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I remember the initial Windows release of Safari. Apple insisted on doing their own font rendering, and the result was blurry headache-inducing text.


Wasn't that a Windows issue, though? I feel like font-rendering on Windows, in general, is far inferior to font-rendering and aliasing on the Mac. Especially with the new HiDPI displays popping up, Apple's stuff looks far better to me than any display I've ever seen on Windows.


font-rendering on Windows, in general, is far inferior to font-rendering and aliasing on the Mac

That's because Windows has to deal with so many more differences in hardware. E.g. look at these pixel-level variations in LCD screens. http://www.digitalversus.com/tv-television/screen-technology... I don't understand how it would be possible to support subpixel rendering on some of those. IIRC when I last used Windows (XP?) it let you choose from 8 different schemes. But that still wouldn't nearly be enough!

OS X and IOS can be tweaked to support a much smaller subset of that mess.


They actually went back on that decision because Windows users complained so much that the text was antialiased properly.


That's right, the anti-aliasing didn't look good to me either. I'm sure it comes out very nicely in print.


That's interesting because 'back in the day' the IT department accidentally installed safari on my win XP box and as a long time mac user I thought 'finally some font rendering done right'. I guess it's down to taste or it perhaps it didn't work well for screens with low pixel density or people who like really small text and ui settings.


People like what they're used to. I'm not in the least surprised that you happened to be a former Mac user...




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