Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Yes I am. When I switched to 1920x1200, it made everything crystal clear apart from the text. Can you (or anyone) suggest a decent big monitor that has perfect clarity with macs?
 
Yes I am. When I switched to 1920x1200, it made everything crystal clear apart from the text. Can you (or anyone) suggest a decent big monitor that has perfect clarity with macs?
Your display is (probably) just fine.

Font smoothing is just something you need to get used to. I cannot stand looking at those edgy fonts in (older) Windows (versions). I think that is fugly and unbearable.

But, if you absolutely must, use TinkerTool and disable font smoothing for fonts smaller than 144 pt, that should effectively turn it off all together:

Picture 1.jpg
 
Thanks for that. I downloaded TinkerTool, but anything I change makes no difference to anything. I'm not sure it's a case of getting used to Font Smoothing because Font Smoothing looks the same as when Font Smoothing is turned off. There's a white blurry glare off all off the text characters which makes every word look fuzzy. I've adjusted all monitor settings as well and nothing works.

I've just plugged my mac into my old monitor and everything looks fine, trouble is the monitor's too small which is why i bought the 24" for the mac pro.

no idea what's wrong, i'm just gonna have to swap for a new one, non-HD. if anyone can just give the name of a 24" that they know works well, i'd be very grateful, cheers!
 
Yeh I am. I've tried everything. Gonna try a new monitor. Thanks for all your help Mitthrawnuruodo - would be grateful for any suggestions on monitors to get from anyone...
 
Yeh I am. I've tried everything. Gonna try a new monitor. Thanks for all your help Mitthrawnuruodo - would be grateful for any suggestions on monitors to get from anyone...

What is your monitor price range? And I'm assuming you want a 20[22?]" at minimum?

I'd try looking at some of De||'s (I know, sorry for the bad word:)) new [EDIT: display] lineup. Their quality is good (not quite as good as Apples and about the same as SD HP) and they are only in the three digit range.
 
Its not the monitor... repeat, its not the monitor!

Here is a perfect example, I am running both windows and OSX at the same time... yes, font rendering is different - BFD

Font Difference

its just how OSX does it, take it or leave it. I was a long time windows user and liked that crisp text as well, but my new mac doesn't bother me... and don't even bother trying to get it to render like a windows box, not gonna happen.
 
Thanks for the screenshot, and looking at that, I 1000 times prefer the OS X texts, it's so much nicer, but that's not what mine shows! I wish it did! Mine is all fuzzy and blurry.

I was going to upload a screenshot to show ppl what it looked like, however when I put it on to my PC (which I'm using to write this) to upload it on this thread, it looked perfect, so didn't prove my point. This suggests that Apple is outputting it perfectly, but the monitor is not showing it correctly. Surely?

I'm looking at 22" or above, Samsung pebble? I might just have a faulty monitor. I spoke to someone at Apple and they said that downloading the drivers would fix it, but BenQ don't make drivers for macs as far as I'm aware.
 
Actually, the opposite is true. Mac renders fonts with the goal of preserving the overall design of the font face, whereas Windows makes sacrifices to keep the font easy on the eyes.

Mac fonts are nicer to look at, but for actually reading the text, Windows is superior.

Not for me. I like how OS X anti-aliases the fonts. I despise the way text looks in Windows, in IE especially. The text is all blocky. That's not any easier to read.
 
I hate to tell you, but your copy of windows doesn't have ClearType (M$ version of font smoothing) activated.

Your text is all jaggy and awful.

In widows, right click on your desktop, click properties, then appearance, then effects. Then use the ClearType method to smooth font edges.

Mark

Its not the monitor... repeat, its not the monitor!

Here is a perfect example, I am running both windows and OSX at the same time... yes, font rendering is different - BFD

Font Difference

its just how OSX does it, take it or leave it. I was a long time windows user and liked that crisp text as well, but my new mac doesn't bother me... and don't even bother trying to get it to render like a windows box, not gonna happen.
 
My girlfriend has had a ton of problems with her macbook and they finally replaced it. Now, with the new one that she has had for about three months the text just started going fuzzy about two days ago. Its been clear untill then. And its not super blurry, just enough to notice it. I thought she was crazy at first, than I sat down with it for a few min to view some stuff and noticed it myself. Its pretty sucky. I checked all the prefs for font smoothing and restarted all the apps running and it still did it. Any ideas?

Do you think that perhaps you may have a corrupt font that isn't rendering correctly? Try re-installing OS X and see if that fixes it. It could be that your fonts somehow became corrupt.

Am I the only one who likes the "Standard - Best for CRT" settings on an LCD screen? I hate how bold and noisy the text looks when it's set to the LCD smoothing... gross. I much prefer the softer text. Try it out for a few days and it would be hard to go back... seriously.. it's always the first thing I fix when I install OS X.
 
Blurry text in display and all applications

Something that I've consistently noticed at both local Apple stores is fuzzy text on all the machines - macbooks, ACD's, and iMacs. The ACD's are the worst. Is this a problem with OS X?
I have had a Macbook since June and have found all text to be clear and sharp.

Today I downloaded Christmas Stationery for Mail from a link on one of these forums on my Macbook. The text on my display and in all applications is now suddenly blurry and hard to read which seems to be a coincidence. I have tried all the font smoothing options with no difference whatsoever. I have since deleted the stationery.

Has anyone else experienced this?
 
I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd post my "fix" here in case anyone else stumbles across this looking for an answer.

I had the same problem as mentioned (graphics looked fine, text looked fuzzy). I was also using a BenQ monitor (Benq G2420HD 24") and changing the font smoothing in system preferences ins OSX didn't help.

The "fix" was to change the Sharpness setting on the monitor itself. This monitor has several different modes (Movie, Standard, Cool, etc, etc) and mine was automatically set to Movie mode (perhaps because it is full HD & has HDMI input)?

Anyway in this mode the Sharpness setting is set to maximum (5 I think) and makes text look nasty. Changing the mode to Standard and dropping the Sharpness to 2 or 3 gave perfect text rendering.

Hopefully this will help someone out!
 
The "fix" was to change the Sharpness setting on the monitor itself.

Hopefully this will help someone out!

You did massively help me out!! Thanks a lot, I've been scouring the internet for an answer, and kept running into people saying "there's nothing wrong with the text, it's just a matter of preference". There's still a difference between Windows and Mac (which I guess I'll just have to get used to), but at least now the fonts aren't really 'blurry' as they definitely were before on my monitor (HP Compaq LA2205wg). By the way, in my case, I had to increase the sharpening to 5 (it was set to 4). But I guess that depends on the monitor :cool:
 
For some reason the text looks less fuzzier in Eco mode than in Standard, and the Sharpness on the display is set to 3 on both so its not that.
I will try to play with the settings until I get a good result. I know the display is not the most expensive model on the market but as people pointed out I don't think its the problem of the display.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.