> Subpixel antialiasing is going to be problematic anyway on newer displays that don't necessarily feature a plain RGBRGB (or similar) subpixel arrangement.

This will then mean making the subpixel anti-aliasing algorithm aware of different subpixel layouts. And this ought to be done anyway, because most anti-aliasing is usually at least somewhat hardware-aware. In my opinion, regardless of how subpixels are laid out, more resolution is always better.

There was a quick option to change subpixel layout way-back-when in Linux (GNOME 2.x series), eg. a quick search gave me a screenshot at this page: https://askubuntu.com/questions/88528/how-to-switch-on-sub-p...

Today it seems it's hidden as a dconf option:

  $ dconf read /org/gnome/desktop/interface/font-antialiasing
  'rgba'

But this is an issue that applies to VA panels as well (cheaper than IPS, worse viewing angles, but better contrast ratio), and I have a 27" 4k VA screen that works just fine with it turned on in Linux — text is so much clearer with it on than off, and attaching a MacBook to a 4k screen at 27" or 32" IPS makes me hate MacOS for killing subpixel rendering off.

As for "retina" resolutions, I've tried 24" at 4K as soon as it came out (with that Dell monitor that required 2 DP 1.1 connections for 60Hz IIRC), and turning subpixel rendering off made text and lines jagged — that was ~190 ppi at a normal viewing distance with vision corrected to better than 20/20 (which is what I usually have — can't really work without glasses anyway, and worse correction leaves me with headaches). For the record, 5k at 27" and 6k at 32" is roughly ~216 ppi, so not much better than ~190 ppi: subpixel rendering probably achieves 2x the increase in text clarity for those not sensitive to colour fringing (I am not).

So, subpixel rendering is really not an issue on any displays, but Apple will happily tell you what's the limit of your vision and upsell you on their monitors.

Fontconfig on Linux has an option to set the subpixel layout, though currently only rgb, but, vrgb and vbgr are supported. Maybe this could be extended for OLED monitors

For this Windows had ClearType tuner since before PenTile existed.

I disagree: I am not susceptible to colour fringing, and I can tell if subpixel rendering is on or off on 24" 4k screens (~190 ppi) at a regular or even further viewing distance (~70cm/27") — I specifically got that display hoping for subpixel rendering to be turned off.

Haven't tried Apple's big "retina" screens but considering they are ~215 ppi, pretty confident 10% increase in PPI wouldn't make a difference that subpixel rendering does. Laptop screens have higher resolution, but haven't really paid attention to whether M1 Air 13" or 4K 14" X1 Carbon work for me without subpixel rendering (I prefer to be docked).

Before anyone jumps on "you've got incredible vision": I wear either glasses or contacts, and with that my vision corrects to better than 20/20 — slightly lower correction induces headaches for me. Without glasses, I'd probably be happy with 640x480 on 32" so they are kind of a must. :)

On medium-DPI screens, I find that subpixel antialiasing make fonts significantly less blurry than grayscale antialiasing without causing obvious color fringing. On actual low-DPI screens, bitmap fonts are IMO the only really usable option. (YMMV, but I have mild astigmatism and use glasses.)

> They don't sell anything without hiDPI for quite some time now (a decade?). Making their software look good on obsolete screens is understandably not a priority for them. And if you are happy to plug in something that old, you are kind of signaling that you don't really care about what things look like anyway.

My apologies for buying 1080p monitors that had no issues with neither my Linux, nor my Windows computers, I guess. I can understand that they might not care about what I care about (supporting the hardware that I have, rather than going out of my way to buy a new monitor just because of a new computer deciding not to work with it well), I'd argue that maybe that's even fine because it's their device and ecosystem, but jeez, that tone is super uncalled for.

As an aside, I use the M1 MacBook at a scaled resolution of 1440x900 because anything finer is hard for me to see. That's a visible PPI of around ~130 because of the 13.3 inch screen. A 1080p monitor of 21.5 inch diagonal size would have a physical PPI of around ~100, so that's around 80% of the pixel density. That's not to say that the panel on the MacBook is not much nicer, but rather that with software anti-aliasing it could definitely be okay. Somehow I don't want to buy a new monitor just for the weekends when I visit the countryside.

Reality distortion field is strong with this one.

I have a perfectly good normie dpi 25x16 display which is extra crisp on windows. On macOS I had to install betterdisplay just to make it not miserably bad; it’s just plain bad now. As far as I can tell Apple removed the feature because of greed and laziness.

There are plenty of non-hiDPI screens from other vendors on the market, especially “large” screens that are “medium” in price. In an office you’re not always free to order a screen from any vendor you want (due to their framework agreements), unless of course you’re paying for that hardware privately.

I care about how things look, and have spent more time than I want to admit configuring MacOS apps to look good on the screens available to me. I just don’t care enough to buy an expensive office screen with my own cash if my employer can’t provide one.

> you don't really care about what things look like anyway.

That statement has no connection to the premise.

There are multiple reasons to use an old screen besides the mentioned reason of not caring for x.

It's funny to read that thread (from 6 years ago, wow time flies) and see complaints that a lot of people have low-dpi external displays. But I think some of the rebuttal comments in that article rang true even then, and certainly do now: if you are spending money on an Apple laptop or workstation, Apple is going to expect you to spend money on hi-dpi external monitors.

X11 handles mixed DPI fine. Monitor configuration GUI for DE don't support the required option however both X and nvidia-settings do