[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.