Vista beats Windows XP, Ubuntu and OSX on font rendering
My brief period of using a Mac made me think something was just “off” about the font rendering but I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. Things were harder to read in OSX across the board and now I’m glad to say this was not just in my head.
Windows XP has an older version of the “ClearType” system that smoothes out the fonts but that’s to be expected, it was still superior to that offered by Mac OSX. Ubuntu was just slightly better than Windows XP but was no equal to Vista.
Of course, part of this is down to user preference or in some cases “fanboyisms” but fonts in Vista look better to me, they’re easier to read and you aren’t straining your eyes (at least I’m not) to read something.
Not only were the fonts in OSX blury but were also rendered in something closer to gray scale. Of course, the original article at ZDnet attracted some attention from Apple fans trying to state exactly why Apple designed the fonts the way it did.
“They [users] argue that is Apple is geared for its desktop publishing roots. I can’t accept that for the following reasons.
What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?
Even if a Mac user works in the desktop publishing industry, do they need that while surfing the web or looking at desktop screen fonts? What In the world do you need to pre-press a web browser for?
I can understand prioritizing the font size and topography for something like PageMaker or QuarkXPress, but do it there and leave the desktop and browser fonts alone.
There’s nothing to prevent a Windows computer application from doing its own pre-press rendering.”
You can read the original article and decide which one you think looks best for yourself but might I say, “I told you so.”
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August 17th, 2007
You’re not getting the whole story. Ou’s article is flawed. Go read it again and then try fiddling with your appearance settings in OS X. Should help.
August 17th, 2007
If you copy my image (within fair use), please keep the same PNG lossless format and copy it faithfully. JPG adds its own scaling and lossy artifacts. Thanks.
August 17th, 2007
Well, there’s a first for everything, George, for now I’ll just remove the image, however, the compression you’re seeing isn’t due to JPG, it’s due to a problem with the current version of Live Writer, images are always blurred when imported with Live Writer. Sorry about that, the image will be removed.
August 17th, 2007
Also, we were unaware of what format the image was in to begin with due to the way it was saved from the ZDnet site. Still, it will not be added back.
August 17th, 2007
Vista rules the world friends. The Mac OS has no future.
August 20th, 2007
Who cares?
August 21st, 2007
George Ou lied in his column, and got called on it. Since Gedeon’s mentioned it in the comments and you’ve retracted your blog entry here, I’m going to call you on it too.
MacOS X has four antialiasing setings: “Standard” (for CRTs), and “Light”, “Medium” and “Strong” for LCDs. Anyone with half a brain who uses a Mac knows that the Light/Medium/Strong are Apple’s equivalent of ClearType, and Standard is just plain old antialising for CRTs which can’t take advantage of such a feature.
Of the four, guess which one Ou chose to demonstrate that Apple’s antialiasing was inferior to ClearType? You got it. When he was called on it and forced to post the proper value, he didn’t retract his claim, even though it was at that point clear that the two were essentially equivalent.
Ou has a long history of lying crap like this — most recently, his “coverage” of shysters pretending to break into Macs via Apple’s wireless. Be respectable bloggers and retract your ridiculous link article to him.
August 21st, 2007
Oops: “retracted” -> “NOT retracted”
August 21st, 2007
“Be respectable bloggers…”
Wait? What? There is such a thing?