Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Blurry text

T

Thegolem

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 26, 2012
112
0
England
HI, is blurry text something we just have to get used to on Mac's or is it my machine? I've googled around and found that it seems to be the same on all Macs. I've got a Macbook 4.1. I got it 2nd hand and love it but this blurr/fuzzy text thing is just getting too much to take now. Is there anything I can do about it? What do you guys do...just get used to it?
Thanks in advance to anyone replying with advice and comments.
 
Look in System Preferences > Appearance pane. What options do you have enabled for text smoothing?

Then look in System Preferences > Displays pane. What resolution is your display set to?


How long have you been looking at the screen on the Mac, exactly? As noted in the link provided by simsaladimbamba, "blurriness" depends a lot on what you're used to. If you're used to how older versions of Windows do it, things will look different.
 
chown33 said:
Look in System Preferences > Appearance pane. What options do you have enabled for text smoothing?

Then look in System Preferences > Displays pane. What resolution is your display set to?


How long have you been looking at the screen on the Mac, exactly? As noted in the link provided by simsaladimbamba, "blurriness" depends a lot on what you're used to. If you're used to how older versions of Windows do it, things will look different.
Click to expand...

I've only had a Mac for just over a week and had never seen one before so yes I was/am used to older versions of Windows.

The Font smoothing style is Automatic-best for main display

The Display is set to 1280 * 800
 
Thegolem said:
I've only had a Mac for just over a week and had never seen one before so yes I was/am used to older versions of Windows.
Click to expand...
Then you should expect to take some time to adapt. Read the linked article for why.

The Font smoothing style is Automatic-best for main display
Click to expand...
Try the other ones. See if you like them better.

Try changing the font-size below which smoothing is turned off. Some people only notice the smoothing on small sizes. Adjusting the threshold higher makes them happier.

A settings change may not take effect in currently running apps. Quit and relaunch them to see the change.

The Display is set to 1280 * 800
Click to expand...
That's the native display resolution, so it's not blurry because of that setting. If you want to see what that means, pick a lower resolution and see what happens. Sometimes the resolution accidentally gets changed, and the screen looks very blurry/jaggy until it's changed back to normal native resolution.
 
Weaselboy said:
Sounds like he understands just fine and simply prefers the way Windows displays fonts more "crisp."
Click to expand...

Yeah. The only thing I can't understand is why anyone would put up with this blurry text thing! It boggles my mind that millions or ten of thousands or w/e Mac users are out there now all looking at screens like this and putting up with or adapting to it as someone said earlier.
 
Thegolem said:
Yeah. The only thing I can't understand is why anyone would put up with this blurry text thing! It boggles my mind that millions or ten of thousands or w/e Mac users are out there now all looking at screens like this and putting up with or adapting to it as someone said earlier.
Click to expand...

I really noticed this too when I first got a a Mac, but I suppose I got used to it too and don't notice it any longer. Do you like the computer otherwise? Maybe give it a couple weeks and see what you think? :)

Dis any of the things Chown33 mentioned help at all?
 
I didn't have to "adapt" to it. I've always liked it better. I've always thought older Windows text rendering looks clunky, chunky, and oddly distorted.


If you prefer Windows, maybe you could install Windows on your MacBook. Since you didn't say why you like the MacBook, I'm guessing it's the hardware and not the OS. Otherwise just sell it and be done with it. Use what you like. Nobody's holding your feet to the fire to use it if you don't like it.
 
Weaselboy said:
I really noticed this too when I first got a a Mac, but I suppose I got used to it too and don't notice it any longer. Do you like the computer otherwise? Maybe give it a couple weeks and see what you think? :)

Dis any of the things Chown33 mentioned help at all?
Click to expand...

Yeah. I love E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G else about my Mac. In fact your encouraging me to preserve. Also in a funny way sometimes I like it but there's no getting away from the fact it's problematic.

I think the changes I've been playing around with courtesy of Chown33's help have done a bit of good but not much. I'll keep playing around with them but the resolutions settings seem to be pretty pointless as all of them barring the 1280 x 720 setting zoomed in on everything massively.

----------
chown33 said:
I didn't have to "adapt" to it. I've always liked it better. I've always thought older Windows text rendering looks clunky, chunky, and oddly distorted.


If you prefer Windows, maybe you could install Windows on your MacBook. Since you didn't say why you like the MacBook, I'm guessing it's the hardware and not the OS. Otherwise just sell it and be done with it. Use what you like. Nobody's holding your feet to the fire to use it if you don't like it.
Click to expand...

O.K Thanks again. Yeah. It is the hardware I like most. Although I like the softeare too..everything as I said apart from this blurry tesxt thing. I didn't realise it wasn't just the actual screen. Apple aught to give people the option of setting the font to display the Windows way on OS X.
 
