"The missing mid-range desktop Mac"

[toasterwaffle86]

I think the general consumer is probably happy with the DPI of 4K@27". If that wasn't enough, we'd see more 5K screens at that size.

Looks like 4K vs 5K is no longer an issue for DisplayPort, so that is not the explanation.

However, sitting behind a 27" 4K monitor right now, I know that in theory 27" at 16x9 = 23.5" wide and 3840 / 23.5 = 163 PPI is still below the human eye's visual acuity, but in practice I never notice the pixels. So why go up to 5120 / 23.5 = 218 PPI, only to see the very many non-resizable parts of the MacOS UI shrink to sizes that I find too small?

Although I guess Apple has been addressing that issue by pumping up the size of their UI chrome to compensate. Now that would all be fine except of course that we don't automatically get higher res displays when the new MacOS drops, and that dreadful scaled default resolution on the laptops. Did they stop doing that now?

I did use a 4K 24" display for many years but the bump to 27" was nice because everything is the right size sitting just a bit further back. Hopefully I won't need to start wearing reading glasses behind my computer anytime soon...

In regards to the general consumer, I still see tons of 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 monitors on the Wintel side that look like terrible screen doors. Compared to that, sure, 4K 27" is pretty decent.

That being said, I buy Apple products BECAUSE of their attention to little details, and that absolutely, beyond a doubt, includes the screen. MacOS can't do arbitrary scaling ratios, it's 1X or 2X and the video card rescales beyond that. 4K 27" is usable emulating 2560x1440 but text is much softer than my other displays. Any argument around "but you could buy an inferior product for a fraction of the price" completely disregards the niche, perfectionist market this is all targeting.

I'm also quite glad that the new laptops include enough pixels to run native with more space, which is not only awesome for day to day use, but also gives me more headroom when I use the "max space" setting (opening massive spreadsheets on the go) and push back into non-native. Because the old laptops had fewer pixels to begin with and ran non-native out of the box, "max space" pushes that ratio further and means a pretty serious loss of fidelity.

 

[gabemaroz]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

If I've taken anything away from this conversation it's that I actually don't want another 27" 5K display but rather a 27" 4K display. I've been looking to move on from this 2015 iMac model and at this point I've got an external webcam, an external microphone, as well as third-party keyboard and mouse combo. All I need now are some external speakers. If my takeaway is correct, the Studio Display would be as unappealing as the iMac screen has been, so the chances of getting a third-party display and the 'mid-range' desktop have gone up significantly. Or am I missing something here?

 

[Deleted member 397475]

In a lot of pro applications. on retina, content = native, UI is "normal" and thus non-tiny. That's where the real estate comes from, being able to for instance manipulate 1920x1080 assets @ 100% while benefiting from all the extra workspace for tools.

 

[jeanlain]

At the viewing distance I use (I'm not farsighted), a 27" 16/9 monitor should be used a 1440p or 5k for optimal UI size and screen real estate. 1080p/4k is not optimal at that size.

 

[gabemaroz]

Visual acuity is fine but have strong astigmatism such that larger fonts are needed to reduce eye strain. Perhaps I’ll find a way to set my iMac 27” to looks like 1920 x 1080 and see if the UI is too large for me.

 

[karolus]

Visual acuity is fine but have strong astigmatism such that larger fonts are needed to reduce eye strain. Perhaps I’ll find a way to set my iMac 27” to looks like 1920 x 1080 and see if the UI is too large for me.

Any specific hardware aside, you may also want to check System Preferences > Accessibility. There are settings there for menu sizing and zoom that may work well for you.

 

[hestermofet]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

The benefit to integer scaling is not performance but image quality. You don’t get aliasing, or shimmering on scrolling content. Also, aspect ratio remains the same.

Scaling content, non-integer or otherwise, is virtually free from a performance standpoint on a modern computer. It can be accomplished by a half cent chip, but it doesn’t need to be on a computer because the GPU can do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind its back.

 

[hestermofet]

Visual acuity is fine but have strong astigmatism such that larger fonts are needed to reduce eye strain. Perhaps I’ll find a way to set my iMac 27” to looks like 1920 x 1080 and see if the UI is too large for me.

Any specific hardware aside, you may also want to check System Preferences > Accessibility. There are settings there for menu sizing and zoom that may work well for you.

That does the same thing as running the whole screen at 1080p, but scales by a non-integer factor. For people who have standard vision problems due to age or a common condition like myopia, running the screen at a lower res makes more sense. For people with more serious vision problems, zoom makes more sense.

 

[Matey-O]

$40 is A LOT for a single chip in what is typically a dumb display. It doesn't seem to do much: it doesn't provide added end-user functionality by running TV OS, it doesn't do FSAA on the image or anything unique like that to increase image quality, it doesn't upscale, it basically seems to... run the webcam and allow the attached Mac to do things like control the brightness over the display connector. All of this could have easily been handled with an off the shelf chip that probably costs under $3, so cheaper by a factor of ~13.

