[vetinari]

Both variants had their fans and anti-fans. Apple rendering was shape-preserving but blurry, Microsoft's shape-deforming but crisp.

I personally like the Apple rendering, but I realize that many people around me don't. In the end, it is subjective.

[enriquto]

There's more than two variants that you can be a fan of. I for one find both cases that you describe blurry, and can only stand truly clean, non-rescalable bitmap fonts.

[vetinari]

Do you know, that with a good font (properly hinted, or with good autohinter), you can have identical results as with bitmap fonts? Antialiasing is not mandatory for scaled fonts, and snapping to grid is the raison d'etre of hinting.

If anything, bitmap fonts on older/crt monitors were as fuzzy as the scaled ones, and on lcds, too jagged, so that hunted their readability. For me, enabling antialiasing actually improved their appearance.

But then, I always disliked the X11 bitmap fonts as ugly; the Microsoft's MS Sans Serif was about the only bitmap font I could tolerate (nowadays, it is truetype too).