[rand_r]

Apple’s unique ethos is technology as a means for creative expression. That’s why they’ve excelled in font rendering, colour accuracy, sound fidelity, and input-lag.

I think this value came from Steve Jobs, and I hope they never lose it because it imbues Apple with real human spirit. They’re more than just another profit-seeking company.

[gumby]

> They’re more than just another profit-seeking company.

I do like Apple but be real: this is how they garner their profits.

[baoqdau]

This is your brain on consumerism.

[ben-schaaf]

> That’s why they’ve excelled in font rendering

Not sure about the past, but without subpixel antialiasing they pretty much have the worst font rendering now.

[matwood]

Doesn’t this only cause issues on non-HiDPI screens.

[owlboy]

Can you elaborate?

[rand_r]

Basically, they assume you’re using a retina quality (aka HiDPI) display where each virtual or abstract pixel maps to four physical pixels in the display.

For example, you have a 27” 4K display, but set the resolution to 1920x1080 in System Preferences.

Mapping each virtual pixel to four physical pixels lets you render curves really crisply. However, on non-HiDPI where you don’t have pixel doubling, you have to use sub-pixel rendering to approximate curves.

One technique is playing with slightly shading adjacent pixels so that at a distance curves appear to be smoothed out. But for some technical reasons, Apple dropped support for sub-pixel rendering. It was too hard to do and the future is HiDPI anyway.

[spicybright]

Right? All it's missing is a Posted from my iPhone footer

[fnord123]

> That’s why they’ve excelled in font rendering, colour accuracy, sound fidelity, and input-lag.

That'll be why mac laptops connect to bluetooth speakers using the worst default settings for sound fidelity so it sounds like a dying frog.

And the input lag is quite terrible when the machine is under any load.

[dijit]

Input lag on an iPhone or an iPad is best in class. The Mac leaves much to be desired.

I have never had an issue with Bluetooth on the Mac. Maybe there’s issues if you’re doing audio recording on the headset, but that’s a limitation of bluetooth 4 and would be similar on Linux or Windows.

My Linux laptop likes to negotiate HSP (low quality but with audio recording) over HSDP (high quality) with my Bose QC35s, but the Mac is quite happy to dynamically switch as needed.

[fnord123]

Default bitpools on mac are very low for audio ime. To fix it, you can run the following:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5rfdj6/pro_tip_signi...

[ryneandal]

I've tried to use the mic on my airpods with my windows desktop once -- Bluetooth 4 mic output _definitely_ sounds like what he's describing. It's godawful and certainly an effective way to mete out punishment to those vendors you dislike via conference call. It's an immediate headache.

[fastball]

I'm sure that will be fixed once Apple inevitably starts building their own Bluetooth chipsets.

[gumby]

> you’ll have to wait until 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#W_se...

[fastball]

* for computers.

From what I've heard, their chipsets don't have the same problems as the ones they use in macs.

[dangus]

The M1 Macs are essentially iPhone/iPad hardware. The latest iPad Pro shares the same M1 chip, and I imagine it shares most other components as well.

[fastball]

Right, but the wifi+bt chip is still Broadcom.