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Comment by daemontus | Hacker News Reader

A gentle reminder that every retina MacBook has been shipping with fractional scaling as default for years now (and it's not even 1.5). Sure, you can put it back into 2x if you want to. But you can do the same on a Framework, and then you get... wait for it... almost the same vertical resolution as a 2x 13" MB Pro (93% to be exact). If you absolutely need more space and a 2x scaling, there is a large amount of 4K 13"/14" laptops that are more than happy to fill that niche. Free market is your friend :)

So the argument that Windows is somehow responsible for the death of perfect 2x scaling is a bit exaggerated. People just want more space and anti-aliasing is mostly good enough so that no one cares.

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> every retina MacBook has been shipping with fractional scaling as default for years now

I have a MacBook and I don't see the kind of display artifacts that I mentioned (grid lines set to same pixel width appearing to have different widths) on a MacBook. Why is that? I have also tried the same test on nearly every Windows laptop at BestBuy, and every Windows laptop that does not have scaling set to either 100% or 200% has this artifact. Even 300% scaling has this artifact. What is Apple's magic that Microsoft has not been able to replicate?

could I suggest trying to figure this out yourself? it sounds like you have the interest and incentive - i'm sure other people would love to know. a blog post about why fractional scaling artifacts exist on Windows but not MacOS would probably be popular (i'd definitely be interested in reading it at least).

Very wild guess: Display PostScript. Or, I suppose, more accurately, its descendant Quartz 2D.

I definitely see it on macOS. Set your display scaling to a fractional amount, then drag a window around slowly. You should see the border lines subtly get fuzzier/sharper/change width.

So you have to set the scaling to a non-default amount, to get that to happen. Of course I would expect display artifacts in that case, because you're forcing it to happen.

The default scaling is fractional on recent MacBooks.

> I have a MacBook and I don't see the kind of display artifacts that I mentioned (grid lines set to same pixel width appearing to have different widths) on a MacBook. Why is that?

You just claimed that this is only possible with 200% scaling. Was that wrong?

> A gentle reminder that every retina MacBook has been shipping with fractional scaling as default for years now (and it's not even 1.5).

You're saying MacOS deliberately uses fractional scaling by default on the 14 inch and 16 inch MBP models, the iMac, Studio Display, and the Pro Display XDR, even though all of them have a PPI that's deliberately meant for integer scaling? If that's true (which I really doubt), it would be extremely counterproductive, to say the least.

The M1 Air and the 13 inch MBP are the only Macs that don't have a suitable PPI for integer scaling.

I run one monitor at 1.5:1, but it also offers me 1.2766:1, (2160->1692) which is a truly bizarre configuration. It's right at the edge of what I can read comfortably. I don't think it looks particularly fuzzy, I mostly don't use it because I don't like the idea of using such a funky resolution. It feels like it will be problematic, in ways 1.5 won't.

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