If you're having color banding, you may need to force RGB on your external monitor [1]. I had to do this a few years ago, it massively improved the picture.

That said, I was in disbelief that this was a problem that both was common enough to be all over the Internet, and so involved to fix. Amazes me that OSX doesn't simply have an advanced setting for RGB/YPrPb, and instead requires that you boot into Recovery Mode (!!!) to fix it!

1. https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/08/24/macbook-pro-externa...

That's.. very weird to pick chroma subsampled format by default when RGB or 4:4:4 is available.

Anyway, low-dpi screens on macOS are so blurry because it doesn't do font hinting.

Windows does subsampling by default. The whole point of subsampling is that it looks better than just 4:4:4.

At least in Big Sur, you can just place the override in /Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides instead of /System/Library/[...]. This may work in earlier versions as well, but it equally wouldn't surprise me if it was only added to Big Sur because of the Signed System Volume thing.

I can vouch that MacOS font rendering really became an eyesore on desktop monitors became after I updated to Catalina. It genuinely results in an inability to parse letters when using certain common fonts, and next to Windows and Linux it is by far the worst of the three.

"apple-blessed displays" means "displays that have a pixel density that is appropriate to the year 2020", not necessarily screens that were manufactured by apple

That's beside the point.

There are a lot of non high dpi devices out there. The majority of screens are. Whether it's your personal one (and you can't or don't want to change it) or a professional one (and your company may not want or be able to justify changing dozens of screens), you need to use them.

It's possible to display properly and cleanly on them, everyone else does it. It's not as great as on a high dpi obviously, but it's perfectly sevicable for its need.

Apple with osx is the only major os that fails to do it, either through incompetence, malice or just pure disdain for their users facing that scenario.

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate. not as in intentionally punishing users, but intentionally not bothering to test their stuff with any third party equipment (excluding the blessed belkin maybe). if I had to distill the apple brand into a single phrase, it would be "my way or the highway". their way might be pretty good if you buy all the way in, but if not, you can go fuck yourself.

> Apple with osx is the only major os that fails to do it, either through incompetence, malice or just pure disdain for their users facing that scenario.

It’s because of cost involved in maintaining the code that can push the hinting through the various layers of the graphics stack. Coupled with Apple’s culture of ditching old technology at the first opportunity.

> "displays that have a pixel density that is appropriate to the year 2020"

As opposed to what other year? Color me naive, but I thought it was supposed to be the function rather than the form that we were supposed to make those kinds of comparisons about. What about a low pixel density is /not/ appropriate to the year 2020?

Yeah haha it's not like 1080p is still by far the most common resolution for screens, TVs, projectors that you might need to connect your macbook to.