Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#261

Post by harr01 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

praseodym wrote: post #76

densh wrote: post #13

I might be the only one, but it's still to this date (and dating all the way back to 2014 with the first iMac 5k display) Apple is the only company that truly gets HIDPI desktop displays with high quality gloss and 200+ ppi at screen this large. In the meantime popular and widely sold gaming screens with matte blur filters and mediocre ppi give me headache and eye fatigue after a few hours of use. Prior generation St…

The hardware is great, but the software is lacking. macOS only supports resolution-based scaling which makes anything but the default 200% pixel scaling mode look bad. For example, with a 27" 4K display many users will want to use 150% or 175% scaling to get enough real estate, but the image will look blurry because macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution of the screen. Both Wind…

Have you ever seen a MacBook air's screen? Those use fractional scaling and look fine.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#262

Post by hollerith » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:18 AM UTC

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #260

hollerith wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland supports it (and Chrome supports it very well) but GTK does not. I run my UI at 200% scaling because graphical Emacs uses GTK to draw text, and that text would be blurry if I ran at my preferred scaling factor of 150% or 175%.

This works with GTK for me at least. I've been using Gnome+Wayland with 150% scaling for almost 4 years now, and I haven't noticed any issues with GTK. Actually, my experience is essentially backwards from yours—anything Electron/Chromium-based needed a bunch of command-line flags to work properly up until a few months ago, whereas GTK apps always just worked without any issues.

If you're using a high-DPI monitor, you might not notice the blurriness. I use a standard 110-DPI monitor (at 200% scaling in Gnome) and I notice it when the scaling factor is not an integer.

Or more precisely, I noticed it eventually as a result of my being primed to notice it after people on this site insisted that GTK cannot handle fractional scaling factors.

Compared to the contents of a browser's viewport, Emacs and the apps that come with Gnome are visually simple, so it took me a year or 2 to notice (even on a standard 110-DPI monitor used at 150% and 175% scaling) any blurriness in those apps since the app I'm most conditioned to notice blurriness is my browser, and Chrome's viewport is resolution independent except when rendering certain image formats -- text is always non-blurry.

Yes, Chrome's entire window can be quite blurry if Xwayland is involved, but it now talks to Wayland by default and for years before that could be configured to talk Wayland, so I don't consider that worth talking about. If Xwayland is not involved, the contents of Chrome's viewport is non-blurry at all scaling factors except for the PNGs, JPGs, etc. For a long time, when run at a fractional scaling factor under Gnome (and configured to talk Wayland) the only part of Hacker News that was blurry was the "Y" logo in the top left corner, then about 2 years ago, that logo's PNG file was replaced with an SVG file and the final bit of blurriness on HN went away.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#263

Post by nailer » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

praseodym wrote: post #76

densh wrote: post #13

I might be the only one, but it's still to this date (and dating all the way back to 2014 with the first iMac 5k display) Apple is the only company that truly gets HIDPI desktop displays with high quality gloss and 200+ ppi at screen this large. In the meantime popular and widely sold gaming screens with matte blur filters and mediocre ppi give me headache and eye fatigue after a few hours of use. Prior generation St…

The hardware is great, but the software is lacking. macOS only supports resolution-based scaling which makes anything but the default 200% pixel scaling mode look bad. For example, with a 27" 4K display many users will want to use 150% or 175% scaling to get enough real estate, but the image will look blurry because macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution of the screen. Both Wind…

> macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution

That seems weird to me. I remember 20 years ago one of the whole points of macOS version 10 was display PDF, i.e. a vector based UI.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#264

Post by brailsafe » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

badc0ffee wrote: post #202

praseodym wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware is great, but the software is lacking. macOS only supports resolution-based scaling which makes anything but the default 200% pixel scaling mode look bad. For example, with a 27" 4K display many users will want to use 150% or 175% scaling to get enough real estate, but the image will look blurry because macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution of the screen. Both Wind…

I would love to see examples of this. I have a MBP and a 24" 4K Dell monitor connected via HDMI. I use all kinds of scaled resolutions and I've never noticed anything being jagged or blurry. Meanwhile in Linux the scaling is generally good, but occasionally I'll run into some UI element that doesn't scale properly, or some application that has a tiny mouse cursor. And then Windows has serious problems with old apps -…

I'm more surprised that you're using a 24" display at any resolution. Of course, everyone has different preferences, but that just seems ridiculously small considering how available larger displays are for the same ppi and refresh rate probably.

I'm personally on the old 30" 16:10 2560x1600 form factor, and it's wildly better visually than the 27" 1440p screen by the same brand (all of them Dell) I use at the office.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#265

Post by watersb » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #263

praseodym wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware is great, but the software is lacking. macOS only supports resolution-based scaling which makes anything but the default 200% pixel scaling mode look bad. For example, with a 27" 4K display many users will want to use 150% or 175% scaling to get enough real estate, but the image will look blurry because macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution of the screen. Both Wind…

> macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution That seems weird to me. I remember 20 years ago one of the whole points of macOS version 10 was display PDF, i.e. a vector based UI.

While the original OS X display model, Quartz, evolved from Display PDF via NextStep, I believe that it shifted back to pixel rasterization to offload more of the display stack onto the GPU.

Quartz Extreme?

John Siracusa, Ars Technica:

It's possible that existing consumer video cards could be coerced into doing efficient vector drawing in hardware. Apple tried to do just that in Tiger [note], but then had to back off at the last minute and disable the feature in the shipping version of the OS. It remains disabled to this day.

