You guys have been fantastic. My understanding have improved dramatically. Here's the part that still doesn't make sense to me. If MacOS uses the native resolution of the monitor, why would it be blurry compared to using a 4K monitor? That's the part that makes no sense to me. Why would Windows look better on the 29" monitor? What is it about MacOS that renders text worse than Windows at lower resolution?
Thank you!
The best answer is that a 30” 1080p display will be blurry simply because it is low resolution for such a large screen. But a 30” 4K screen at 1080p resolution will have very sharp text. The Mac still sends a 4K video signal to the screen even though you tell the Mac to display in 1080p. This gives you very smooth, larger fonts.
I use an LG 4K display with my Mac and it’s great. I use all different resolutions to suit what I’m doing. The full 4K setting gives me the largest desktop; I can arrange more windows and so on. But menus and other objects can be small for me, so I usually use a lower setting, in between 1080p and 4K.
If I used a larger 4K monitor, then I wouldn’t have the problems with small objects looking too small, but now you’re moving your head all around looking for stuff. I don’t think Windows is any better in this respect.
BTW, if you buy a 4K display for your Mac, use a DisplayPort connection, not HDMI through a dongle. It will cost less and work better, because you won’t get 4K60 10-bit through an HDMI dongle; you’ll get 8-bit at best and maybe only 4K30. It’s a limitation of the dongles, not of HDMI, and the dongle vendors don’t point this out.
OTOH, when I edit digital photos (I’m a photographer), then I use the full 4K mode and it’s great. I use my image editor a lot so I know where all my tools are and I can see all the details in my photos when I’m looking for blemishes or stray hairs that I want to clone out and so on.
I used a Windows 11 laptop for work and absolutely hated it. I’m much happier using a Mac. There are little dislikes I have, but I live with them. For instance, Windows has Maximize and Restore buttons on each window. But on a Mac, there is no Maximize. If you click the Maximize button, it creates a full screen window on a new, virtual desktop. Instead, if you double-click a window title bar, it makes the window large but not full screen.
Another annoyance is that when you minimize windows, you can’t Alt-Tab to switch to them. You have to use your mouse to tap the minimized window’s icon to restore it. I installed a 3rd-party utility to get around that.
There are so many advantages to Mac compared to Windows that these minor annoyances are not that big a deal to me.
My best advice is this: If you have a Windows app you need to use, try to find a Mac-native alternative instead of emulating Windows. Just start a new thread here describing what your app is and what it does, and if there’s a Mac alternative, you’ll find out.