It doesn't have a good use today. If that's the windmill you want to tilt at, we can look at UWB (eventually used to good effect with airtags...which launched to several generations of portable devices pre-seeded in the market with UWB support) or Lidar...which is...well...good for focus and placing IKEA furniture in your living room. Jury is still out on that one. You know Apple is all about Walled Garden Lockin and they get there by doing oddball things like inserting an iphone 8 in their monitors.


I had a Dell Ultrabook with a 2 core i7. It started out having good battery life, but in current WFH COVID times, running Teams and Chrome and McAfee meant the fan was on 100% of the time...I think the venn diagram of available resources, Software needed, and quiet operation just flat didn't overlap anymore. It couldn't sleep reliably. It was light and portable. I think in quantity, they were $650 a piece.

Due to a crazy series of events, where our IT didn't want to support more than two SKUs and I had log analysis needs that slightly outstripped our current base business ultrabook, I ended up with a Precision 7560. I've railed on some of the cognitive dissonance here before. It's a 64 Gb, Xeon processor, discrete Nvidia A3000 GPU science workstation. It has, literally, no supported sleep modes, is always warm, and has that 3.5 hour battery life if you don't do anything to 'spool it up much'...near as I can tell, it's a $5500 MSRP beast. it has a 17" screen and a 10 key keyboard. It weighs 6 lbs 2 oz.

Compared to the $2500 M1Pro Mac I just picked up...which everyone knows all the details about. It's party trick is transcoding 30 minutes of 1080p in 2 minutes (because I'm a luddite and that's what I was recording in.) it weighs 3lbs 8 oz. It's faster in EVERY METRIC except raw CUDA GPU power.

The three examples really can be compared or not, depending on the biases you have coming in. Compared to capability, the Mac Mops the floor with the Precision. The user experience is just streets ahead. But they're entirely different use cases, Paladin vs. Orc on your D&D spec sheet.

What is astounding is just how bad the Precision is in the details. The biggest PC manufacturer using the processor from the oldest Processor manufacturer using the most supported OS in the world...and it can't sleep. (literally none of the 4 sleep modes are exposed to Windows from the BIOS). It comes with a 275 watt power supply you leave in the dock, which used two USB-C plugs to transfer the power, and if you used the 180 watt travel supply on the road, it complains if you try to charge your phone.

Apple attacked computing from the bottom up (how do we get our phone processor to scale) precisely BECAUSE what Intel was producing had a TON of technical debt it couldn't scale past, and a power budget that was horrific.

We can pick and choose and debate here in the muck and we'll miss the real details like 'supplychain inefficiency' and 'commodity parts make power management impossible' and 'Intel is seriously topheavy with management and spent too much time holding their improvements in reserve, squeezing the market for money as much as it could while AMD and Apple released better stuff sooner.

The missing mid-range desktop could be in the pipeline, or is may not. I think a LOT of 27" iMacs were sold because of the additional realestate by some people while others complained 'I'm not going to buy an AIO because I'll be throwing away a display if anything breaks and I can't upgrade the RAM, der hur'

With apple's upgrade program, I bought a MBP in 2017 for $1600...in 2022 I bought a MBP and the trade in value of the 2017 brought the price back down to...$1800. $320 a year for a Macbook doesn't seem all that bad, considering what it gave me in return. I didn't NEED to upgrade the Ram.

ETA: Wife had a 2013 MBP she upgraded to the new M1Pro...paid $1850 for it IIRC (more storage)...that's $205 a year for the privilege. It was doing all she really needed (except blurry backgrounds in Zoom, apparently that was too much to ask) and she swapped it as the battery was finally pooping out.

 

[Cranioclast]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

If I've taken anything away from this conversation it's that I actually don't want another 27" 5K display but rather a 27" 4K display. I've been looking to move on from this 2015 iMac model and at this point I've got an external webcam, an external microphone, as well as third-party keyboard and mouse combo. All I need now are some external speakers. If my takeaway is correct, the Studio Display would be as unappealing as the iMac screen has been, so the chances of getting a third-party display and the 'mid-range' desktop have gone up significantly. Or am I missing something here?

I go back and forth between a 5K iMac and a low-end 27-inch 4K Dell display with the UI scaled 200%. The iMac is obviously a better display, but I don't feel like I'm suffering on the 4K screen. It just means that I only have to zoom the browser to 110%, rather than 130%. It's Ubuntu vs. macOS, so it's not a direct comparison, but I feel like the bigger UI is easier to work with.

