New 13" MBP - Font smoothing issues?

[Vertakill]

Hi guys,

I bought my first "serious" Mac last Friday (I say this because I owned a very old MacBook for a few weeks which I got for free in 2009) and I've got a question for you seasoned Mac-heads; which does your browser font look more like... the right or the left in the picture below:

The reason I ask is because I'm positive my old MacBooks screen looked like the left hand example with Font Smoothing on but my new MBP looks like the right hand image with font smoothing turned on. My friends 15" MBP and 27" iMac both don't have this issue either, they look like the left hand sample with font smoothing turned on but with a slightly smoother look.

I've done some searching on the 'net and found a command which enables you to tweak font smoothing, the command is:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3

Setting the integer to 0 disables font smoothing, 1 for standard smoothing (best for CRT), 2 for light smoothing, 3 for medium smoothing (best for flat panel and the option that Snow Leopard uses when you tick "Use LCD font smoothing" in the appearance panel) and 4 for strong smoothing.

As I said above, with the setting on 0 I get the example on the left (like my friends iMac/MBP but more jagged than his), with option 1, 2 or 3 I get exactly the same horrible bold looking font on loads of websites. With it set to 4 I get the nice looking font but it looks out of focus and it's not nice to read.

Do you lot have any suggestions? I've not had much luck on any other forums or the Apple Discussions forums!

Thanks,

Verta.

 

[greytmom]

This may seem like a stupid question, but did you try re-booting after changing your settings?

 

[Vertakill]

This may seem like a stupid question, but did you try re-booting after changing your settings?

There are no stupid questions

Font smoothing settings are applied to any newly opened application, so I can test the settings by simply quitting Chrome/Safari and then opening it again to see the new settings. If I want it to apply system wide then logging out and back in is OK but a reboot would do the same!

Thanks for the suggestion greytmom

Verta

 

[Kreylonus]

The font smoothing on my MacBook Pro (2010) looks to be about in the middle - it's not as light as the left-hand image, but not as heavy as the right-hand image either. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6 and haven't played with the settings for appearance at all.

 

[Tikkabhuna]

Hello fellow OcUK'er.

 

[Vertakill]

Hello fellow OcUK'er.

Hello

I'm not Meds (as the username in the screenshots suggest) by the way, his thread was at the top of the Apple Software section that I was browsing at the time!

I'm sure you can work out who I may be by simply browsing the Apple Software section for a very similar thread to this one

Cheers,

Verta