The "cleaner" feel may well be to do with better font rendering for desktop fonts, because you'll be using something like TTF rather than WOFF. Web font files have to trade off file size for quality, which desktop fonts don't have to do.
WOFF has nothing to do with rendering. You can achieve the exact same rendering with a WOFF file as you can with TTF; the contents are the same.
On the other hand, it's possible that in the course of deployment, various things may be dropped from the original font resource: not just subsetting (reducing the repertoire of supported characters), but in some cases also OpenType features (e.g. ligatures or contextual forms), and in some cases hinting is stripped.
If that is done, the webfont version may indeed appear differently than the original "desktop" font, depending on local font-rendering settings.
Is this really done?
Rent-seeking would be if Google demanded money from a font designer to let their fonts be "compatible" with Chrome. I.e. Pay me or I'll make sure your product doesn't work with my product. App stores is a common example; pay Apple or they'll make sure your software doesn't run on the iPhone.
For example, some foundries require you buy a special expensive license in order to use their fonts in a PDF. IIRC, Hoefler & Co. and Emigre do this (though it's been years since I've looked, so I may have changed this). Their rationale is that since it's possible to extract font from a PDF, they need to pay for any font piracy that results from that.
(never mind that anyone who wants to pirate the font would just go and find a torrent instead of ripping it out of a PDF... and there are torrents of every notable foundry's entire libraries)
Rent-seeking is when a third party uses force to claim profit from an agreement they're not actually party to.
For example, you rent a business property. You pay the landlord and agree to their terms. Next week the mob shows up and demand protection money to "keep you from harm". Implying that harm will surely come to you unless you pay. That's rent-seeking.
The app store analogy fits rather nicely I think, but it depends on your viewpoint.
The agreement is between you and the law in most countries, which says that typefaces are exempt from copyright. The third party are foundries who license fonts to you and charge you more based on how popular your website is.
If you don't wish to agree to the license terms of a particular typeface, you have the option to choose another typeface instead. This includes the myriad free typefaces that exist today.
If you buy something from me or strike a license agreement with me, I'm not a "third party" to that transaction.
> If they were not then why would license agreements even be a thing.
We could make a license agreement that you pay me per breathe of air you take. It’s not my fault if you sign that.
The most usual is that you'll have to pay a certain price up-front (or monthly), and some more for each access. The odds are also good that you won't be able to host the font yourself, because well, the foundry has to count those access, doesn't it? And if you want the foundry to respond any quickly, you better pay some extra.
(Though I've heard Adobe Stock and iStock at least works ok for photographers and graphic artists for now)
Now if you use a high-resolution monitor and print-optimized fonts, MacOS will look better. If you use a low-resolution monitor and screen-optimized fonts, Windows will look better. Problem is, most designers come from print and use expensive Mac gear, so they are designing for a minority, their peers, not their users.
This can't still be true. No one comes from print anymore.
It is. The real problem is that a large number of designers like to have a pixel-perfect experience (which on print doesn't really matter as they know what paper will that publication use).
I think macOS will always be optimised for the best experience. Even if that means sub par XP if you don’t go all in on money.
I’d actually be interested in learning more about the rendering vs say windows if you have a source.
It is probably better to say that Apple will design for their intended market. I was using Apple products long before HiDPI was a thing and was never particularly happy with the fuzzy fonts under Mac OS X. While that may be acceptable when designing for print, since accuracy is more important, it is an annoyance in many other circumstances.
On hi-def monitors and laser-printed page, it is lovely both to read and to look at.
I mean, 4K (3840×2160) 23" displays nowadays start at $300, so if you’re still on hundred-buck 1920x1080 then you’re only getting what you paid for.
Going to all hi-def displays is the single best investment I ever made as a professional programmer, reading and writing text on screens daily.
In my recollection (and it's been a few years since I used a Linux GUI) Linux was the one with dodgy font rendering.
To me, fonts indeed look blurry on macOS and weird on Windows. Screenshots from Windows with colored pixels particularly don't look good to me. Though after having seen screens of people using Windows 10, it seems they changed whatever I really didn't like about font rendering on Windows.
I still like font rendering on GNU/Linux (and Android) better it is correctly configured, which it is on widespread distributions with widespread desktop environments (I use a QHD screen). But it could be out of habit. On some configurations, kerning is bad though.