I ordered a nicer 32-inch 4K display to go with the Mac Studio that may arrive one day. I figure it means less browser zoom, easier-to-target UI elements and smaller font sizes in editors. It may end up feeling like playing with Duplo, but I have to give it a shot. The iMac feels just slightly cramped sometimes, so I'm not comfortable investing in the 27-inch Studio Display. If Apple comes out with a 30-32-inch 6K version in the future, I will definitely consider that at the time.

 

[Arasirsul]

In a lot of pro applications. on retina, content = native, UI is "normal" and thus non-tiny. That's where the real estate comes from, being able to for instance manipulate 1920x1080 assets @ 100% while benefiting from all the extra workspace for tools.

That's a thing I think a lot of folks still don't get: When I choose, say, "looks like 2560x1440", it's not sending a 2560x1440 image to the monitor. If my monitor's a 5K monitor, the Mac is sending a 5K image to the monitor. If I'm, say, editing a 4K video, that 4K video can show up on my screen using 3840x2160 pixels-- one-for-one native resolution-- leaving 1280 pixels in width and 720 pixels in height leftover for an L-shaped area for my editing controls. Those controls are what are sized as if they were on a 2560x1440 screen.

It's not just smoothing out a 2560x1440 image. You can do that on anything!

 

[gabemaroz]

Visual acuity is fine but have strong astigmatism such that larger fonts are needed to reduce eye strain. Perhaps I’ll find a way to set my iMac 27” to looks like 1920 x 1080 and see if the UI is too large for me.

Any specific hardware aside, you may also want to check System Preferences > Accessibility. There are settings there for menu sizing and zoom that may work well for you.

Thanks. Just being able to scale up the menu bar was a huge help.

 

[gabemaroz]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

The benefit to integer scaling is not performance but image quality. You don’t get aliasing, or shimmering on scrolling content. Also, aspect ratio remains the same.

Scaling content, non-integer or otherwise, is virtually free from a performance standpoint on a modern computer. It can be accomplished by a half cent chip, but it doesn’t need to be on a computer because the GPU can do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind its back.

I definitely see a significant UI performance hit on scaled versus default. However, this is a 7 year old computer.

 

[Helten E]

A more reasonable, but still quite lazy, solution would be to display the content at a native resolution and scale just the UI chrome as needed.

I vaguely remember this being possible (from the app dev side of things)

Yep, the developer tools used to have a widget that let you scale the UI. It never looked right, with pixel gaps and other odd effects everywhere.

Apple also made a High Resolution 17" PowerBook, which I bought despite everything being too small because I thought they would make the scaling work. I suppose they did... with the iPhone 4, five years later.

 

[japtor]

A more reasonable, but still quite lazy, solution would be to display the content at a native resolution and scale just the UI chrome as needed.

I vaguely remember this being possible (from the app dev side of things)

Yep, the developer tools used to have a widget that let you scale the UI. It never looked right, with pixel gaps and other odd effects everywhere.

Apple also made a High Resolution 17" PowerBook, which I bought despite everything being too small because I thought they would make the scaling work. I suppose they did... with the iPhone 4, five years later.

Oh no you're thinking of when they were still trying for true resolution independence (which yes, never got beyond that jankiness), I'm talking about the current HiDPI days and scaled resolutions. From one of the WWDC talks way way back I remember them mentioning you can still draw directly to the pixels on screen without being affected by whatever resolution scaling. So if a dev is doing that, then in effect the scaled resolutions are just scaling the UI chrome around the native resolution displayed content.

(...don't ask me how the hell that works at the edges where native content and scaled UI chrome meet up)

 

[Helten E]

Oh no you're thinking of when they were still trying for true resolution independence (which yes, never got beyond that jankiness), I'm talking about the current HiDPI days and scaled resolutions. From one of the WWDC talks way way back I remember them mentioning you can still draw directly to the pixels on screen without being affected by whatever resolution scaling. So if a dev is doing that, then in effect the scaled resolutions are just scaling the UI chrome around the native resolution displayed content.

(...don't ask me how the hell that works at the edges where native content and scaled UI chrome meet up)

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. I also have a memory of seeing that, but I'm not sure if they were talking about drawing at the screen's native scale or just accessing the full resolution of the HiDPI view before it is scaled down. Can't find anything relevant on the developer site now.

 

[iljitsch]

What is astounding is just how bad the Precision is in the details. The biggest PC manufacturer using the processor from the oldest Processor manufacturer using the most supported OS in the world...and it can't sleep.

That's not exclusive to Wintel. Apple's stuff is just as bad in various ways. And possibly I'm mistaken because I don't use Windows much, but it seems to me that at least Microsoft's software is less buggy than Apple's. Not that it works better, but at least it's working poorly as designed rather than because of bugs.

Apple attacked computing from the bottom up (how do we get our phone processor to scale) precisely BECAUSE what Intel was producing had a TON of technical debt it couldn't scale past, and a power budget that was horrific.

