be what I was looking for all along. I'm going to try getting that LG panel again and giving this a shot. Thank you!

There are no longer just two 5k 27" displays. Per a thread on macrumors[1], the display panels that make up these displays are now available from the factories, so some chinese manufacturers have begun making monitors at much lower prices ($400, if you can get an RV100).

[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-complete-list-of-27...

Dells 6k is quite alright at reasonable price. Has some quirks though

I love it. It is exactly the right size to have two windows side by side. 27“ used to work but nowadays half a 27 is no longer enough for many web applications

Agree, i think 32 inch is perfect size. However what bugs me is that waking up from sleep it often only wakes up left side, and the right is all green. i have to restart the monitor. I wish it was glossy too, but i can live with the matte.

Are you referring to the U3224KB? It's $2500, which seems a bit steep.

2400 in some places, and i bought it in thailand closer to 2000. It's comparable to ASD27 either way. Thus it's still much cheaper than Pro Display.

> There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine

There’s also the Samsung S9 now.

The XDR Pro Display is the Mac monitor without technical compromise.

Incredible for coding.

32" is too big for me.

Every few years I buy Dell QHD displays 24’’ second hands on local ads websites, I have 4 of them (not all installed at the same place), for an average of ~150€ per display. They are definitely not sexy but work perfectly as monitors and hubs.

Why do you replace them every few years?

I do not replace them, I buy additional ones

I feel the same way about the utility of my AirPods. It is simple, boring, works every time I need it to, without any fuss or connection issues or pesky cables.

Although, I have a strict policy of not sharing my AirPods, or let it connect to anything other than my iPhone to make sure I don’t get into the mess of “figure out which device it auto connects to” etc.

What it's worth, I currently use my AirPods on:

- my personal iPhone

- my work iPhone

- my personal MacBook

- my work MacBook

And not once have I ever had to worry about it being connected to the wrong device, it seems to just keep track of all the devices around and everything "just works"

In mind these are AirPod pro 2s

I just have a bog standard cheapest 4K display, and I have more or less the same experience.

Yeah, I agree. I rolled my eyes when I bought the Studio Display because of the price (I got the VESA option so I also had to factor in $200 for an Ergotron LX just so I could use it the way I’d want) and I’m annoyed by its lack of power button, its garbage web camera, and the really that it has no better picture quality than the v2 LG UltraFine 5K it was replacing, despite costing $300 more, but if it broke tomorrow I’d buy another one without a second thought (also the VESA option — also just say no to the Nano Texture option). In fact, I might even get a second one this year because I have 3 Macs (2 M-series laptops and a 2020 5K iMac) and it would be nice to have one dedicated to the laptops instead of having to swap the cable for the TB4 dock.

Until/unless Apple does fractional scaling in a way that doesn’t really need pixel doubling to work, I will insist on a 5K display for a 27” monitor and the ASD really is the best game in town.

So what's the benefit of the ASD if it has no better picture quality than the LG?

Slightly brighter, much better build quality, much better audio and much better camera.

But at the same time, I see the LG is down to $999 (I suspect it’ll be discontinued soon if it isn’t already) and it’s debatable that the studio display is $600 better. It’s definitely $300 better though.

That said, it is increasingly more difficult to buy the LG. So it’s become less of a choice.

It's always crazy reading those kinda comments. He keeps maligning the product that he had to pay a premium for, comparing it to equivalent products that are cheaper and perform the same, yet he's still going to make his next purchase another, by his own admission, overpriced Apple product.

It's mind blowing, I don't wanna reach for the low-hanging quips here but it really is like an Apple iCult type of vibe

Why “he”?

My friend sold boats for over 10 years. He said women love going on boats, but he never saw a woman buy a boat in his life.

Women love apple products, but if you look at who is splurging on multiple high end apple computers with multiple monitors it's gotta be 95% male.

But I was noticing that the username was “filmgirl”.

Because "he" is grammatically correct when the gender is unknown.

Well The Times They Are A-Changin'

But I was noticing that the username was “filmgirl”.

Fair enough!

Is it really? Also when the username contains „girl“ it may give a hint.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languag....

singular they is preferred on Reddit but not here, learned hard way

You forget Apple is selling trust as well as technology. I have far more trust in an Apple product than an LG one.

Reading the comment, the impression I got was that while the image quality is similar between LG 5K & ASD, overall ASD is still worth the small premium.

The 27" 5K Studio Display is in a weird category, where they actually have zero competitors. On paper, there's the LG Ultrafine, but I have yet to see one available for purchase in EU (I've seen "in stock", but not actually available), not to even mention seeing one in person. So basically you don't really have a choice.

The Apple Studio Display looks nicer. I would prefer that items that I own in my apartment look nice. Aluminum looks and feels nicer than plastic. Yes, I will pay a premium for that.

Here is the model here:

- Apple's software (particularly macOS) is extremely high quality. Best game in town.

- Their hardware is also high quality, but it is often overpriced.

- You must use their hardware to get the best experience using their software.

- Therefore, people might end up buying, say, the Apple XR display or AirPods Max even though they are overpriced compared to other monitors/headphones, because it gives you a better experience using macOS.

I am a pretty huge Apple fan but I think this is pretty unfortunate, not gonna lie -- it kills me a little that macOS doesn't look sharp on my 4K monitor. But it isn't an iCult, it's just that the cheaper thing doesn't work as well with macOS.

I don't have an ASD, but back in 2020 I bought the LG UltraFine 5K from Apple's website together with a laptop and the LG monitor's colors all had a yellowish hue to them. Some Internet searches and possibly their support forums claimed that this is normal, it's just how the monitor works, or something like that (yes I did try various color temperature and config settings - all yellow).

Luckily this "wasn't my first monitor", so I quickly returned it and went back to Dell that's always been OK enough so I don't ever have to pay attention to which monitor or display setting I'm using.

You can't drive two LG 5k screens with a single cable, due to it lacking DSC support.

Why no nano-texture?

It causes fringing around letters and stops things looking as sharp, which sort of defeats the point of having a 5k display for a lot of people.

I guess most people just like their UI elements much smaller than me, I work all day on a 42” 4k display running 1080p@2x 120hz and I wouldn’t want to shrink the UI elements any further. I sit ~4 feet from the display.

My husband uses an iMac (27” 5k display running @2x) and I struggle to do anything at that resolution.

Why say no to the the nano texture? Looking at a studio display these days and trying to understand the option

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