MBA 2010 looking forward

[WuMing2]

With adapters pretty much anything is possible. What I recommend with modern monitors and this computer is to get a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable, this way you're staying in the same connection. No adapting being done, and cables are cheap. I don't think any monitors these days have DVI, but again with adapters things can be made to work.

Forgive me: I meant DisplayPort and Thunderbolt. Being able to continue using an external display also with a TB equipped Mac.

As for the LCD font smoothing, it is still in newer versions as a Terminal command. Very annoying to test with, but it does exist. You need to turn it off completely since it is optimized for Retina displays only which is laughable given that before Snow Leopard there were 4 levels of font smoothing in the system and now it is a simple on/off. There is an article here on MR that talks a bit about it: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/disable-font-smoothing-in-macos-big-sur/

I went through all of it. Actually starting point of my optimisation attempts was the linked article. Nothing worked perfectly. Big Sur removed color fringes, High Sierra employs, with great detriment to readability. Grayscale font smoothing is no perfect replacement for it. Also tried to change level of contrast, Night Mode, font size, color palette and anything I could find. Simply to say anti aliasing with color fringes (sub-pixel rendering), or a retina display, is an absolute must for me to be able to read from a display for an extended period of time. Major contributor to the decision to sell a MBA 2013.

 

[retta283]

Forgive me: I meant DisplayPort and Thunderbolt. Being able to continue using an external display also with a TB equipped Mac.

I went through all of it. Actually starting point of my optimisation attempts was the linked article. Nothing worked perfectly. Big Sur removed color fringes, High Sierra employs, with great detriment to readability. Grayscale font smoothing is no perfect replacement for it. Also tried to change level of contrast, Night Mode, font size, color palette and anything I could find. Simply to say anti aliasing with color fringes (sub-pixel rendering), or a retina display, is an absolute must for me to be able to read from a display for an extended period of time. Major contributor to the decision to sell a MBA 2013.

Thunderbolt contains all of the tech from the DisplayPort connection on your 2010, so the same cables and adapters will work on any Mac with Thunderbolt ports. As long as they have the same connector shape, they will work.

I agree that it is absurd that Apple has messed with the readability of non-retina screens, it's one of the major reasons I do not use modern macOS versions. I have LCD monitors that are 22 years old that still work fine, and monitors as recent as the last 5 years that look just as bad thanks to the OS. Look great on Windows. On my mini which is purely a developer box I just have to put up with it, with that article and completely disabling the font smoothing it looks okay, but it varies from monitor to monitor.

 

[mectojic]

Beware however that the 23" Cinema Display is notorious for poor quality control, there are many issues with pink and green tints and discolored fringes. Power supplies are also known to die. Frankly, unless there is something particular about the Apple display that you like, getting a 1920x1200 24" monitor from Dell or HP is a much better route to take. They have been made up into the 2020s and are LED panels.

Agreed. I had 2 23" Displays and they had so many problems – with power supplies and also producing strange ghosted images. I tried every combination of adapter and cable before giving up.

I agree that it is absurd that Apple has messed with the readability of non-retina screens, it's one of the major reasons I do not use modern macOS versions. I have LCD monitors that are 22 years old that still work fine, and monitors as recent as the last 5 years that look just as bad thanks to the OS. Look great on Windows. On my mini which is purely a developer box I just have to put up with it, with that article and completely disabling the font smoothing it looks okay, but it varies from monitor to monitor.

This is the worst. I found this to be a major problem with my 22-inch Apple Cinema Display – it outputs a very respectable 1600x1024, but you wouldn't know it from the way it ruined the fonts on my M1 Mac Mini.

Such a shame, because great monitors should be future-proof, not ruined by software.

 

[WuMing2]

Thunderbolt contains all of the tech from the DisplayPort connection on your 2010, so the same cables and adapters will work on any Mac with Thunderbolt ports. As long as they have the same connector shape, they will work.

I thought so but here it says otherwise: https://superuser.com/questions/333...r-to-the-thunderbolt-port-on-a-mac-and-vice-v

A non Retina display would also be of no use to me with a newer Mac that won’t have subpixel rendering function. I may be compelled to buy another laptop if existing glitches worsen.

Subpixel rendering or font smoothing with color fringes (never know which one is correct naming) requires the driving computer to know pixels arrangement. I don’t know if a generic, non Apple, non retina monitor would pass required info for technology to work in High Sierra.

All things considered I will pass.

 

[retta283]

I thought so but here it says otherwise: https://superuser.com/questions/333...r-to-the-thunderbolt-port-on-a-mac-and-vice-v

The people in that thread are referring to the Thunderbolt display, which is not the same thing. As far as I know that's the only thunderbolt monitor ever released, and yeah it's not going to work with an older Mac because DP isn't forward compatible, but Thunderbolt is backwards compatible.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thunderbolt contains all of the tech from the DisplayPort connection on your 2010, so the same cables and adapters will work on any Mac with Thunderbolt ports. As long as they have the same connector shape, they will work.

This has been my experience using DP to HDMI adapters and cables on my Thunderbolt equipped Macs and the 2010.

I agree that it is absurd that Apple has messed with the readability of non-retina screens, it's one of the major reasons I do not use modern macOS versions.

What's the most recent version that you're using? Just curious.

 

[WuMing2]

The people in that thread are referring to the Thunderbolt display, which is not the same thing. As far as I know that's the only thunderbolt monitor ever released, and yeah it's not going to work with an older Mac because DP isn't forward compatible, but Thunderbolt is backwards compatible.