Actually as I was reading the earlier part of your post I was thinking the same thing about software, both on the Windows and Mac sides: it's just decades of layers upon layers of complexity. And either those layers are not actively developed so their bugs don't get fixed, or they are (somewhat) actively developed so new bugs creep in.

Would be nice to realize that personal computer OSes are no longer something that makes money for anyone, and come up with a clean new standard one that will run on all personal computers (as opposed to the mobile/tablet and servers stuff) and then the hardware and application software makers have something stable to target.

 

[insecto]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

If I've taken anything away from this conversation it's that I actually don't want another 27" 5K display but rather a 27" 4K display. I've been looking to move on from this 2015 iMac model and at this point I've got an external webcam, an external microphone, as well as third-party keyboard and mouse combo. All I need now are some external speakers. If my takeaway is correct, the Studio Display would be as unappealing as the iMac screen has been, so the chances of getting a third-party display and the 'mid-range' desktop have gone up significantly. Or am I missing something here?

I go back and forth between a 5K iMac and a low-end 27-inch 4K Dell display with the UI scaled 200%. The iMac is obviously a better display, but I don't feel like I'm suffering on the 4K screen. It just means that I only have to zoom the browser to 110%, rather than 130%. It's Ubuntu vs. macOS, so it's not a direct comparison, but I feel like the bigger UI is easier to work with.

I ordered a nicer 32-inch 4K display to go with the Mac Studio that may arrive one day. I figure it means less browser zoom, easier-to-target UI elements and smaller font sizes in editors. It may end up feeling like playing with Duplo, but I have to give it a shot. The iMac feels just slightly cramped sometimes, so I'm not comfortable investing in the 27-inch Studio Display. If Apple comes out with a 30-32-inch 6K version in the future, I will definitely consider that at the time.

I have a 27" Dell 4K display that I run at "looks like 2560x1440" and find that works well. It does appear just a bit sharper at proper 2x scaling but the extra screen real estate is more than worth it to me and the UI feels too big at 1980x1080. I could easily see decreasing the effective resolution if and when my vision deteriorates though.

 

[SunRaven01]

I am of an age such that I find myself looking for ways to increase text size and let me tell you, the fact that Ars forums don't respect the settings in Safari for minimum font sizes is infuriating.

I can set the size of text in Finder windows to appear at 16. I can make the sidebar icons large. I can't change the size of the menu bar text along the top of the viewport without changing the entire resolution of the display? Maddening! I can't tell the System Preferences window to use text labels larger than the minuscule 8pt font that it appears to be using without changing the entire resolution of the display? That's insane, and frankly a disappointing shortcoming of the MacOS UI. There's no reason why those labels can't be made larger, and if it means reflowing the icons in the grid, well by gosh darn do that. I shouldn't have to resort to Zoom to be able read something like that. Let me tell the UI how big I want that text to be!

I don't want to give up the overall space on my monitor because I want TEXT to be bigger. Let me make the text bigger without shorting me on how many pixels I can use to divide up my windows. It's crazy to me that there isn't a way to make just the text bigger.

 

[karolus]

I am of an age such that I find myself looking for ways to increase text size and let me tell you, the fact that Ars forums don't respect the settings in Safari for minimum font sizes is infuriating.

I can set the size of text in Finder windows to appear at 16. I can make the sidebar icons large. I can't change the size of the menu bar text along the top of the viewport without changing the entire resolution of the display? Maddening! I can't tell the System Preferences window to use text labels larger than the minuscule 8pt font that it appears to be using without changing the entire resolution of the display? That's insane, and frankly a disappointing shortcoming of the MacOS UI. There's no reason why those labels can't be made larger, and if it means reflowing the icons in the grid, well by gosh darn do that. I shouldn't have to resort to Zoom to be able read something like that. Let me tell the UI how big I want that text to be!

I don't want to give up the overall space on my monitor because I want TEXT to be bigger. Let me make the text bigger without shorting me on how many pixels I can use to divide up my windows. It's crazy to me that there isn't a way to make just the text bigger.

Accessibility is a sore spot—and legal liability now. As a designer, I have to often drill this into stakeholders, and be the advocate for those dealing with disabilities.

Per viewing text larger on macOS—what about entering CMD + within your active browser tab/window? I just tried it in this page, and it did work to increase the type size without scaling anything else.

 

[Hap]

I can't change the size of the menu bar text along the top of the viewport without changing the entire resolution of the display? Maddening!

Under Accessibility, have you tried setting the Menu Bar to "Larger"?

 

[SunRaven01]

I can't change the size of the menu bar text along the top of the viewport without changing the entire resolution of the display? Maddening!

Under Accessibility, have you tried setting the Menu Bar to "Larger"?

