[hsn915]

I never understood _why_ but text rendering on windows has always looked like garbage to me.

It was obviously not the screen resolution or anything, because you can run a linux vm (say, on virtualbox) and the text rendering inside the VM will look much better than the text in windows.

> Nobody's "right", it's just personal preference.

I don't think that's true. macos is clearly better.

[arsome]

Interesting, I personally far prefer the Windows one on 100 DPI displays at least. The blurriness is quite noticeable on OS X and certain Windows applications that attempted to use this style of font rendering.

Sure, it's great on higher DPI screens, but then it makes even less of a difference whichever one you use.

I'd say Microsoft made the right call here.

[burnte]

I actually agree. MS went for readability on standard screens for ages, MacOS went for staying true to the typeface's design and printed look, which was laudable, but IMO a mistake on screens before the dawn of high-DPI.

[Macha]

The most notable case was older versions of iTunes and safari for window which did manage their own font rendering and had MacOS style fonts. To me at least seeing both styles in the one OS looked bad and iTunes was the one that stuck out as being "wrong"

[mastazi]

> macos is clearly better.

I disagree.

Yes I do prefer MacOS on high DPI screens but, at low DPI, I prefer Windows. It's about how the edges of characters look, as I was saying here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28031314

[girvo]

Which is a fair enough point, but considering the only screens I own are high DPI, MacType is quite interesting to me

[mastazi]

Of course, it all depends on your needs. I'm a fan of repurposing old PCs for less demanding tasks so I have a few of those low DPI monitors around the house.

[tssva]

And here is proof that it is personal preference. I hate the font rendering on macOS and think Windows is clearly better. I even think the font rendering on modern Linux distributions is superior to that on macOS.

[ObscureScience]

I don't agree with that. I think it's pretty clearly about preference. On non retina displays, MacOSX really is blurry, and my preference is clear lines, preferbly without antialiasing, an certainly without subpixel AA. I think pre cleartype Windows, Classic MacOS, or X11 with bitmap fonts looked the best, but was not flexible enough for modern requirements.

[p1necone]

I still think bitmap fonts are by far the most readable at smaller sizes on lower dpi displays - you can fit so much more code without having to scroll, and I don't find it any harder to read than large TTF fonts on the same screen.

TTF fonts at small sizes on newer ~200+ dpi screens are even better again though. I'd love to try coding on a high res color e-paper screen.

[fxtentacle]

I'm strongly the opposite direction.

In fact, I even built my own font just to make the Windows font rendering look even more crisp and pixelated like the good old DOS bitmap fonts.

I agree that it looks like sh*t, though. But I still believe the readability improvements are well worth the bad aesthetics.

[FpUser]

>"I don't think that's true. macos is clearly better."

It is easier for me to read fonts on Windows. And that is all that really matters to me. Fonts on Mac look fuzzy. This "clearly better" is just your perspective. It is not universally shared.

Yes I do use large 4K monitors but I keep text scale at 100%. Otherwise what's the point. The more text I see when programming the happier I am

[emn13]

I get the impression most of these opinions stem from the Windows XP era. GDI rendering is horizontally hinted; but DirectWrite (as released in Windows Vista) is more linear in the horizontal axis (not sure if its entirely unhinted, but it's certainly a very light touch if any). In fact, there's an argument to be made that mac OS font rendering today is less graphically "accurate" than windows' - take a screenshot from a fairly light font at some huge size, and then scale it down in something like photoshop, vs. scale it down in terms of font size. Note that if you do this on macos then at small sizes the font-renderer adds a little bit of font-weight. On windows it does not. In terms of size, both are quite linear, and I dare say most users would be hard-pressed to even tell the difference.

The difference nowadays is so slim, I doubt it matters - assuming your app uses DirectWrite, and not GDI.

[p1necone]

Smaller fonts are easier to read on low dpi screens with windows font rendering - that's the benefit. Assuming a high enough dpi display or just larger font sizes mac rendering is likely to look aesthetically better though (although that is still somewhat personal preference)

It's this form vs function distinction that's important here.

[Drew_]

I'm pretty sure since Windows 8 Microsoft has focused on making font rendering look very good on high DPI displays at the cost of making them look poor on more traditional low DPI displays. Windows font rendering looks really good on 4K monitors and laptops with high res screens. Not so much on your typical 1080p-fare.

[mastazi]

Strange, in my experience fonts look better on Windows at low DPI, and better on Mac at high DPI. I guess it's personal preferences. To me, at low DPI fonts on Mac look as if they had rough edges. At high DPI however fonts on Windows look like the edges are too soft.

[emn13]

There isn't much difference between windows and macos font rendering at large scales - you can try it in something like browserstack, so you can compare two oses on one screen simultaneously. I mean, it's not imperceptible side-by-side, but edges certainly aren't sharper or softer on either.

[mastazi]

Yes, it is true that the difference between Win and Mac at high DPI is much less noticeable than at low DPI.

[mitemte]

Similar situation in macOS. Sub-pixel anti aliasing was removed in 10.14/Mojave.

[chrismorgan]

macOS mangles font rendering. They have this awfully-named preference called “font smoothing”, enabled by default, which actually enables glyph dilation, which is basically “ignore what the font author said, and make the font fatter than it should be”. This is the worst thing to happen since sliced bread or something. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553486 gives more details, including the biggest problem: people using overly light fonts because they use macOS that makes them bearable.

Quite apart from that, my understanding (as a non-user of macOS) is that macOS’s font rendering used to be better than it is now, because they used to do subpixel antialiasing but no longer do, preferring to simplify things because it’s not as valuable on high-resolution displays which they mostly (but not consistently) try to shunt people towards. Mind you, it’s still not useless on high-resolution displays, but definitely not as valuable.

[kristianp]

I haven't used MacOS recently, but my feeling on Windows font rendering is that it makes the fonts look too blurry. Once you get to a reasonable DPI it gets better, but my distaste with it started on a fairly low dpi, starting with about windows 7 (I didn't use Vista). Before then the fonts used didn't try too hard to use aliasing, and hence had sharp, single-pixel lines, which are much more satisfying to look at.

[bastardoperator]

This is my experience. Font's on windows look blurry and fonts on MacOS look crisp and clear given the same 4k monitor.

I've also noticed certain Windows programs especially installers have their own resolution and it becomes even more apparent.