[note] https://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/14

https://arstechnica.com/staff/2006/04/3720/

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#266

Post by kinematikk » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:10 AM UTC

benbayard wrote: post #251

praseodym wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware is great, but the software is lacking. macOS only supports resolution-based scaling which makes anything but the default 200% pixel scaling mode look bad. For example, with a 27" 4K display many users will want to use 150% or 175% scaling to get enough real estate, but the image will look blurry because macOS renders at a higher resolution and then downscales to the 4K resolution of the screen. Both Wind…

I just tested on my 4k display and 150% and 175% were not blurry at all. I'm on a 32 inch 4k monitor. Is it possible this information is out of date and was fixed by more recent versions of macos?

Absolutely not fixed. Try to look on black text on white background. Its not very obvious but still a little annoying

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#267

Post by watersb » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:19 AM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #132

tshaddox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought that original 5k iMac on release day in 2014. I was thrilled with that display, and stoked to see the entire display industry go the route of true quadruple-resolution just like smartphone displays did. Sadly, it basically never happened. There was the LG display that came out a couple of years later. It didn't have great reviews, and it was like two thirds the cost of an entire 5k iMac. It took Apple over 7…

The LG UltraFine's were garbage, but got better over time as either the firmware improved or macOS added drivers that worked around the nonsense. For a while I ran with two of them on an iMac Pro with a 5K itself, but switched to a single Pro Display XDR with a laptop eventually. I'm very sad to see the 6K/32" form disappear, it's by far the best screen I've ever used.

Asus ProArt Display 6K PA32QCV

Since about six months ago, 4th quarter of 2025.

I haven't got one yet, but it has the magic Mac 218 dpi for $1289

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#268

Post by data-ottawa » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:19 AM UTC

nicce wrote: post #223

craftkiller wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along similar lines, there's no way I would buy an OLED at this price point. If I'm dropping $3k on a monitor, it needs to be a technology that lasts, not a technology that wears out over time.

> If I'm dropping $3k on a monitor, it needs to be a technology that lasts, not a technology that wears out over time. I bought my OLED TV when fearmongering was the highest, and it still works perfectly with zero burn-ins. So it is definitely possible. I bought the tv 8 years ago.

Yeah my LG C9 looks great, minor dimming where the captions are, but that’s it.

In the 7 years since they’ve gotten better, with micro lens arrays and stuff to improve brightness without heat causing faster decay.

RTINGs has some great content on TV longevity, but I haven’t seen anything for monitor workloads.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#269

Post by gucci-on-fleek » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:27 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #262

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works with GTK for me at least. I've been using Gnome+Wayland with 150% scaling for almost 4 years now, and I haven't noticed any issues with GTK. Actually, my experience is essentially backwards from yours—anything Electron/Chromium-based needed a bunch of command-line flags to work properly up until a few months ago, whereas GTK apps always just worked without any issues.

If you're using a high-DPI monitor, you might not notice the blurriness. I use a standard 110-DPI monitor (at 200% scaling in Gnome) and I notice it when the scaling factor is not an integer. Or more precisely, I noticed it eventually as a result of my being primed to notice it after people on this site insisted that GTK cannot handle fractional scaling factors. Compared to the contents of a browser's viewport, Emacs…

> If you're using a high-DPI monitor [...] I use a standard 110-DPI monitor (at 200% scaling in Gnome)

FWIW, I'm using a 184 DPI monitor with 150% scaling.

> you might not notice the blurriness. [...]

> Compared to the contents of a browser's viewport, Emacs and the apps that come with Gnome are visually simple, so it took me a year or 2 to notice

I'm pretty sensitive to font rendering issues—to the point where I've complained to publishers about their PDFs having unhinted fonts—so I think that I would have noticed it, but if it's really as subtle as you say, then maybe I haven't.

I do have a somewhat unusual setup though: I'm currently using

  $ gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer','xwayland-native-scaling']"

although that might not be required any more with recent versions. I've also enabled full hinting and subpixel antialiasing with Gnome Tweaks, and I've set the following environment variables:

  MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
  QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
  GDK_BACKEND=wayland,x11,*
  CLUTTER_BACKEND=gdk,wayland
  SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
  SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER=wayland
  ECORE_EVAS_ENGINE=wayland_egl
  ELM_ENGINE=wayland_egl
  QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1
  QT_ENABLE_HIGHDPI_SCALING=1

So maybe one of those settings would improve things for you? I've randomly accumulated most of these settings over the years, so I unfortunately can't really explain what (if anything) any of them do.

> Yes, Chrome's entire window can be quite blurry if Xwayland is involved, but it now talks to Wayland by default

Ah, good to hear that that's finally the default; that probably means that I can safely remove my custom wrapper scripts that forced those flags on.

Re: Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

#270

Post by nebula8804 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:52 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74

tshaddox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought that original 5k iMac on release day in 2014. I was thrilled with that display, and stoked to see the entire display industry go the route of true quadruple-resolution just like smartphone displays did. Sadly, it basically never happened. There was the LG display that came out a couple of years later. It didn't have great reviews, and it was like two thirds the cost of an entire 5k iMac. It took Apple over 7…

You can get a 27 inch 5k from Asus for $750. A 31.5 inch 6K goes for around $1200. A 28 inch 4K is around $350-$400.

Anyone reading this I am begging to please thoroughly test anything that comes out of ASUS before committing. Maybe only purchase with a generous return policy and possibly insurance. They are decent panels but everything around the panel is horrendous. Random connection errors with different machines, poor UX for switching inputs, takes a millenium to boot up and connect to the screen, forget about any support, if you have built in speakers you'd be better off with a tin can connected to your computer.

You get what you pay for with ASUS.