It's a 2013 iMac, so I'm limited to Catalina. There's no option for Menu Bar in Accessibility.

Edit: let me forstall the inevitable "Well you need to upgrade." No shit. In fact, I'm waiting for a Mac Studio to be delivered next month. However, that's an incredibly privileged response, so before you chirp it at me (or anyone else), take a moment to listen to what people are trying to say, and recognize that your means are not the means available to everyone. For many people, "Just upgrade" isn't possible.

 

[SunRaven01]

Per viewing text larger on macOS—what about entering CMD + within your active browser tab/window? I just tried it in this page, and it did work to increase the type size without scaling anything else.

Yes, I am aware of this. That's not the point of my complaint though, which is that the forums don't respect the minimum text setting specified in Safari's preferences. (Blah blah old forum software -- I know already. Doesn't matter. Other websites do it too.) I went through the trouble of digging through the preferences to set my preferred minimum text size.

This is old, rehashed ground though, and it happens basically in every Mac forum across the internet Apple's approach in this area isn't the most consumer-first that it could be. I know the workarounds, but they shouldn't be workarounds, and Apple could do a lot more to make it first more consistent, and second more discoverable, especially given that it's not very uncommon for people to suggest that older parents, grandparents, or other family members pick up an Apple device for ease of use over Windows.

 

[toasterwaffle86]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

There's nothing wrong with 27" 4K at looks like 1920x1080. The pixels are physically larger (and if you sit close and have good sight you can see this), but you are running a perfect 2X and it's a hell of a lot better than people who buy 27" 1920x1080 monitors (which I see very, very often) for that same purpose.

I think the assumption in this thread became that people want that default 2560x1440 (and many of us do), but as with any assumption, it won't be correct in every situation.

This is old, rehashed ground though, and it happens basically in every Mac forum across the internet Apple's approach in this area isn't the most consumer-first that it could be. I know the workarounds, but they shouldn't be workarounds, and Apple could do a lot more to make it first more consistent, and second more discoverable, especially given that it's not very uncommon for people to suggest that older parents, grandparents, or other family members pick up an Apple device for ease of use over Windows.

I have deployed Macs to grandparents, and I just cheated and used a lower scaled resolution instead of messing with individual apps (with the exception of cmd + in the browser). With that being said, choosing to instead run the OS at the native 2X and change text size in apps is theoretically better as it means you effectively get more than a 2X scaling factor - i.e. even more rendered pixels for each letter of text.

 

[dal20402]

I have deployed Macs to grandparents, and I just cheated and used a lower scaled resolution instead of messing with individual apps (with the exception of cmd + in the browser). With that being said, choosing to instead run the OS at the native 2X and change text size in apps is theoretically better as it means you effectively get more than a 2X scaling factor - i.e. even more rendered pixels for each letter of text.

My 83-year-old mom uses a 2016 15" MBP (native resolution "looks like 1440x900") set to run at "looks like 1024x640." She swears up and down that it is the best computer screen of any sort that she has ever used, and adores the machine (which I gave her because I found 16 GB RAM inadequate for my needs). I think the macOS scaling approach is brilliant for users who need both content and interface to be bigger.

 

[SunRaven01]

I just cheated and used a lower scaled resolution instead of messing with individual apps (with the exception of cmd + in the browser). With that being said, choosing to instead run the OS at the native 2X and change text size in apps is theoretically better as it means you effectively get more than a 2X scaling factor - i.e. even more rendered pixels for each letter of text.

Running a scaled resolution on my current iMac makes unacceptably (well, unacceptable to me) fuzzy text. Running a scaled resolution blows up the size of everything - windows, chrome, and all. I don't want that. As an example, the System Preferences Displays pane is an un-resizable pane that is around 25% of the width of the monitor, and a little less than 30% of the height at the native resolution for this display. If I drop down to the next largest scaled resolution from native (native is 2650x1440, so if I drop to 2048x1152), the Displays pane blows up to be about 30% of the width and a little less than 25% of the height. I don't need the pane to be bigger. I don't need extra white space and fuzzy text. I want the text to be bigger, but still sharp. It's okay with me if nothing else in that pane changes size. The slider bar can be the same width. The picture of the iMac can be the same size. The excessive amounts of white space around everything can stay the same size. Just let me tell the text to be bigger.

I want sharp, large text, and there's no way to get that in that pane. Your choices are tiny sharp text or large fuzzy text. The text in the System Preferences pane is tiny (and low contrast, c'mon Apple). Dropping the resolution it's now slightly-less tiny, more fuzzy, and there's more space around the very-slightly larger icons.

None of that is an improvement. None of that is helpful. I'm certainly interested to see what improvements Monterey and the Studio Display can bring, but from where I'm sitting, Apple's answer to "I want larger text, and only larger text" is crap. Doesn't mean I love Apple any less, because I don't. I have zero interest in using Windows or Android. I'm an avowed Apple hugger here. It's Apple love all day long.

