The high-dpi support really is a big deal. No other OS (Windows or Linux) comes close to handling it as seamlessly. I run Gnome in Ubuntu and have got it to a "serviceable" state by being able to set pixel density on a per-app basis by editing launcher files (depending on which display it's running on), but that's not something an average user would be able to figure out (or should have to).
Apple has done a great job with their window manager and support for varying DPI between displays. It's just a shame their OS is otherwise such a walled garden, and their hardware is a bad joke ($6k for an 8 core desktop with a years old GPU and no storage, come on.) It really boiled down to a "pick your poison" scenario for me and I sided with the OS (and hardware) that lets me tinker to my heart's content.
Mac text rendering is blurrier than Windows text rendering (and I have learned of no way of changing that despite my having used a Mac for 10 years).
Worse, if for some reason you want to change the size of the elements on the display, the only way I know how to do that on a Mac (namely, to use System Preferences :: Displays to change the "resolution" to some value other than "default for display") makes the text much blurrier. I don't have a Retina display on my Mac, but someone who does claims that even on Retina, he prefers Windows because of the blurriness of the Mac
In contrast, if you can be somewhat picky about which apps you use, text on Windows is just as sharp no matter how big or small you configure the elements on the screen relative to the default size.
(In most Mac apps, it is easy to adjust the size of the text in the main pane, but all the other text and all the other non-textual elements, e.g., icons, stay at the default size.)
>Apple has done a great job with their window manager and support for varying DPI between displays.
That might be true, but the Mac does a poor job accommodating sub-par or non-standard human visual systems (and I would guess that people who cannot easily control how far their eyes are from the screen -- e.g., people living in a small van -- would find a Mac frustrating as well relative to Windows).
Mac font rendering is also more accurate to the font than Windows. Since MacOS doesn’t hammer glyphs to the pixel grid, font scaling is far more consistent. Windows’ font rendering is part of the reason why their HiDPI support is so janky.
I always thought that Microsoft's commitment to keeping old binaries running on new versions of Windows is the reason their HiDPI support is suboptimal and that if you use only apps that use the latest text-rendering API, the experience is great.
How would making the pixel grid finer exacerbate the problems with a strategy of hammering glyphs to the pixel grid?
Could you tell me a bit more about your experience of Linux with a high res display? Are you using the built-in screen of a laptop? Would you mind sharing the model, or do you have any recommendations/advice regarding laptops with high resolution displays that can work well with Linux? Basically, is there any hope of emulating the experience of a macbook Retina screen under modern Linux? Do you know if there are any groups / momentum in the linux development community working on this?
This was the game-changer for me. When I first saw 2012 MBP Retina I was sold. Build quality is overall so much better than its class, although Thinkpads are solid stuff as well (good enough for the ISS, anyway). The rest of your comment I align with also.
> The high-dpi support really is a big deal. I honestly don't understand this. I owned a Retina MacBook Pro (2015) for a while and my current (Lenovo) laptop has a 4k screen, but I don't think I've ever actually cared about the increased pixel density. The only thing it's ever done for me is increase heat production, decrease battery life, and decrease compatibility (there's Mac software that isn't Retina compatible too, and it looks at least as bad as on Windows).
I use 24 inch monitors at 1080p all day and I can see the pixels if I look, but images still look plenty good and text is super readable. I switch between this pixel density and my Pixel 3 XL and while I can definitely notice the difference in density if I look, my productivity isn't affected whatsoever by having a less dense screen. Is everyone else putting their face 2 inches from the screen every 5 minutes just for the sense of satisfaction they get from not seeing the pixels?
> Apple has done a great job with their window manager I think that's a pretty massive stretch. I haven't used a Mac as my primary machine for a few years now, but I've been watching the window management get worse and worse over the years. It used to be you could have a grid of Spaces and proper intuitive window management, but now Maximize is hidden behind the Fullscreen button. Virtually everyone I've watched use a recent version of macOS either has everything fullscreen, uses one window at a time with 4" of spacing around it because it's a pain to properly size the windows, or has 7 different apps installed to fill in missing features that have been around in Linux for as long as I can remember and in Windows since Windows 7.
I find text visually less fatiguing at high-DPI even though I have no problem reading it on my 24" 1080p secondary monitor. I don't think it's a matter of productivity as much as comfort (though maybe comfort indirectly affects productivity).
I agree with everything you said about the more recent releases of MacOS. Maybe I was being too generous in my previous comment - it really does seem optimized for very small laptop displays, so that's probably why they have recently placed so much emphasis on fullscreening everything (and also why they got rid of the Expose grid - horizontal swipe works better on a laptop trackpad).
You don't understand because you are the kind of person who buys a laptop with a 4k screen and thinks that's an asset, who thinks 1080p monitors and that aspect ratio are acceptable, etc.
In other words, you've never had a large high-dpi monitor setup with multiple screens large enough to appreciate it. And you haven't ever been an advanced enough Mac user to learn keyboard commands and the various ways to manage windows.
That was extremely rude and condescending.