WARNING: Do not upgrade to Mojave if you have any non-retina screens!

[cmhsam]

I have a 2018 15” Retina and when connected to my Dell U3417W via the Elgato TB3 dock the fonts on the external monitor looks like ****. Even when connecting directly from a TB3 to DisplayPort cable directly from the MB it looks horrible.

This weekend I am going to reinstall HS

 

[martin2345uk]

Anyone wondered if dumastudetto maybe was being sarcastic?

If you’ve seen the rest of his posts on here you’ll know he definitely was not

 

[mikecwest]

Anyone wondered if dumastudetto maybe was being sarcastic?

I certainly didn’t read it that way, I read it as condescending... but I of course replied in a sarcastic, yet hoping he was generous billionaire, who could drops a few "pennies" to solve my MBP desires. I still wish the new ones allowed upgradable ram and SSD drives...... but oh well. That is the main reason I haven't upgrades, as the whole retina thing, never seemed too important to me...

 

[alien3dx]

I certainly didn’t read it that way, I read it as condescending... but I of course replied in a sarcastic, yet hoping he was generous billionaire, who could drops a few "pennies" to solve my MBP desires. I still wish the new ones allowed upgradable ram and SSD drives...... but oh well. That is the main reason I haven't upgrades, as the whole retina thing, never seemed too important to me...

The more higher resolution the more advance graphic card required which translate more money to paid.

1920 x 1080 x 2 pretty wide enough for me.. if 4k x 2 fuh my eye small icon .

 

[AlliFlowers]

I never noticed a difference. Guess there are some advantages to having old eyes.

 

[F1Mac]

If you’ve seen the rest of his posts on here you’ll know he definitely was not

I rest my case.
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I never noticed a difference. Guess there are some advantages to having old eyes.

They call it Retina Eyes: you don't even see the pixels anymore

 

[boss.king]

Does this apply to external monitors as well? And if so, what is the required resolution?

 

[neliason]

Because subpixel antialiasing is an ugly (albeit smart) hack that is expensive to implement, doesn’t play well with compositing window managers and is completely unnecessary in the age of HiDPI monitors.

So it is unnecessary even though the company saying it is unnecessary still sells devices that don't even have those monitors? So is Apple selling a lemon? Is Apple saying the devices they sold in the recent past are also outdated and unimportant?

Does this apply to external monitors as well? And if so, what is the required resolution?

Yes. The solution is upgrade and live with it, don't upgrade, or get a new monitor.

If you want to see what it will look like on High Sierra go to System Preferences → General. At the bottom is 'Use LCD font smoothing when available'. Uncheck the box. Log out and log back in for it to take effect.

 

[boss.king]

Yes. The solution is upgrade and live with it, don't upgrade, or get a new monitor.

If you want to see what it will look like on High Sierra go to System Preferences → General. At the bottom is 'Use LCD font smoothing when available'. Uncheck the box. Log out and log back in for it to take effect.

I've already upgraded. I don't have an external monitor but I'm planning to get one in the near future and I want to know what the minimum resolution I should be looking for is.

 

[Fishrrman]

I have a Mac Mini connected to a 27" display (only 1920 x 1080, but my eyes are almost 70 years old).

Mojave doesn't look any different than previous versions of the OS, insofar as "display quality" is concerned...

 

[dumastudetto]

Trust me, I’d love a 2018 15” i9 with 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM to replace my current 15” 2012, which is beginning to struggle on LPX and is pretty much unusable for smooth playback on FCPX with multiple layers.

I really would love one to use for the next 6 years. It’d make my workflow a lot smoother. Unfortunately I don’t have £4500 to sink on a goddamn laptop. My one was £1250 when I first bought it directly from Apple, which included free AppleCare at the time, plus add maybe £400 for the upgrades during its life. That’s still far less than half of what I’d need to pay now.

I can justify £2000 on a futureproofed laptop. I can’t justify or afford £4500. It’s such a colossal jump.

I never said anyone should drop 4 grand on a new laptop. Apple has many MacBook options with retina displays at much more affordable prices.

Obviously if you have high end needs though, you’ll need to spend more. Hopefully the work you are doing will more than compensate for the cost.
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Have a word with your favourite company.

It’s sad they are still selling that. But if people are willing to buy, it’s hard to refuse their money. Hopefully the rumors of a new retina laptop in that price range are true.
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I love my Air and have no reason to upgrade it currently - it’s still fast, battery lasts hours, it’s light... you do come out with some utter tripe sometimes

If you are happy that’s great. But don’t expect apple to optimise new versions of macOS for that old display tech.
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On the plus side, I've noticed Mojave is noticeably smoother and faster on my mid 2012 MBP

Apparently the sub pixel anti-aliasing was taxing for the GPU's



Who doesn't have one?? Do you have any idea how popular the MacBook Air has been? More MacBook Air's are out there in the wild than the retina MacBook line up. No one "must" have a retina MacBook.