But fuzzy text ain't where it is, and there's room for improvement in this area.

 

[toasterwaffle86]

I just cheated and used a lower scaled resolution instead of messing with individual apps (with the exception of cmd + in the browser). With that being said, choosing to instead run the OS at the native 2X and change text size in apps is theoretically better as it means you effectively get more than a 2X scaling factor - i.e. even more rendered pixels for each letter of text.

Running a scaled resolution on my current iMac makes unacceptably (well, unacceptable to me) fuzzy text. Running a scaled resolution blows up the size of everything - windows, chrome, and all. I don't want that. As an example, the System Preferences Displays pane is an un-resizable pane that is around 25% of the width of the monitor, and a little less than 30% of the height at the native resolution for this display. If I drop down to the next largest scaled resolution from native (native is 2650x1440, so if I drop to 2048x1152), the Displays pane blows up to be about 30% of the width and a little less than 25% of the height. I don't need the pane to be bigger. I don't need extra white space and fuzzy text. I want the text to be bigger, but still sharp. It's okay with me if nothing else in that pane changes size. The slider bar can be the same width. The picture of the iMac can be the same size. The excessive amounts of white space around everything can stay the same size. Just let me tell the text to be bigger.

I want sharp, large text, and there's no way to get that in that pane. Your choices are tiny sharp text or large fuzzy text. The text in the System Preferences pane is tiny (and low contrast, c'mon Apple). Dropping the resolution it's now slightly-less tiny, more fuzzy, and there's more space around the very-slightly larger icons.

None of that is an improvement. None of that is helpful. I'm certainly interested to see what improvements Monterey and the Studio Display can bring, but from where I'm sitting, Apple's answer to "I want larger text, and only larger text" is crap. Doesn't mean I love Apple any less, because I don't. I have zero interest in using Windows or Android. I'm an avowed Apple hugger here. It's Apple love all day long.

But fuzzy text ain't where it is, and there's room for improvement in this area.

It's interesting that iOS has a system-wide text scaling option that does exactly that (and always runs native) whereas MacOS doesn't.

 

[gabemaroz]

I want sharp, large text, and there's no way to get that in that pane. Your choices are tiny sharp text or large fuzzy text. The text in the System Preferences pane is tiny (and low contrast, c'mon Apple). Dropping the resolution it's now slightly-less tiny, more fuzzy, and there's more space around the very-slightly larger icons.

TinkerTool does have options for adjusting System Wide font sizes. The author has versions that are compatible all the way back to the OS X beta. It's not perfect, but have you tried that. After the suggestions above about increasing the menu bar and utilizing TinkerTool I'm now running my 5K at default resolution but with lots of fonts cranked up.

 

[karolus]

I just cheated and used a lower scaled resolution instead of messing with individual apps (with the exception of cmd + in the browser). With that being said, choosing to instead run the OS at the native 2X and change text size in apps is theoretically better as it means you effectively get more than a 2X scaling factor - i.e. even more rendered pixels for each letter of text.

Running a scaled resolution on my current iMac makes unacceptably (well, unacceptable to me) fuzzy text. Running a scaled resolution blows up the size of everything - windows, chrome, and all. I don't want that. As an example, the System Preferences Displays pane is an un-resizable pane that is around 25% of the width of the monitor, and a little less than 30% of the height at the native resolution for this display. If I drop down to the next largest scaled resolution from native (native is 2650x1440, so if I drop to 2048x1152), the Displays pane blows up to be about 30% of the width and a little less than 25% of the height. I don't need the pane to be bigger. I don't need extra white space and fuzzy text. I want the text to be bigger, but still sharp. It's okay with me if nothing else in that pane changes size. The slider bar can be the same width. The picture of the iMac can be the same size. The excessive amounts of white space around everything can stay the same size. Just let me tell the text to be bigger.

I want sharp, large text, and there's no way to get that in that pane. Your choices are tiny sharp text or large fuzzy text. The text in the System Preferences pane is tiny (and low contrast, c'mon Apple). Dropping the resolution it's now slightly-less tiny, more fuzzy, and there's more space around the very-slightly larger icons.

None of that is an improvement. None of that is helpful. I'm certainly interested to see what improvements Monterey and the Studio Display can bring, but from where I'm sitting, Apple's answer to "I want larger text, and only larger text" is crap. Doesn't mean I love Apple any less, because I don't. I have zero interest in using Windows or Android. I'm an avowed Apple hugger here. It's Apple love all day long.

But fuzzy text ain't where it is, and there's room for improvement in this area.

It's interesting that iOS has a system-wide text scaling option that does exactly that (and always runs native) whereas MacOS doesn't.

