Fonts Anti-aliasing on a MAC.

I love OS X, Mac, but the one thing that is sometimes a little bit uncomfortable for me is Anti-aliasing of the fonts, or Fonts Anti-aliasing i forgot how is it right to say in english

For e.t.c in win. there is no AA, or it is not such visible.
In os x the text sometimes feels like blurry, because of AA. I've already tried to tilt setting in sys.prefs-appearence-font aa, but it didn't help a lot.

TinkerTool helped a little. But again - wanna make fonts to be more like in win.(with less AA).
Some os x veterans said that such font AA on a mac is a unique feature of os x.

If you know any extra methods how to decrease font aa on a mac - you're welcome.

for e.t.c:

on a Mac:
http://screencast.com/t/ZmZiYzRi

on win.:
http://www.screencast.com/users/Dimgor/folders/Jing/…b251-00cd8c9d50ff

 

Is it just cyrillic that looks blurry or is it all fonts?

 

are you running your screens native resolution? if your running something lower, many things can look a bit blurry.... but I'm not sure whats wrong with that picture, maybe doesn't look right in a screenshot like it does on the screen.

 

Seshan,
At all fonts. I can't name it exactly blurry, but sometimes "blurry", it is just AA.

doh123,
Yes, native 1280x800, maybe it is because of a small screen resolution (13" macbook) and old macbook(my model is 4years old, therefore the screen is not LED), but on sony(win) there is no such "bold" AA.
Yeah, i could name it like "bold" AA.

Made new screenshots:

MAC:
TechSmith | Screencast.com, online video sharing, 2010-09-01_0258

Win.:
http://screencast.com/t/YTdhYzBjNmIt

 

I prefer OS X smoothing of fonts.
On windows, in your screenshots, some edges of fonts look really sharp and pixelated.

Look at Seshan's signature written in red. You can barely read what's written there on your windows screenshot. You can also spot pixels in the usernames on the left.

 

Thanks for sharing.

Back on topic, I dont think there is a system preference option but maybe if you go through terminal commands? Dont know the command needed tho, alternatively have you tried installing a new font instead? Maybe that will change the AA.

 

No, thank you for sharing.

 

You can change font smoothing settings through a Terminal command -

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

By default it is set at 2, so using the 1 value will make your system look more like the Windows appearance you prefer. Log out and log back in again to see the changes.

 

Svarto
no, i haven't tried Terminal tricking yet,

modernape, thanks a lot, will try it out.

 

so, terminal tips make the same as TinkerTool. Font smoothing gets lower, but persists.
The one way is to turn AA off, and install win. like fonts.

you could about that "problem" here Coding Horror: What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering?

 

well... you could try some things.

get Secrets Preferences Pane
Secrets
then go in and set the minimum Font Smoothing to be like font size 999999 .. then i guess it wont do it on anything smaller than 999999.

 

doh123
thx. for sharing, but the link provided is not working.
I found this Secrets but didnt find program to install.

 

same link... just the forum screwed it up making a forward which wont work right on some browsers depending on settings.

If you go there you'll see an option to get the Secrets Preferences Pane (PrefPane 1.0.6).. which is what you want. it installs into your System Preferences as an extra icon you can go into.

 

I think its just a weakness of the Mac that you have to either accept or use a PC instead. I was very close to getting a 15" Macbook pro but that same problem was one of a couple of things that bothered me about it, considering that I mostly use my laptop for web browsing, excel word and powerpoint. I asked several of the people in the Apple store about it and no one was able to show me solution to it on the display model. Nor did I really find any real solutions in my search online.

I think Apple should do something about this - its a bit of a drag considering they go to greeat length to use the best screens around. Might as well make the fonts more readable.

 

The font rendering in OS X is suppose to represent a "real print"-look so when you print something out it looks close to what you see on the screen. In Win, fonts may look good on the screen but supposedly looks different when printed on paper.

Personally when looking at OS X from a normal viewing distance on a screen with 110 PPI I don't find the fonts blurry.

It comes down to personal preference and what you are used to. I've read that in surveys, Win-users think OS X font rendering looks blurry hence preferring the win-fonts. While OS X-users find the Win-fonts too thin hence preferring the OS X-fonts.

 

when I first saw Apple's AA I thought there was something wrong with my screen. Everything is explained in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/245012-not-impressed-screen-mb-air-normal.html

I don't think there's anything you can do about it. For me this is a definite downside to Macs.

 

doh123,
thx, got it.

skagen,
seems so..

jairo,
really, if to sit down far away it gets a little better.
Another hint: in Safari(view menu) check "scale only text" and then when browsing click cmd +, text gets smaller, therefore less blurry.

Phil,
Thank you so much, great topic.

So, now i am gonna write a letter to Steve Jobs, why not give a try?, maybe he will react and you too could also write him about font smoothing. Overall - till OS X there was all ok with fonts, for e.t.c in OS 9 there was no such font aa, font smoothing.

Do you remember what is his right email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
?
the first seems the right one.

 

So you guys actually like the jagged edges of Windows non-AA font display?

 

weird huh?? I totally prefer the apple smoothing, the windows fonts just look pixellated in comparison.

 

not me.. i think Macs fonts look better.

 

To me Windows Cleartype looks much sharper than Apple's AA.

 

Well yeah, if you blow it up like that. That's software artifacts from zooming in, isn't it?

Point being, when you select a different size of font, the AA works differently. If you blow up small text, of course it's going to be blurry.



See?



No blowing up:

 

Big or small, it still looks blurry to me. But each to his own.

 

Like the old dutch saying:
"To each his own said the farmer and kissed the as* of a pig"

 

Here is the buzz.

Font rendering on OSX is the best for high resolution and there won't be issue in the future because it ignore the pixel ppi in some case if you look at iPhone 4 retina display. It is more like a vector font to me. Scalable.

Windows font rendering are sharp as for now. If we put it on high resolution monitor like 2000x2000 (whatever it is) it will become really TINY and we might need to increase the ppi to be readable but the look of the font will look bad.

Apple took typography seriously in the first place and Microsoft simply ignored it for long.

 

My experience is the opposite. I had my Macbook and PC connected to the same screen 1920*1200 24" screen. On the Macbook I had to disable AA on small fonts to make it readable, while I had no problem reading the Windows fonts.

It's interesting Apple offers a setting to disable AA on small fonts.

 

They offer this option because of code writers need to have clear monospace aligned.