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Why does Apple stick to its crappy AA on the iPad?
- Thread starter naujoks
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The PPI is not so different from a high quality computer screen, but in this regard I am sympathetic to your position. Whenever I read on my iPad this does bug me for a short while before I get caught up in whatever I'm reading. I'm not very excited about text clarity on the Kindle or Nook either, but it is clearer than on the iPad, and makes for a better reading experience. A 'Retina' display on the iPad 2 would make reading so much more enjoyable.
It is a product for displaying texta byproduct of design and the heart of typographyand as such the ability to render text is of great importance. In doing so, anti-aliasing also becomes extremely important. As for your observation that it's the exact opposite in some regard, and that this should result in a change to reflect this: huh? The iPad is given fonts specifically designed for screen reading and legibility. I would say the specific fonts used in reading on the device are no problem at all (nor are they on the typical web pagefonts like Verdana and Helvetica are great screen fontsso Mobile Safari isn't the problem either). If there's any problem, it is the resolution of the device, or the user's unwillingness to learn and use the pinch/zoom/double-tap page navigation features.
Which has absolutely nothing about font rendering of which a integrated Intel GMA chipset would do just fine. I don't think we need more FPS in Microsoft Word in this topic.
Anyway, back on topic, I did notice a change in the font rendering on the iPad from
iOS 3.2.x to 4.2. I prefer the older font rendering from the older iOS, but current apps require the latest.
Nice of you to push your opinion on people but IMO small fonts look MUCH better on my Mac than they do Widows and I have Windows one one screen and OSX on another.
I'm sensing this is more of a troll thread than anything.
Arial is a Windows knockoff of Helvetica, so here's a comparison of Mac font rendering Helvetica vs. Windows font rendering of Arial.
OSX on the left, Windows on the right.
To my eye, the Mac version is much more readable and also more aesthetically pleasing. I read about a study a few years ago that concluded that people tend to like what they're used to, so Windows users selected Windows font smoothing as their favourite in blind comparisons and Mac users selected Mac font smoothing.
I'm a professional graphic designer and I use Mac at home and Windows at work (not by choice), and I greatly prefer Apple's font smoothing technology.
They have different philosophies behind them. The Mac simulates very accurately what the font will look like when printed, and Windows strives for sharpness.
I read on my iPad all the time, and while it bothered me at first and I turned up the font size to compensate, over the course of a couple of months I got used to it and now read at the default size. I use the nook app and set the background to a cream color instead of white. I can read for hours, no problem.
That said, as soon as they have a Retina display on the iPad, it's an auto-upgrade for me.
That said, as soon as they have a Retina display on the iPad, it's an auto-upgrade for me.
All well and good, but am I being delusional that when I boot into Win 7 on my Macbook Air the first thing I ALWAYS think is: How wonderful clean do the fonts look? Even in all the menus and on the taskbar.
To each their own, I suppose. I'm not sure why you might see things that way, though. There are very good reasons why the professional community prefers the anti-aliasing on Apple computers and to me the difference is as between night and day (but I'm another person who works with this stuff professionally).
See when I use Windows 7, the first thing I think is how jaggy the fonts look and how there's no flow to their strokes. They don't look like they do when I see them on paper, they look like they're pixels on a screen.
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How is that possible that two people have two diametrically opposite opinions about the same thing?
And if that is possible, why has neither Windows nor MacOS an option to display fonts in one or the other way, according to the user's taste?
It's possible because we have different priorities and opinions.
As a designer, I've been trained on the importance of form, flow and stroke when it comes to the readability of typefaces. Sure, Windows renders fonts sharply, but it doesn't render the fonts true to their original design. The stroke widths are sacrificed in the name of clarity and the character of many fonts is lost in all but the larger sizes.
Probably because they both believe their way of displaying fonts is the superior one.
I can't speak for the Windows side, but on the Mac side, I know Steve Jobs is very passionate about good screen typography. He won't be allowing Windows style anti aliasing on Apple products any time soon. Check out this video of a commencement speech Steve gave, he mentions the importance of screen typography and how Apple pioneered, and have always been leaders in it, because of his time in University.