Filed under: OS, Software, Cult of Mac
The Little Things: anti-aliased fonts help Mac OS X shine
Continuing our new The Little Things series that highlights the often-overlooked polish and underrated features that make Mac OS X such a joy to use, I thought I'd highlight one of those 'guy behind the guy' features that makes Apple's OS so gorgeous: font anti-aliasing. Nerdy, I know, but check out the screenshot: Windows, even XP, doesn't support this feature system-wide like Mac OS X does, and it shows. Type looks like garbage in everything from desktop icons to most applications and their menus on Windows. Mac OS X, on the other hand, supports anti-aliased fonts from the ground up (to my knowledge), so everything from System Preferences to desktop icons, text editors to iLife and more are incredibly legible and lickable.
Some call it a minor detail, but given the undeniably pleasant usability this brings to the OS, I would argue it's one of those trademark additions that Apple's engineers don't receive enough credit for.
Update: As many people pointed out Windows does, in fact, have a similar feature called 'ClearType,' which some consider superior to OS X's (though it is a matter of taste). The key difference is that ClearType is disabled by default, which in effect means that most Windows users have no idea that it is even an option. Another case of Apple paying attention to the little details, though Vista will have this feature enabled by default.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
James Hare said 9:09AM on 9-08-2006
Windows does offer anti-aliasing via a feature called "ClearType." This feature is not enabled by default, but will be in Vista. With the additional ClearType PowerToy you can adjust the hinting and subpixel smoothing, which is not available with a Mac. I love my Mac, but my Windows machine at work does not suffer from "Ugly Text" because I've enabled the features Microsoft is nice enough to provide.
Oh, and btw--having played with Vista RC1 last night, the operating system battle should finally be on more even terms. Microsoft has much to learn from OSX, but they've finally done a few things that Apple could learn from.
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Mark said 9:14AM on 9-08-2006
While I dislilke Windows as much as anyone else I am not sure if this is a fair comparison.
TextEdit should be compared to WordPad not Notepad as you have done here.
Mark
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Gareth said 9:14AM on 9-08-2006
I had this debate with a friend just the other day, and you're right, it is massively overlooked. As James sayd you can turn ClearType on, why is it not defualt? There no point in that anyway as Microsoft use such an ugly system font. We are blessed with Lucida Grande, just another factor that makes Mac OS X beautiful.
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superjeff said 9:23AM on 9-08-2006
"legible and lickable"??? the fonts are able to be licked?
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rdas7 said 9:26AM on 9-08-2006
Font smoothing is one of those little things in user interface design which, at some level, allows you to forget you are working with a "computer" and allows you to feel as if you're using an object, or tool.
The latest Sony Ericsson phones (K800i and K610i series) have font smoothing in the UI also, and it makes them stand apart from the rest of the computer-in-the-shape-of-a-phone handsets, as true functional objects.
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Richard said 9:27AM on 9-08-2006
Anti-aliasing in OS X is a big deal to me.
On the subject of ClearType, unless it has been improved in Vista, it isn't nearly as effective but OK none the less.
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Juan Fernandez said 9:29AM on 9-08-2006
This is a completely unfair and misleading blog entry. Windows XP DOES have cleartype installed and it is available. Fonts render smooth in WXP as in Mac OSX. The comment shows the little knowledge of the author about WXP, and this comparison instead of favouring MacOSX over WXP only shows how pointless is this discussion and this blog entry.
Regarding rendering in MacOSX and WXP, actually MacOSX has some problems with small fonts which are not in WXP. For example try the following: use TextEdit in Mac to type Courier New 12 text. It looks gray (contrary to WXP in which is looks properly black) due to the Quartz engine.
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Taxman said 9:35AM on 9-08-2006
Totally off the subject but how did you get your system hard drive icon to display the storage data?
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Tek said 9:37AM on 9-08-2006
I think I know why the ClearType is not on by default in XP--it does NOT look 100% legible to MANY Windows users' monitors. It feels blurry. I knew someone who said she got a clamshell iBook for free and said it gave her headaches because the fonts just didn't seem legible; it was too thin, too blurry. And I have to agree. I worked on Macs in a computer lab in college that didn't seem to have the Japanese default font set to something thicker and more legible. They seemed too faint and light. I couldn't read them without tweaking. Many people's first impressions of the Mac come from these small features if you are a Windows user; I know they're changeable, but many people don't even know how to change their fonts on Windows, let alone a Mac.
I'm testing out Windows Vista right now, and the jaggies are no longer in certain fonts (Japanese as well), however I tried a test in Notepad (and Wordpad) it is still not system wide (for example, the font selection menu is completely aliased, and selecting certain fonts in Notepad gives you aliased text/Web Japanese fonts appear smoother, but still show sharp edges). It hasn't driven me nuts though.
