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by jd3 1251 days ago
macOS still provides anti-aliasing — I assume the OP is referring to the removal of subpixel rendering/antialiasing.

See "The subtle death of subpixel antialiasing"

https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/09/macos-10-14-mojave-...

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Scree...

The one thing I appreciate about windows is that you can completely disable cleartype/anti-aliasing, if you'd like. As far as I know of, it's not possible to do that in any version of macOS (including Ventura).

In fact Checking "Antialias text" in the Terminal.app settings profile just didn't do anything on a non-retina external monitor for 2+ years.

https://i.imgur.com/nRLReww.gif

https://i.imgur.com/fu08mPa.gif

rdar://FB8901170

1 comments

It's difficult and memory-expensive to do subpixel font rendering in the presence of things like transparency/colors/blur effects - eventually you'd end up in a situation where it's just missing half the time anyway.
How expensive would it be? Windows XP (circa 2001) does it without GPU acceleration with ease on a 512MB ram machine. Windows Vista runs on 2G of ram, with transparency everywhere (to the point that it is distracting).
A lot worse than that. They didn't have 5K HDR 120fps displays and macOS has some significantly more demanding things than plain old transparency going on.
I find it hard to believe it would overwhelm an M chip.