Why do Mac and Unix GUIs look better than Windows?
August 20, 2004 8:02 AM Subscribe
Why do Macs and Unix GUI's seem to display graphics better than a Windows OS? Just the default backgrounds and such that are included, not any photos or anything. They seem to have more depth or are more crisp, or something. I've talked to a few co-workers about this and they all seem to agree, but don't have any answers. Is this an optical illusion, am I just seeing things?
The only difference I've ever noticed between displays is the monitor and the video card driving it (usually colour quality.) I've never noticed any difference in crispness or quality between Mac, Unix, or PC. My Unix experience is limited to SGI (IRIX) and Sun and is not as extensive as my PC and Mac experience/exposure.
Of course, there are things you can do, such as setting Clear Type in Windows to improve the display. It's not on by default.
posted by juiceCake at 8:22 AM on August 20, 2004
Of course, there are things you can do, such as setting Clear Type in Windows to improve the display. It's not on by default.
posted by juiceCake at 8:22 AM on August 20, 2004
Response by poster: Thanks for the responses. I've noticed this at least with linux (in my initial question, should've been linux not unix) vs. Windows on the same exact hardware configuration, so I know it's not hardware. Of course, linix vs. mac, I'm unable to compare on the same hardware, especially since I don't have a Mac.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 8:35 AM on August 20, 2004
posted by TuxHeDoh at 8:35 AM on August 20, 2004
What happens when you move one of theLinux backgrounds over to the Windows side? Does the image look worse?
posted by Space Coyote at 8:42 AM on August 20, 2004
posted by Space Coyote at 8:42 AM on August 20, 2004
I too think it's the text anti-aliasing. Whenever I look at someone's Windows screen and see all the jaggies, I can't believe they choose to leave Clear Type off and don't mind the way text looks. I've searched several times, but I can't find any data on what percentage of Windows users are using anti-aliasing when browsing the web.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:14 AM on August 20, 2004
posted by planetkyoto at 9:14 AM on August 20, 2004
dithering. I used to have a hardware X server that would only do 256 colors, but would do so looking just about as good as windows looks in 16bit color mode.
Here's an extreme example. Original image of some laptops and coffee on my desk, then two images with the pallet reduced to 256 colors. One with dithering, one without.
planetkyoto: text antialiasing wouldn't affect the background or other images. And I thought cleartype was for LCD displays only? afaik cleartype is the same thing as subpixel antialiasing, which makes use of the fact that a single pixel on an LCD display is made of of a red dot, a blue dot, and a green dot, which are uniquely addressable.
posted by duckstab at 9:46 AM on August 20, 2004
Here's an extreme example. Original image of some laptops and coffee on my desk, then two images with the pallet reduced to 256 colors. One with dithering, one without.
planetkyoto: text antialiasing wouldn't affect the background or other images. And I thought cleartype was for LCD displays only? afaik cleartype is the same thing as subpixel antialiasing, which makes use of the fact that a single pixel on an LCD display is made of of a red dot, a blue dot, and a green dot, which are uniquely addressable.
posted by duckstab at 9:46 AM on August 20, 2004
Look, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but aesthetics and usability are totally different.
Microsoft spent a *LOT* of money "stealing" ideas from various usability studies. That's why things on windows look so gray, drab, and overall, very unappealing. Because, guess what, just like a corolla is far more usable than a Ferrari, it's also ugly as sin (compared).
That's not to say that OS X sucks, *but* it is to say that more time was spent on making it appealing as opposed to usable. (*)
(*) Prime example being the unlabelled coloured dots in a windows' title bar that, well, non OS X users can't even guess at what they do until they push them. They do look nice, though...
posted by shepd at 10:09 AM on August 20, 2004
Microsoft spent a *LOT* of money "stealing" ideas from various usability studies. That's why things on windows look so gray, drab, and overall, very unappealing. Because, guess what, just like a corolla is far more usable than a Ferrari, it's also ugly as sin (compared).
That's not to say that OS X sucks, *but* it is to say that more time was spent on making it appealing as opposed to usable. (*)
(*) Prime example being the unlabelled coloured dots in a windows' title bar that, well, non OS X users can't even guess at what they do until they push them. They do look nice, though...
posted by shepd at 10:09 AM on August 20, 2004
I can't get the damn text smoothing to stay turned on on my Win2K installation. It's a laptop, so maybe it's turning it back off because of the LCD.