Besides, some people prefer the battery life of the Airs...no retina Apple laptop to date has matched the Air battery life.

I know the Air is still popular with students. Hopefully this will be the last year Apple will be selling it without retina.

If you want the best macOS experience then you must have a retins MacBook. If you don’t care, or are willing to compromise on a lousy display for a better performance to price ratio - that’s obviously your call.

I should have qualified my original comment a little better.

 

[CipherMe]

Who doesn't have a retina Mac at this point? Everyone must, and if you don't really you must upgrade now. There's no excuse.

Why should I abandon a perfectly working MacBook Air. That was a moranic statement.

 

[AppleHaterLover]

Why should I abandon a perfectly working MacBook Air. That was a moranic statement.

That was a flamebait, I think.

But really, the display in the MB Air is just sad.

 

[DJLC]

I've been using it on my 2012 MacBook Air since DP9.... literally haven't noticed any difference at all.

 

[EdwardC]

I went from Sierra to Mojave on my late 2013 iMac. The fonts on the display reminded me of a VGA connection vs. DVI. Kind of a little blurry. Two hours later, I was back on Sierra. Now I also have a late 2012 Mini and am using a Dell 23" 1080P HD monitor. The fonts look acceptable on it. One issue I noted with H.S. and Mojave is that PDFs seem to be out of focus until you enlarge them. I find this odd and not very Apple like. Not sure if this is something with my two Macs or that anyone else has had this issue? Overall Mojave is OK, seems very speedy and dark mode is mediocre at best.

 

[flur]

Who doesn't have a retina Mac at this point? Everyone must, and if you don't really you must upgrade now. There's no excuse.

*eyeroll* My travel machine isn't retina. I "must upgrade" a machine I use four times a year? Um, nope.

 

[KGB7]

Who doesn't have a retina Mac at this point? Everyone must, and if you don't really you must upgrade now. There's no excuse.

Are you buying me a new Mac!?!?

 

[dumastudetto]

That was a flamebait, I think.

But really, the display in the MB Air is just sad.

It wasn't but I didn't qualify the statement which was dumb on my part.

Of course if you are happy with your MBA/non-retina Mac that is great. The point I really wanted to make is - retina is where Apple is at now, and macOS will be designed for these high-res displays. So if you want the best experience, you'll need to buy a newer Mac.

 

[August West]

I have an older 24" Apple LED Cinema Display 1920 x 1200 I use with my mini. Would the fonts look bad on this display?

 

[MacBird]

I have an older 24" Apple LED Cinema Display 1920 x 1200 I use with my mini. Would the fonts look bad on this display?

Yes, fonts would look blurry and pixelated unless you run the terminal command below and logout and back in. I have the same monitor and it worked for me:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

 

[CTHarrryH]

Probably the only upgrade on an Apple device that I haven't liked and lowered the usability of my MBA (which is new -bought because of ports and without Retina). Following a bunch of threads I have tried a bunch of things and that along with getting used to it I can at least use my MBA but it is visually much worse than before. As long as Apple is selling non-Retina equipment they should produce software that is usable on it. I don't remember any comments about this from the Beta users but.
Hoping it gets fixed

 

[MacBird]

Probably the only upgrade on an Apple device that I haven't liked and lowered the usability of my MBA (which is new -bought because of ports and without Retina). Following a bunch of threads I have tried a bunch of things and that along with getting used to it I can at least use my MBA but it is visually much worse than before. As long as Apple is selling non-Retina equipment they should produce software that is usable on it. I don't remember any comments about this from the Beta users but.
Hoping it gets fixed

Have you tried to run this command in Terminal? After running it, you need to log out and then log back in before it works.

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

 

[Larvas]

Wait, so if it's looking ****** on non-retina, does that mean that all external monitors with basic resolution like 1080/1440p are affected?
I just wanted to upgrade, but no way I'm going to do it if I can't work on my external monitor, I just recently solved the RGB problem where my laptop thought that it's a TV and not a 1440p monitor, I'm not ready for another problem.

 

[MacBird]

Wait, so if it's looking ****** on non-retina, does that mean that all external monitors with basic resolution like 1080/1440p are affected?
I just wanted to upgrade, but no way I'm going to do it if I can't work on my external monitor, I just recently solved the RGB problem where my laptop thought that it's a TV and not a 1440p monitor, I'm not ready for another problem.

It's very likely that you would run into the problem with monitors at native resolution such as 1920x1200 etc.

 

[arkitect]

I never noticed a difference. Guess there are some advantages to having old eyes.

Same here…

I use an Apple LED 27" Display — 2560 x 1440 — and until this post popped up I didn't know I had to spot a difference… I still can't tell if it is worse.
Thank god for 54 year old eye eh?

Life. So much simpler with one foot in the grave.