[didibus]

I just switched from Windows to a Mac, and I immediately found that the colors and contrast and the clarity of images and text on the same monitor I connect my laptop too improved.

I wasn't sure if it was just in my head, but something about the rendering in Mac seems better to me. I don't know if they have better calibration for colors and contrast, better anti-aliasing, etc., but I seem to see the screen much better and my eyes don't strain as much.

[Joeri]

Have you tried to use the windows ClearType Text Tuner to improve the font rendering? Windows tries to take advantage of subpixels to improve crispness but it can cause color fringing which makes text harder to read. The tuner utility helps with that. You can also disable cleartype entirely to get standard anti-aliasing, which is what macOS does on non-retina screens. Personally I find the macOS way of rendering on standard dpi displays a bit too blurry.

As for images, the only difference I can imagine is a different handling of color profiles.

Update: I totally forgot about the mixed dpi situation. When you hook up a monitor of a different dpi than the laptop (e.g. the laptop is 150% scaling but the monitor is 100%, or vice versa), then only one display will be perfectly crisp for all apps, and that's the primary display at login. Only applications designed to take advantage of the right scaling API's will look crisp on both displays in that case. The other ones will look blurry on the non-primary display. MacOS does tend to handle that situation a little bit better.

[vborovikov]

There is a fix for apps that are blurry on the non-primary low-res display. Go to the app properties and on the Compatibility tab click the button 'Change high DPI setting' and check 'Override high DPI scaling behavior' option. Make sure 'Application' is selected in the 'Scaling performed by:' drop-down list.

The blurry apps will render a bit bigger on the non-primary low-res display but everything will be crisp.

[kmeisthax]

On later Windows 10 builds, you might want to try "System (enhanced)" mode, it manages to get proper DPI scaling on entirely DPI-oblivious apps.

(It basically does what Microsoft should have done decades ago and changes GDI pixels to be virtual rather than physical.)

[ghusbands]

The text drawn in most places doesn't match the cleartype tuner (try choosing the most grayscale option each time), and the cleartype in general doesn't take into account screen rotation. Turning off cleartype leaves you with text with odd per-pixel kerning.

[ascom]

Another possibility is that macOS actually does proper color management throughout the entire OS - the Windows shell/desktop is simply not color managed and it's especially irritating when you have a wide color gamut monitor.

[1--6zVa-E]

It’s laughable that the default photos app in Windows 10 is not color managed, yet the previous Windows Photo Viewer from Windows 7 is…

[breakfastduck]

Another of the staggering deficiencies for windows. Right next to audio management.

Because audio drivers and colour management aren't important ofc....

[hashhar]

Audio management better on MacOS?

There is no system level volume mixer, you can't route audio between apps, you can't even monitor an audio output device. To do anything sane with audio on MacOS requires external applications like Loopback or Blackhole or any of the virtual cable applications.

[whyoh]

I don't know what he meant with "audio management", but when it comes to music production, MacOS works way better by default, with system-wide low latency audio and multi-client MIDI drivers.

On Windows, you need to buy a dedicated audio card and install 3rd party audio and MIDI drivers, so that you can finally--assuming you bought the correct gear--get almost the same functionality that every Mac has out of the box.

[fleaaaa]

To be fair, core audio is indeed better default system but any trivial music production involves audio interface, I've never seen a person using direct input to macOS. On daily work, it's pretty much same.

Windows used to be horrid when it comed to music production but that was like almost two decades ago. Been using W10 for quite some time and any basics I need is pretty much there.

On the other hand, hardware taxing when gearing up the equipment is insane on apple hardware, that's why I migrated from their ecosystem. It's a huge drawback for many I believe.

[Macha]

The lack of an OS level volume mixer is one of my biggest day to day frustrations with OS X. Linux is really the gold standard for me though, allowing me to shunt applications around across audio devices on a per app basis when most don't include an output selector.

[navjack27]

Sure uh huh. Mac is great when I want to open up GarageBand on my M1 Mac Mini that's connected to my TV over HDMI. It yells at me to change the sample rate to 44.1. I can't do that there is no way to do that. I also can not control the volume using keyboard volume or system OS volume. Mac OS is great! Also the HDR is questionable unless you are using an Apple display which I am not.

Edit: basically what I'm getting at here is one is not better than the other and one is not worse than the other every single OS has quirks and honestly you should just be running one of everything in your house if you need it. Make sure to always have an up-to-date latest Mac and run WSL 2 in Windows 10 or 11.

[ascom]

Re: sample rate: you might be looking for the Audio MIDI Setup application.