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Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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!

> 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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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

Incredible for coding.

32" is too big for me.

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.

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