Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

Post by GnarfGnarf » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

Jakobeha wrote: post #270

awinder wrote: post #166

I’ve been using windows more recently since my personal Mac bit the dust and I’m trying to decide if there’s really that much reason to own a personal Mac. So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in windowsland where the quality of font r…

I remember watching a speech from Steve Jobs where he specifically said he learned about calligraphy or typefacing (I don’t remember the specific terms) to implement proper font rendering on macs. This was also before OSX came out. It was interesting because I realized how subtly difficult font rendering is. Unless you’re using a monospaced font all of the characters have different widths, you have to figure out how…

Post by sys_64738 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

Post by johnwalkr » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

jlturner wrote: post #187

This has been around for a long time but most people don’t know about it: Dragging and dropping files from the finder into an file selector window (ie. Open File in most programs) will navigate to that file and select it. As others mentioned this works in terminal as well to give you a path, but actually this generally works in any text box (unless it specifically handles paths being drag ‘n dropped). This also works…

Post by mthoms » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #320

awinder wrote: post #166

I’ve been using windows more recently since my personal Mac bit the dust and I’m trying to decide if there’s really that much reason to own a personal Mac. So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in windowsland where the quality of font r…

This is a holy war topic. Some people, myself included, prefer how Windows render fonts. Others prefer MacOS. From what I recall the last time this came up on HN, MacOS tries to render true to the font as if in a professional work flow that ends with a physical product. Windows aims for on screen legibility as it's primary goal. Also remember that most Windows machines have a much lower DPI screen that what comes wit…

Post by rcarmo » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC