Are Mac displays less than clear?

[picasso_41]

I'm considering switching from my Amiga to a Mac. Actually, it'll be more like moving on, since the Amiga is no longer supported.

So I go down to the Apple store and look at the latest wares with their LCD screens. To my surprise, the displays are not very clear when compared to windows notebook computers that I've seen at the office or at Best Buy. The text on an apple is fuzzy; when I pull down the fonts menu in Word, the fonts suffer from terminal jaggies.

Has anybody else noticed this or is it just me? Can anything be done to improve the quality of text on an Apple LCD? Is the problem caused by a lack of antialiasing?

I'd prefer a Mac because windows is a scary os, but if I have to strain to read the screen, I'd be better off with some other hardware.

Comments about this issue are very welcome.

...Dave

 

[Bear]

Re: Are Mac displays less than clear?

It could be the settings in system preferences were wrong.

In Display preferences, make sure the highest resolution for the screen is specified, and that under the Color tab, "Apple LCD" is selected. This should be correct unless someone played with it.

In General preferences, make sure font smooting is set to "Medium - best for flat panel" And 8 pixels is the right amount for disabling font smooting.

After you make sure these are at the defaults...try playing with the preferences. Also try changing the display brightness inthe Display preferences.

Everbody seems to prefer slightly different settings and with a machine in a store, you never know who has played with it.

I find the Apple displays to be rather nice you just need to tweak the preferences.

 

[MacBandit]

I've never heard of a complaint about jaggies in OSX. OSX has AA built into the system and usually people confuse the smoothed fonts with blurred fonts and complain that there screen seems to be fuzzy. The AA settings can be turned up and down or off for that matter.

If you are complaining about jaggies in Microsoft Word or any other non Apple program that problem lies with the program and not with the computer or Apple. The developer simply needs to rewrite the program in cocoa so that it is an OSX native program and takes advantage of the AA and other features.

Apple tends to be on top of the heap when it comes to screen quality. This has been the case for over a decade now. I still use an Apple 17" StudioDisplay CRT and I find it to be one of the sharpest clearest most distortion free displays that I have seen for less then truck load of money.

My friends are always complaining that there PC screens don't look as sharp. I just chock it up to how windows renders everything. I have to agree with them because I have never been fond of the display quality in windows.

I would recommend looking at photos and OSX system elements rather then judging based on 3rd party programs.