May have to do with the respective timeframes when macOS and iOS were being conceived. Accessibility, sadly, was often an afterthought, until relatively recently. Great strides have been made, but there's still a long way to go.

 

[hestermofet]

What is astounding is just how bad the Precision is in the details. The biggest PC manufacturer using the processor from the oldest Processor manufacturer using the most supported OS in the world...and it can't sleep.

That's not exclusive to Wintel. Apple's stuff is just as bad in various ways. And possibly I'm mistaken because I don't use Windows much, but it seems to me that at least Microsoft's software is less buggy than Apple's. Not that it works better, but at least it's working poorly as designed rather than because of bugs.

Everyone has a blindspot for the things they love. There are a lot of things about Apple products that are really puzzling oversights, but maybe they don't matter to the people who post effusively about how awesome Apple products are. They do matter to some people, though.

The inability to scale text system-wide is a pretty big oversight, IMO. Apple's scaling may look better, but Windows' is more usable for people who have a hard time reading high resolution screens. YMMV of course, and it's all IME. It's especially puzzling because iOS gets this so, so right and it's frustrating that Mac OS can't do the same thing. I have no reservations about recommending an iPhone to someone with poor eyesight, because the fix is so easy in software. But there is a lot of hesitation recommending the same WRT to Mac OS. I'd rather direct someone to Windows.

I personally don't think Windows software works poorly because it's designed that way, but I'm used to using Windows since Windows 3.1. But again, that's just how I personally feel, you can feel different. If you are a newer user, or are unfamiliar with the software, it will obviously be confusing and unintuitive. But the same is true for Mac OS, IME. Unfamiliarity with something always makes it hard. I'm a very advanced user. I stopped using Mac OS daily around Sierra, and picked it up again with Big Sur. I am sooooo lost half the time. It's a bit humiliating because in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm learning to use a computer for the first time, again.

Meanwhile, I've been using iOS all along, and feel perfectly fluent and comfortable in it. Though if someone had a similar gap, they'd be similarly lost as I am with Mac OS right now.

I think the adage that "MacOS is easier to use" was certainly true back in the classic Mac OS 7/8/9 days, but it's not really true any more. The OS (and any modern OS) is just so complex these days that you really need a lot of time to get acclimatized to it. This is neither a benefit nor a drawback, it's just reality. Like any complex system, whether it's driving a car, learning to cook, or learning how to use Mac OS or Windows, it takes time to get the hang of things.

Edit: let me forstall the inevitable "Well you need to upgrade." No shit. In fact, I'm waiting for a Mac Studio to be delivered next month. However, that's an incredibly privileged response, so before you chirp it at me (or anyone else), take a moment to listen to what people are trying to say, and recognize that your means are not the means available to everyone. For many people, "Just upgrade" isn't possible.

Testify, brother. This "very helpful advice" frustrates me to no end. Some people on the Internet seem to be physically allergic to running old software, because they apparently believe they'll instantly be hacked by all kinds of baddies if they are even one version out of date. Being on the latest version has somewhat become Religion in the Apple world.

 

[Matey-O]

Meanwhile, I've been using iOS all along, and feel perfectly fluent and comfortable in it. Though if someone had a similar gap, they'd be similarly lost as I am with Mac OS right now.

I think the adage that "MacOS is easier to use" was certainly true back in the classic Mac OS 7/8/9 days, but it's not really true any more. The OS (and any modern OS) is just so complex these days that you really need a lot of time to get acclimatized to it. This is neither a benefit nor a drawback, it's just reality. Like any complex system, whether it's driving a car, learning to cook, or learning how to use Mac OS or Windows, it takes time to get the hang of things.

I think all OS entrants are reaching feature parity...Windows 11 (It's windows 10, with a centered taskbar!) is a good place to spend time, and iPhone used to be 'simple and intuitive' and then the power button stopped being a power button (it's power + volume down)...and the menus that sweep in from the sides, and the long-hold to bring up context menus and the auto-swap headphones to what I think is the right audio source.

I'm happily amazed at the speed and battery life and apparent gaming chops of the new MBP...but good god, I would expect nothing less from a $2500 hardware purchase.

 

[Robaba]

What is astounding is just how bad the Precision is in the details. The biggest PC manufacturer using the processor from the oldest Processor manufacturer using the most supported OS in the world...and it can't sleep.

That's not exclusive to Wintel. Apple's stuff is just as bad in various ways. And possibly I'm mistaken because I don't use Windows much, but it seems to me that at least Microsoft's software is less buggy than Apple's. Not that it works better, but at least it's working poorly as designed rather than because of bugs.

Apple attacked computing from the bottom up (how do we get our phone processor to scale) precisely BECAUSE what Intel was producing had a TON of technical debt it couldn't scale past, and a power budget that was horrific.