I wish someone would hack ClearType into Win2k.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:16 AM on August 20, 2004
I wish someone would hack ClearType into Win2k.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:16 AM on August 20, 2004
Prime example being the unlabelled coloured dots in a windows' title bar that, well, non OS X users can't even guess at what they do until they push them.
Kind of like the unlabeled buttons on a Windows window's title bar that you can't guess at what they do until you push them? (Well, I guess they have tooltips now, but they didn't originally.)
posted by kindall at 10:22 AM on August 20, 2004
Kind of like the unlabeled buttons on a Windows window's title bar that you can't guess at what they do until you push them? (Well, I guess they have tooltips now, but they didn't originally.)
posted by kindall at 10:22 AM on August 20, 2004
holy crack smoke juiceCake! YTF don't they turn on Clear Type by default? I think the readability of my work desktop just improved by, say, 300%.
Thanks!
posted by Fezboy! at 11:17 AM on August 20, 2004
Thanks!
posted by Fezboy! at 11:17 AM on August 20, 2004
Well, kindall, most people know "x" is a symbol for death or pain, hence old cartoons changing eyes to Xs for dead characters.
_ looks like a taskbar, and that's what it does. The double square one is a stretch to describe. I guess there's only so much room in the boxes to make descriptions.
All I know is that green yellow and red look like a stop light to me. And, out of that, only the red one makes sense (I *think* the red button kills the application, right?).
Feel free to describe the colours in a way that the colour matckes the buttons' use, though. Maybe I've missed it.
From this, it appears:
- Green makes a program fullscreen
- Yellow makes a program minimized
- Red kills a program
I dunno about you, but I expected green to make a program go faster, and a yellow one to make it go slower. That's what yellow and green mean to me.
>YTF don't they turn on Clear Type by default?
ClearType is made for LCDs. Since most users don't have an LCD, turning it on by default makes no sense.
If you like how it looks on your monitor, well, hey, whatever works for you. It *shouldn't* look better, unless you choose the boring font smoothing option. Cleartype should cause the pixels surrounding text to be different colours to make it "blend" on an LCD (since on an LCD you can somewhat guarantee what colour will be beside a pixel as they are defined like that. On a CRT, that's not possible).
posted by shepd at 11:34 AM on August 20, 2004
_ looks like a taskbar, and that's what it does. The double square one is a stretch to describe. I guess there's only so much room in the boxes to make descriptions.
All I know is that green yellow and red look like a stop light to me. And, out of that, only the red one makes sense (I *think* the red button kills the application, right?).
Feel free to describe the colours in a way that the colour matckes the buttons' use, though. Maybe I've missed it.
From this, it appears:
- Green makes a program fullscreen
- Yellow makes a program minimized
- Red kills a program
I dunno about you, but I expected green to make a program go faster, and a yellow one to make it go slower. That's what yellow and green mean to me.
>YTF don't they turn on Clear Type by default?
ClearType is made for LCDs. Since most users don't have an LCD, turning it on by default makes no sense.
If you like how it looks on your monitor, well, hey, whatever works for you. It *shouldn't* look better, unless you choose the boring font smoothing option. Cleartype should cause the pixels surrounding text to be different colours to make it "blend" on an LCD (since on an LCD you can somewhat guarantee what colour will be beside a pixel as they are defined like that. On a CRT, that's not possible).
posted by shepd at 11:34 AM on August 20, 2004
Ahhh! Maybe I've been using regular Windows too long, but I just turned on Clear Type and it hurts my eyes and doesn't look right. Maybe I just need to get used to it having never used it before.
posted by jmd82 at 11:41 AM on August 20, 2004
posted by jmd82 at 11:41 AM on August 20, 2004
There's a Cleartype tuning wizard here. Needs IE as it installs a custom control. It might help.
posted by Flat Feet Pete at 11:59 AM on August 20, 2004
posted by Flat Feet Pete at 11:59 AM on August 20, 2004
I dunno about you, but I expected green to make a program go faster, and a yellow one to make it go slower. That's what yellow and green mean to me.
Really? Was it the first time you ever used a computer?
posted by jeb at 12:02 PM on August 20, 2004
Really? Was it the first time you ever used a computer?
posted by jeb at 12:02 PM on August 20, 2004
Oh, come, jeb. Surely you must acknowledge the red/yellow/green colour coding is just a little obscure.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:54 PM on August 20, 2004
posted by five fresh fish at 12:54 PM on August 20, 2004
>Really? Was it the first time you ever used a computer?
