Well, I just recently got the MacBook Pro (as in 3 weeks) and I really like Apple hardware, and I really liked the Mac OS as an operating system, but as my job requires staring at code all day long - I have got the Boot Camp, and added Windows Vista business, and Office.
I have booted into it, and now I could compare it side to side, as other folks in my small ofice are all using Macs. Both on the LCD on the notebook, and on an attached 2407WFP-HC - those new ClearType optimized fonts that come with Vista and Office just blew Mac ones out of the water. everybody agreed, though not everybody cared - and they love their Macs.
Now, Vista seem to heat up the MacBook considerably more - guess when on battery I will boot into Mac. Hope they fix it with Leopard bootcamp drivers.
I understand why people dealing with any graphical content prefer Mac - everything but the plain text fonts is head and shoulders superior on the Mac. Alas, I see a lot of plain text fonts…
This is an interesting debate. In IE7, apparently Microsoft changed the way text is rendered, because it isn’t as crisp as it used to be. I don’t know if it is just a blur effect, or it actually uses subpixel information to calculate the color of each pixel. I have noticed this in Office 2007, too.
So Microsoft is taking steps toward the Apple aproach.
The thing is that Apple fonts are TOO blurry, but I think they have the right aproach. They don’t just put whole pixels on screen, they actually render the text acording to the font face, using subpixel information.
For me, the perfect solution would be the Apple one, but with slightly increased contrast. This would be a nice compromise.
I also vastly prefer the Safari example. Perhaps it’s subconscious: if you were to say “one of these is from an Apple browser, one is from a Microsoft browser,” without labeling them, I would instantly be able to tell you which was which. To me, the top one looks like a Mac and the bottom looks like Windows, and I don’t care much for Windows.
The text on top looks soft, yet full. The text on bottom looks anorexic and weak.
From every angle and distance, Safari’s rendering is superior and it always has been. MS followed Apple into the WYSIWYG interface, then aquafied XP, and then had to create ClearType to catch up on font rendering.
“To me the MS fonts look “Cleaner” but the Apple fonts are easier to read. At the end of the day, I’ll take “easier to read” since I stare at this damn monitor all day, the less eye strain the better.”
Had this discussion last year. On a Mac site. With just Mac users. It took a while for me to realise that I was as wrong as a George Ou. Because this is subjective. There were some people in that discussion who found the fonts blurry, but I honestly couldn’t understand what they were talking about.
I think it may have to do with the way some people read/percieve the letter/words. In the Mac way, the individual letter shapes and kerning are preserved, and this means that the word shapes are accurate. So I don’t see a blurry ‘i’ because I’m not looking at individual letter, I’m looking at the whole word.
To me, (I class myself as a Mac user, even though I probably spend more time in front of Windows at work), Windows font rendering seems clunky and old fashioned. But the point is that this is my subjective opinion, and while I see clear (Mac) and jaggedy clunky messed up (Windows), someone else will see fuzzy blurred weak (Mac) and crisp readable (Windows).
Um… I think the font in your Safari picture is messed up.
The url below links to a picture of the same search in my safari browser. Its font looks much cleaner. http://tinyurl.com/yta5fq
All of this back and forth about which approach is better would be put to rest if people would only get educated about typography. At typical screen resolution, the Mac font rendering is more accurate, and since people read word-shapes, NOT individual letters, it’s superior, not because it renders individual glyphs more accurately, but because it preserves correct kerning and leading as well.
Read:
Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works (Adobe Press)
pp. 115-119
To me the MS fonts look “Cleaner” but the Apple fonts are easier to read. At the end of the day, I’ll take “easier to read” since I stare at this damn monitor all day, the less eye strain the better.
where are you with the “12:18pm” time stamp. In the land of proper time it’s “20:18pm”.
0r perhaps you can’t read that because your sub-pixel rendering makes the a look like an e?
Why do so many people think the Safari rendering is blurry? Up close, far away, normal reading distance I just don’t see either the Safari or the IE 7 rendering as blurry. I do however find the IE 7 rendering harder on the eyes. The IE 7 text is so spindly it seems as if whoever was writing were afraid we might actually see it. Also noticed a preponderance of commenters have stated that even though the Safari rendering seems blurrier it is easier to read. Hmmm.
Victor, just above me is totally right. There’s not a single professional designer who prefers ClearType over MacOSX font rendering. ClearType’s characters spacing is a total horror!
I spend most of my 8-hour workday in front of a 22" LCD staring at XP. It is godawful having to look at MS’s font rendering. I always find relief when I come home and get to use our Macs, where the readability of text is better. So, for me, it’s not a matter of prefering the style I’m most accustomed to, as that would be Windows, but it would be Mac, which is plain easier on my over 50 near-sighted eyes (had to add bifocals about 10 years ago).
Look at the ‘S’ in the word Sub-Pixel! The ‘ClearType’ one is jagged and the font is unrecognizable. OS X, for me, hits the right balance between anti-aliasing, keeps text legible, and keeps the design intact.
I switched to Mac recently, and whenever I use my computer I come away with deep furrow lines in my brow because I’ve been squinting to distinguish mac fonts =\ is there any way to change it?
“So I don’t see a blurry ‘i’ because I’m not looking at individual letter, I’m looking at the whole word.”
That’s very telling. So perhaps people that like ClearType/Mac-Type aren’t slightly color-blind after all, but rather they just aren’t really looking at the letters. If I try to just sort of skim over the Mac-Type I find that it is possible to ignore the horrible fuzzy discoloration, but it takes a lot of concentration to only look at the forest and ignore the trees.
Another vote for Apple’s font rendering. Long have I toiled to implement a similar font rendering on Firefox, using Fontlab manual tweaking. No, it just can’t be done. Or rather, it can, but it won’t look half as good as Safari. The fonts all come out looking hideous one way or another. I must be one of the oddballs who is driven insane by pink and green-edged and jagged looking fonts on Windows, that he’s willing to put in hours of work to come up with a fix. If only there’s a way to override Xp with the Safari font rendering, I’d die a happy Windows user.
I personally think Apple’s rendering is much better.
However there are few points I want to point out:
OSX Rendering: BEST FOR MEDIA WORK
Windows Rendering: BEST FOR USAGE
OSX rendering is emulated to make sure that what you see on your screen is what you get from a printer which is crucial for media work.
Windows renders it WRONGLY. It renders it wrongly to make reading easier. SO these are different aspects we have to think about. Macs are tailored for media work. XPs come out preinstalled on almsot every computer… (which I hate) but anyways. You have to understand this: OSX IS the right rendering… It just doesn’t seem “right” since you’ve been stuck with Windows like ‘forever’… Its proven windows squashes the lettering to make it really easy to read, hence “their” ClearType technology they ripped off Wozinak when Apple computers started. I personally like OSX’s rendering more for reading, too though…