Actually as I was reading the earlier part of your post I was thinking the same thing about software, both on the Windows and Mac sides: it's just decades of layers upon layers of complexity. And either those layers are not actively developed so their bugs don't get fixed, or they are (somewhat) actively developed so new bugs creep in.

Would be nice to realize that personal computer OSes are no longer something that makes money for anyone, and come up with a clean new standard one that will run on all personal computers (as opposed to the mobile/tablet and servers stuff) and then the hardware and application software makers have something stable to target.

Both Apple and Microsoft have tried that (clean room os’s) but have failed spectacularly due to the need for backward compatibility. The closest Apple got to a successful “new” os was iOS, but that’s really just a stripped down MacOS (NeXT). But frankly it’s all a fools errand, since whatever os you come up with will have to evolve over time, it will invariably collect cruft. It’s entropy in reverse.

 

[dal20402]

I'm not quite sure what this discussion has to do anymore with the gap between the 16GB/M1 Mac mini and the 32GB/Max base Mac Studio. But Apple has in fact been considerably better than Microsoft about stripping layers of kludge and bloat out of the legacy OS when feasible. macOS is insanely complex and full of weird legacy problems, and yet there is still much less cruft in it than there is in Windows.

 

[CommanderJameson]

The inability to scale text system-wide is a pretty big oversight, IMO. Apple's scaling may look better, but Windows' is more usable for people who have a hard time reading high resolution screens.

I have found a way of improving my perceived screen quality on Windows 11 and my 4K monitor - AMD's Virtual Super Resolution.

Windows renders the desktop at 5K, and the GPU scales it to 4K. I can choose the Windows scaling value I want (even 100%, if I want to need a magnifying glass to read things), and I can have virtually (ha ha ha, I kill me) pristine text rendering, which is what I really like.

I know this isn't particularly germane to this thread, but I thought it'd be of mild interest.

 

[Jade]

I'm not quite sure what this discussion has to do anymore with the gap between the 16GB/M1 Mac mini and the 32GB/Max base Mac Studio. But Apple has in fact been considerably better than Microsoft about stripping layers of kludge and bloat out of the legacy OS when feasible. macOS is insanely complex and full of weird legacy problems, and yet there is still much less cruft in it than there is in Windows.

All xMac threads eventually devolve into a grievance thread about the Mac in general.

 

[ScifiGeek]

All xMac threads eventually devolve into a grievance thread about the Mac in general.

I don't see wanting an M1-Pro Mini/Studio has anything to do with an xMac. This really is just about a machine in the middle slightly better than the current M1-Mini.

The xMac was really about getting a DIY style PC mini-Tower with MacOS, IOW, user upgradable everything. User upgradable storage, upgradable RAM, upgradable GPU, heck maybe even upgradable CPU.

We do see echoes of the xMac upgrade grievances, but they are in some of the main Mac stories with people moaning about the soldered in RAM, or non standard SSD, those are the closest inheritors of xMac grievance sentiment today.

 

[iljitsch]

All xMac threads eventually devolve into a grievance thread about the Mac in general.

No, just the ones that I participate in.

 

[iljitsch]

Both Apple and Microsoft have tried that (clean room os’s) but have failed spectacularly due to the need for backward compatibility.

Ah, but that was before the age of virtualization!

But frankly it’s all a fools errand, since whatever os you come up with will have to evolve over time, it will invariably collect cruft. It’s entropy in reverse.

Well, getting rid of craft every few decades or so would still be helpful.

But many things have progressed a lot in the past decades, and we can now do things that weren't possible before. We're not going to get back to a simpler time with computing, as a lot of complexity is there for a reason. Such as keeping all the world's best online criminals away from your equally online bank account. We didn't have to worry about that in 1985.

And yes, things will evolve. But lower layers of the software stack no longer have to be all things to all people: on the one hand evolve to keep up or improve, and on the other hand stay stable to support existing software. It's now trivial to provide to each app the runtime environment that best suits its needs. As time goes on and vulnerabilities are found, that runtime would have to become more and more sandboxed. But apps that just do their thing locally on a machine could keep running as well as they always did indefinitely. While your bank will only let you use the (almost?) latest browsers to log into your account.

So what we need is just a very tight core OS and virtualization system, and then pour all the crap you want, going all the way back to CP/M, and also including all known versions of Windows and MacOS, into containers along with their own particular dependencies.

I guess what I'm saying is that I want to run my Mac applications in Docker.

 

[Deleted member 397475]

The next M1 Mini will probably automatically be M1 Pro equivalent if you wait long enough.

 

[ScifiGeek]

The next M1 Mini will probably automatically be M1 Pro equivalent if you wait long enough.

Yeah, M2 Mini comes out, and Intel Mini gets retired. M1 Mini might stay as low end Mini.