I didn't like the text when I got my first mac and also found it blurry. I felt the same as the OP and couldn't imagine how I would put up with it. Within a couple of weeks I no longer perceived it as blurry and I now find windows text too sharp and severe.

My advice is to give it time. I bet you'll find it hard to believe that it was ever a problem for you!
 
shortcrust said:
I didn't like the text when I got my first mac and also found it blurry. I felt the same as the OP and couldn't imagine how I would put up with it. Within a couple of weeks I no longer perceived it as blurry and I now find windows text too sharp and severe.

My advice is to give it time. I bet you'll find it hard to believe that it was ever a problem for you!
Click to expand...

Thanks. I think I will. I've been thinking that kinda thing for a few days. I just had a wobble tonight:) absolutely love this machine apart from that!
 
Thegolem said:
Thanks. I think I will. I've been thinking that kinda thing for a few days. I just had a wobble tonight:) absolutely love this machine apart from that!
Click to expand...

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!:) It's not a case of leaning to live with it. It just magically becomes normal!
 
shortcrust said:
I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!:) It's not a case of leaning to live with it. It just magically becomes normal!
Click to expand...

It does't have to be said it looks very nice on here. On the threads a/w but on the other parts of the site Repl To Thread for e.g it looks too blurry which would be rubbish if it was a lot of text to read.

Also it does have to be said that I use it while sat on my bed with it on my legs or while sat on the setee but when I'm closer to the screen when it's on a table it isn't anywhere near 'as bad'. So this is where some smart alec tells me to get my eyes tested!
 
I'm on my old laptop now which I'm keeping back at my folks house in case of emergency and to use as somewhere to keeep my files and funnily enough I can actually see some blurryness on here that doesn't look much different to the blurryness on my Mac and it's so bloody heavy!!
 
Never noticed any blurry text on any mac I have used ever!!! That being said I am not saying you are not seeing blurry text. I would take it into an apple store and see if they can help. In a case like this I am likely to think it might be a settings issue but with out looking at the machine no way to tell.
 
Well the problems been solved well and truly now. I've sold my Mac. I traded it in today for an ipad and £93 voucher with CEX and 'cause the ipad has proved whole ineffiecent for anything other than watching and reading things I've had to start using my old Windows pc again. The text on this stands out a mile as more easy to read so I don't think I'll be going back to Mac even though I prefert it in all other ways esp. as it was only a 13" screen and lighter than this 15" screen Toshiba. Actually I will go back but only when I've got a bit more spare cash and probably only if they use the Windows antialisiasing thing or w/e it is that makes the Mac and Windows text appear different. I've still got an iphone and ipad so you won't be getting rid of me altogether. Good luck to the remaing Mac faithful.:)
 
Out of curiosity, are you using an external display?

Here's some advice I used years ago with this exact same problem, but with an external display that was creating some fuzziness for me - the advice here is a bit different than previous suggestions, and actually alters the level of smoothing in the OS:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1145157/smoothsnow.html

Just exercise some caution when working in Terminal.

What happened to me was this:
I was, and am, a long-time Mac user. A few years back, I needed to create a dual-platform workspace - I have my Mac on the left, and PC on the right. Up until this point, I always used Apple Displays, which had no problems with Mac Font Smoothing - but Apple displays don't play nice with, say, an HP desktop. However, HP displays will work fine with an Apple laptop. So...I now have 2 HP displays on my desk - one connected to the Apple, one connected to the HP. The HP-Apple duo, though, was displaying fuzzy - I think that HP monitor had a tough time working with the font smoothing. It looked terribly fuzzy. The solution was what I linked to above - I needed to dial down font smoothing at the OS level. No more fuzziness, no more headaches (literally).

Give it a try - let me know if it works for you.
 
ClearCoat said:
Out of curiosity, are you using an external display?

Here's some advice I used years ago with this exact same problem, but with an external display that was creating some fuzziness for me - the advice here is a bit different than previous suggestions, and actually alters the level of smoothing in the OS:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1145157/smoothsnow.html

Just exercise some caution when working in Terminal.

What happened to me was this:
I was, and am, a long-time Mac user. A few years back, I needed to create a dual-platform workspace - I have my Mac on the left, and PC on the right. Up until this point, I always used Apple Displays, which had no problems with Mac Font Smoothing - but Apple displays don't play nice with, say, an HP desktop. However, HP displays will work fine with an Apple laptop. So...I now have 2 HP displays on my desk - one connected to the Apple, one connected to the HP. The HP-Apple duo, though, was displaying fuzzy - I think that HP monitor had a tough time working with the font smoothing. It looked terribly fuzzy. The solution was what I linked to above - I needed to dial down font smoothing at the OS level. No more fuzziness, no more headaches (literally).

Give it a try - let me know if it works for you.
Click to expand...

Thanks but I've sold it now. I got an amazing price for it in fact it's an interesting talking point so I'm gonna start a thead about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back