No, but it was the second time I ever used a Mac. Considering my 286 had a turbo button, and since the first mac I used had Classic MacOS on it, I figured Macs totally sucked arse and so might therefore have turbo type options from the era when PCs totally sucked, too.
I found out they're actually decent with OS X. However, I'm still completely confounded by a lot of OS X conventions (the accordion taskbar thingy sorta freaks me out, for example). I'm sure if I owned a Mac I'd get used to them in no time. However... I can't afford one that's within 25% of the speed of my work PC that includes OS X (and runs it well). Oh well.
posted by shepd at 2:18 PM on August 20, 2004
No, but it was the second time I ever used a Mac. Considering my 286 had a turbo button, and since the first mac I used had Classic MacOS on it, I figured Macs totally sucked arse and so might therefore have turbo type options from the era when PCs totally sucked, too.
I found out they're actually decent with OS X. However, I'm still completely confounded by a lot of OS X conventions (the accordion taskbar thingy sorta freaks me out, for example). I'm sure if I owned a Mac I'd get used to them in no time. However... I can't afford one that's within 25% of the speed of my work PC that includes OS X (and runs it well). Oh well.
posted by shepd at 2:18 PM on August 20, 2004
I do a lot of photo work on my mac and PCs and I've only been using macs for about two years now.
Simply put, graphics and images look much better on a mac, and I've noticed that the mac is much more forgiving on underexposed photographs and subtle graphics in general. The technical reason for this is the gamma being different between the two, and the ability of mac hardware to do colors and contrast at a higher level, because Apple controls both the software running everything and the hardware, while PCs vary widely.
I've only enjoyed nice graphics on one PC that had a $3k LCD monitor and thousand dollar video card that was color-calibrated.
posted by mathowie at 2:22 PM on August 20, 2004
Simply put, graphics and images look much better on a mac, and I've noticed that the mac is much more forgiving on underexposed photographs and subtle graphics in general. The technical reason for this is the gamma being different between the two, and the ability of mac hardware to do colors and contrast at a higher level, because Apple controls both the software running everything and the hardware, while PCs vary widely.
I've only enjoyed nice graphics on one PC that had a $3k LCD monitor and thousand dollar video card that was color-calibrated.
posted by mathowie at 2:22 PM on August 20, 2004
Uh, not to let myself get trolled or anything, but you guys know that when you mouse over the OS X move-bar widgets, they show "x" for close, "-" for minimize, and "+" for maximize, right? And what's obscure about green/yellow/red = more/less/none if you've ever driven a car?
posted by nicwolff at 2:39 PM on August 20, 2004
posted by nicwolff at 2:39 PM on August 20, 2004
I just turned on Clear Type and it hurts my eyes and doesn't look right.
I had the same reaction to antialiased text on OS X at first; it looked blurry and wrong. Apple crisped it up a bit in 10.2, I think it was, but it still doesn't look as clean as OS 9 did.
posted by Mars Saxman at 3:26 PM on August 20, 2004
I had the same reaction to antialiased text on OS X at first; it looked blurry and wrong. Apple crisped it up a bit in 10.2, I think it was, but it still doesn't look as clean as OS 9 did.
posted by Mars Saxman at 3:26 PM on August 20, 2004
ClearType is only for LCD displays. It certainly softens the font outline, but there are no jaggies, so it's a matter of preference. I kept flipflopping between on and off.
Looks like hell on a normal CRT.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:33 PM on August 20, 2004
Looks like hell on a normal CRT.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:33 PM on August 20, 2004
>And what's obscure about green/yellow/red = more/less/none if you've ever driven a car?
I'm sure you could find it somewhere on the internet, but the idea of applying "real world" techniques to computers so very often absolutely and completely fails miserably.
Case in point: Quicktime 4.
posted by shepd at 3:43 PM on August 21, 2004
I'm sure you could find it somewhere on the internet, but the idea of applying "real world" techniques to computers so very often absolutely and completely fails miserably.
Case in point: Quicktime 4.
posted by shepd at 3:43 PM on August 21, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
Other possibilities: brighter default gamma settings in MacOS vs Windows make things seem crisper/sharper. Very high quality Apple flat-panel displays make things seem crisper/sharper when compared to "ordinary" PC monitors one might have in a business office.
Of course, I'm ignoring the whole Unix aspect of your question as it doesn't fit my answer at all! But I suppose your average tricked-out Unix nrrd would spend a lot of time fiddling with her/his desktop settings to get things Just They Way S/he Likes It, too.
posted by bcwinters at 8:14 AM on August 20, 2004