I think it's a matter of preference. But I do preer system consistency. I had thought I'd heard that Vista had a whole bunch of new fonts in Japanese (I found a new ClearType-capabale one called Meiryo...), I guess that was just a rumor....
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Andy said 9:38AM on 9-08-2006
Someone's too quick to fire the publish button in MarsEdit--do a bit of research before making these posts. ClearType is a pretty solid font anti-aliasing technology.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx
As to why ClearType isn't on by default, Bill Hill explains quite well:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4913
There certainly are things annoying about Windows that the Mac does well (and vice versa). Don't get me wrong--pointing out these quirks is what makes both products better. Just seems quite irresponsible of TUAW to perpetuate turf wars where there's not much substance. It's somewhat ironic in light of yesterday's posting about "Mac moments."
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Magnus said 9:39AM on 9-08-2006
This article is not fair, I agree!
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Liam Parkinson said 9:39AM on 9-08-2006
#8, click on your desktop background and press apple+j, then tick the box that says show item info
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Peter Fry said 9:40AM on 9-08-2006
Windows XP supports both ClearType and traditional anti-aliasing system wide. Laptop manufacturers usually turn ClearType on by default, but it only works properly on LCDs.
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Halopend said 9:43AM on 9-08-2006
To Taxman, to get that info to appear, left click anywhere on your desktop and hit Command+j or go to View, then down to "Show View Options". From here, just click show item info. Note that you can activate this for any and all windows you want.
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Emmanuel Blot said 9:43AM on 9-08-2006
Come on: anti-aliasing feature is worse on Mac OS X than it is on WinXP.
At least, it looks better to my eyes ;-)
I moved from Win to MacOsX one year and a half ago, and that's one of the more important feature I keep missing from WinXP: a decent antialiasing system. Antialiasing is not that good on MacOsX. I first thought the poor rendering came from my screen (MacMini + 17" Belinea), but now that I'm owning a MacBook Pro, I'm still disappointed: ClearType does provide a better rendering on LCD displays that MacOsX does.
Maybe the rendering is fine on a CRT screen w/ MacOsX but when it comes to LCD screen, WinXP's ahead. I really hope Leopard will deliver a better antialiasing engine.
MacOsX is not able to render small characters as good as ClearType is. These chars look "fuzzy" on Mac, whereas they're more cristal clear on Windows:
http://ebcom.free.fr/cleartype.png
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JLL said 9:50AM on 9-08-2006
ClearType is subpixel rendering and not antialiasing.
They are two different things and in Mac OS X all settings other than Standard (the setting used in the screenshot) in Appearance use a mix of antialiasing and subpixel rendering - Standard is antialiasing only.
AFAIK Windows does not have antialiasing, and other than not working perfectly on CRTs, subpixel rendering can be annoying to look at for many people since they can see the red and green subpixels.
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fanguad said 9:55AM on 9-08-2006
I'm going to have to throw my vote in with the other posters. We all know you're rabid Windows-haters - and I'm okay with that - but at least check your facts. Whether it's anti-aliasing or sub-pixel rendering, the results are essentially the same.
Furthermore, as Emmanuel Blot pointed out, Windows' font rendering looks cleaner on the smaller fonts that Windows uses by default (compared to OSX on small fonts). So yes, they do look different (and you can still hate Windows if you like), but it's not what you're claiming.
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JLL said 9:55AM on 9-08-2006
"MacOsX is not able to render small characters as good as ClearType is. These chars look "fuzzy" on Mac, whereas they're more cristal clear on Windows:
http://ebcom.free.fr/cleartype.png"
No, they are not crystal clear to me - it's type with a red/green pixel mess around it.
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mroach said 10:01AM on 9-08-2006
One of my favourite little-things about OS X is how it does screenshots. First of all, it can save the screenshots directly to disk and it defaults to the correct format (PNG). Secondly, I love how you can do area screenshots, like in Linux.
Grab.app is also nice to have for when you want to take a screenshot with the cursor included, or when you want the capture to be timed.
http://applepedia.com/Screenshots
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Daniel Brauer said 10:04AM on 9-08-2006
XP's and X's sub-pixel font rendering algorithms are different, but it seems to be entirely a matter of taste as to which people prefer.
For the record, XP's rendering system is technically better for text that will never be printed, as it strives to make each identical letter look identical. To this end, it re-zeroes the rendering matrix for each character, where OS X uses the same matrix for an entire text field. The result is that OS X's text is closer to what it will look like when printed, whereas XP's is slightly off for the purpose of uniformity and on-screen readability. If you want an example and you have XP and X running side by side, type a whole line of the same letter on either system.
Another thing worth pointing out is that although you can reproduce X or XP sub-pixel rendered fonts on the other system by taking a screenshot or through emulation, they will look off because of the difference in the native gamma settings of either system. Cleartype looks washed-out and rainbowed on a Mac, whereas OS X type looks blotchy and over-bold on a PC.
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