I was considering a TB equipped monitor. To serve not only the 2010 Mac but also future laptops. Hence DP --> TB and not the opposite. But then the most likely candidate laptop replacement would be the retina MacBook 2017. That doesn't support TB. So I either buy a DP equipped monitor, and stay within a certain range of older Macs, or a TB equipped Retina monitor on a later stage. When fate of my 2010 MBA (currently typing on it) will have been decided.

 

[retta283]

This has been my experience using DP to HDMI adapters and cables on my Thunderbolt equipped Macs and the 2010.



What's the most recent version that you're using? Just curious.

Sierra. I've tried to come around to High Sierra, but I always find problems with it. The calculator in the notification center is bugged in a way that makes it useless, the Safari is much worse (irrelevant now), and a few apps that I use on Sierra do not run in HS, surprisingly. I also use Photos app quite a bit and I much prefer the interface of the Sierra version. On laptops I have a lot of issues with FireWire which I've never quite pinned down.

I'm considering giving a serious look at Mojave, but it almost seems like I've missed my time to jump as it's getting just as bad as Sierra with regards to app support, and it's the first one with serious readability issues due to font smoothing, IIRC.

Mavericks is my main OS where possible though. I've heavily modified this OS to work the way I want, I don't even use earlier versions unless I need PPC apps. Everything else works in Mavericks with maybe a bit of tweaking. Just need browser support to remain, I've been using Firefox ESR which is gradually becoming harder to use, so may be time for Chromium as much as I don't care for it.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Sierra. I've tried to come around to High Sierra, but I always find problems with it. The calculator in the notification center is bugged in a way that makes it useless, the Safari is much worse (irrelevant now), and a few apps that I use on Sierra do not run in HS, surprisingly. I also use Photos app quite a bit and I much prefer the interface of the Sierra version. On laptops I have a lot of issues with FireWire which I've never quite pinned down.

Thanks for the reply and the insights. I always find it interesting and helpful to gauge the OS preferences of other members, especially in a forum such as this which is geared towards older machines. I use High Sierra on my MBP 2011 daily driver and beyond problems with Disk Utility (which I also encountered in El Capitan) its been trouble free.

I'm considering giving a serious look at Mojave, but it almost seems like I've missed my time to jump as it's getting just as bad as Sierra with regards to app support, and it's the first one with serious readability issues due to font smoothing, IIRC.

Again, this issue with Mojave is also interesting to note. I've not experienced it on my 2010 but that's something I'll have to look out for.

Mavericks is my main OS where possible though. I've heavily modified this OS to work the way I want, I don't even use earlier versions unless I need PPC apps. Everything else works in Mavericks with maybe a bit of tweaking. Just need browser support to remain, I've been using Firefox ESR which is gradually becoming harder to use, so may be time for Chromium as much as I don't care for it.

I'm using Mavericks as the default OS on my Mac Pro because a bug in subsequent versions prevents my USB 3 PCIe card from working. It's a poor reflection on Apple that they failed to fix this in Yosemite and El Capitan. Anyhow, Mavericks runs like a champ on the machine and as a bonus, I have a version of Disk Utility whose functionality hasn't been sabotaged - unlike that of successive releases.

On the browser front, don't forget that we have SeaLion and it works very well. You don't need to turn to Chromium.

 

[retta283]

Again, this issue with Mojave is also interesting to note. I've not experienced it on my 2010 but that's something I'll have to look out for.

When I got my 2012 iMac it was on Mojave, and the text definitely looked a lot worse than it should. I ended up getting it to look decent by simply turning off font smoothing, but that still results in worse text than I am used to. It does depend a lot on your screen though.

On the browser front, don't forget that we have SeaLion and it works very well. You don't need to turn to Chromium.

I admit that I have a hard time getting along with SeaLion. It may just be my lack of configuration, but out of the box it is very choppy especially with scrolling. When the need arises I may have to mess with it a bit more. Running a quad core Ivy Bridge desktop i5 with 16GB RAM doesn't seem like a bottleneck.

 

[WuMing2]

Again, this issue with Mojave is also interesting to note. I've not experienced it on my 2010 but that's something I'll have to look out for.

Plenty of local wisdom on the subject: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-subpixel-aa-debacle-and-font-rendering.2184484/

Went through most of it at my time with Big Sur and MBA 2013.

 

[WuMing2]

As an alternative to HD Cinema Display was considering the LED Cinema. Has DP and a useful charging connector for my MBA. It may also charge a future MB 2017.

Any experience with the LED Cinema Display durability? Can source it for less than 100 dollars but also read on iFixit of issues with the LED strips.

 

[mectojic]

As an alternative to HD Cinema Display was considering the LED Cinema. Has DP and a useful charging connector for my MBA. It may also charge a future MB 2017.

Any experience with the LED Cinema Display durability? Can source it for less than 100 dollars but also read on iFixit of issues with the LED strips.

Could be a good deal. It seems that, from personal experience, they have a much higher failure rate than the older Cinema Displays, but after enough years it seems that survivor bias might be skewing that view.

 

[retta283]

Could be a good deal. It seems that, from personal experience, they have a much higher failure rate than the older Cinema Displays, but after enough years it seems that survivor bias might be skewing that view.

Probably have the same PSU issues as the 2009-2011 iMacs, which I think affects the Thunderbolt display too.