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Comment by bzzzt | Hacker News Reader

Strange. I've got the complete opposite experience. Most displays work fine. It helps if you stick with models that advertise at least a bit of macOS support (like some Dells or Samsungs). Docker sucks, but there's Orbstack. I don't care for posix, but most of my *nix tools are available in Homebrew. Network is steady and more bulletproof than wireless on Linux. Is your experience based on a recent mac?

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The problem with third party displays on the Mac is the system has some deeply held assumptions that all monitors are as pixel-dense as the ones which Apple ships with their machines. 100% DPI scaling for classic ~100ppi monitors is a poor experience since macOS no longer supports subpixel font rendering, and DPI scales higher than 100% but less than 200% are really just 200% in a trenchcoat because the system renders everything at 200% then uses non-integer resampling to squish it onto the display. That works well enough on the ~220ppi panels that Apple uses but isn't ideal on common 4K displays which are usually around 140-160ppi.

It's not unusable if you at least have one of those medium density 4K monitors, but it feels like a step backwards if you're used to Windows which still (mostly) supports subpixel font rendering for crisp text at 100% scale, and can render natively at 125/150/175% scales.

I use both, Windows and macOS on the same two 4K 27" monitors and don’t see any problems or that Windows is sharper or something like this

Yes, this is irking me too. You really need a high density display to enjoy macOS, it shouldn't be like that. I guess they like to leave the baggage behind.

The worst part is you can't even throw money at the problem without still compromising somewhere - third party 6K/8K monitors which meet Apples PPI standard do exist, but those are currently limited to 60hz, so if you want a fast refresh rate you have to settle for 4K at a lesser PPI.

"Retina" Macs were introduced 12 years ago. So what should Apple do? Expend serious time and engineering effort to fix problems with hardware that's far behind the times? Nobody's calling for the return of MCGA graphics so it's clear there's a cutoff needed somewhere.

I can agreee with accommodating old ~100ppi displays not being worth it past a certain point, but the way that Apple handles high DPI by standardizing on ~220ppi across the board is setting the bar way higher than most people can afford even today. The cheapest large format monitors which meet that standard are at least $1500, when you can get a 4K 160ppi monitor for as little as $200, and 160ppi is absolutely fine on systems like Windows which natively support fractional scaling. I think Wayland originally planned to work like macOS but they are in the process of implementing true fractional scaling akin to Windows.

Another factor is that focusing on pixel density above all else comes at the expense of pixel speed, there are no large monitors which meet Apples 220ppi standard and have a refresh rate of 120hz or better, no matter how much money you're willing to spend, they just don't exist.

On macOS 4K displays are fine. Not the best, but fine.

I think the display resolution market suffers from some opposing directions: people who do productivity work like high resolutions, but since Windows (majority of the market) still seems to struggle to scale UI elements correctly some people prefer lower resolution. Also, gamers associate high resolutions with heavy GPU requirements or lower framerates. And then there are companies that are used to spending the absolute minimum on screens that are barely 1080p.

Either make or subsidize someone to make under $1000 monitors that fit their specs.

While this is definitely an issue, ironically we may get to a point at some time where subpixel rendering becomes less and less useful, for reasons aside from pixel density.

As you know, subpixel rendering only works when you have a very specific display (i.e. LCD) since it takes advantage of, and hence relies on precise characteristics of how the pixels are physically laid out in the display.

This means that subpixel rendering fails to work on displays that have different layouts, the most recent example of this have been newer OLED displays (I think QD-OLED) which has a different pixel arrangement and then you ironically had Windows users complaining that the text looked jagged (although you are able to change the algorithm for subpixel rendering to match the QD-OLED, the unfortunate problem here is that its not really possible for this to work all for applications as it depends on which UI engine you are using, Windows is a giant mess here).

Long story short, I can see why Mac removed sub pixel rendering, its basically a workaround that reflected a time when you had less dense displays which were all LCD and had the same physical layout. Nowadays though high pixel density displays are a lot more common and then you don't need sub pixel rendering at all (and it works with all of the different physical pixel layout arrangements)

I have a modern Dell supported 4K display supporting USB-C to USB-C connection. macOS shows black screen for a few seconds before being able to show anything. Also using the 4K monitor with an actual 4K resolution makes everything very slow, so I just use it with lower resolutions :|. Never saw such issues on even entry level Windows laptops.

Is it macOS or the monitor not being responsive? Also, if it's slow your laptop might be too old to properly support 4K or you might have misconfigured something.

At least Dell supports their hardware: have you tried updating the monitor firmware or submitting a report?

It's the built-in mac display that goes blank along with the external monitor. On my Intel 2019 MBP it was very slow (many seconds), on this new M3 it's much shorter but still more than a decent Windows laptop which is almost instant.

> Network is steady and more bulletproof than wireless on Linux.

I gotta disagree hard here. Macs have by far the most obnoxious and temperamental WiFi stack I've ever experienced. Constant disconnects, have to turn it off and on to get it to bother looking for APs again. All of them constantly trigger bad experience scores in UniFi.

Absolutely subpar compared to any of my Linux devices, even the raspberry pi jammed inside a metal box.

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