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

[ChrisChaval]

ok, this is my first try with Mojave on a MB Air 2017

the OS fonts appear definitely more blurry and thinner to me, no doubt about it

with font smoothing turned off text is close to unreadable

drafting emails becomes difficult

web browsing is OK

I do like certain things about Mojave, like the dark mode but the OS fonts ... oh boy

sometimes the trackpad seems not to respond to single clicks or double clicks .. strange

Good I installed Mojave on a separate volume and still do have HS waiting for me whenever I decide to return
[doublepost=1538069275][/doublepost]

I have two 1080p IPS external monitors hooked up to my 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro. Fonts do not look as good as they did on High Sierra. On the MacBook Pro's screen itself, fonts appear to be fine.

There is a difference.

Internal display :

External Display :

I do experience the second example on my MB Air screen

this is clearly related to the pixel count

zoom in on the letter "N" in the above and below screenshot and count the steps forming the diagonal line connecting both vertical lines

as expected many more tiny steps on a retina screen

much fewer bigger steps on a non retina one

zooming out again, this is what makes it blurry

If I bought my Air yesterday, I would return it and invest my money in something else

with Mojave, non retina screens are a thing of the past

[doublepost=1538069542][/doublepost]

Alternatively just install Mojave yourself on a separate volume to test it. APFS makes this very easy - just add a new volume, no need to partition your drive or allocate fixed space. Or to be even safer use an external drive for testing.

yes, I did this

I love APFS, setting up volumes is easy and simple. sizing is dynamic

partitioning was a real PITA in comparison

 

[Cougarcat]

Does subpixel anitaliasing work with portrait mode? My 1080p monitor in portrait already looks awful (I just use it for twitter so it doesn't matter much) but wondering if it will look even worse in Mojave.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I saw this in a reddit post, could you try it to see if it fixes the fonts:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

Here's the post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9inu3e/if_the_font_rendering_on_mojave_looks_odd_to_you/

Thanks, that worked for me and I have a 2012 Mac Mini and a 19" 1280x1024 Dell monitor. I noticed though the fonts have looked worse regardless if I enable "dark mode". If I disable dark mode my fonts look the same as they did with High Sierra.

 

[neliason]

Exactly, you will see the colour fringing when subpixel AA is enabled in Mojave.

You are absolutely correct. I used the command you suggested:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

And then after logging out and back in the color fringing was there. I confirmed by taking a screen shot of some text before and after. Before there was only gray anti aliasing. After there was color.

But I will say that text didn’t seem that bad before enabling this. I’d say it looked better than text on High Sierra with LCD font smoothing disabled.

Alternatively just install Mojave yourself on a separate volume to test it. APFS makes this very easy - just add a new volume, no need to partition your drive or allocate fixed space. Or to be even safer use an external drive for testing.

That was a great idea. Having an external SSD made this very easy. Mojave installed very quickly.

Thanks for the spreading the word on this issue and your suggestions.

 

[drlunanerd]

Thanks for the spreading the word on this issue and your suggestions.

My pleasure.

 

[whitedragon101]

Does this apply to scaled resolutions too? E.g Running 2560 x 1440 scaled resolution on an external 4K monitor?

 

[EugW]

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.

I am using a 2010 iMac as an external screen. The text quality is definitely worse in Mojave.

Did the command. Looks back to the way it did before. Not exactly good, but better than Mojave's default.

 

[ChrisChaval]

this is my second day with Mojave on the MB Air (2017)

did not switch back to HS since I installed it on a separate volume

If I do not boot HS within the next month for any reason, I'll do a clean install of Mojave on the Air and move on

just to let you know

will do the same with with my Mac mini (2014)

the great thing about Mojave is that it supports APFS on external USB 3 drives which HS did not (installed Mojave on a separate HFS+ partition, not APFS volume)

 

[EugW]

this is my second day with Mojave on the MB Air (2017)

did not switch back to HS since I installed it on a separate volume

If I do not boot HS within the next month for any reason, I'll do a clean install of Mojave on the Air and move on

just to let you know

will do the same with with my Mac mini (2014)

the great thing about Mojave is that it supports APFS on external USB 3 drives which HS did not (installed Mojave on a separate HFS+ partition, not APFS volume)

I have an external USB 3 SSD with my AFPS High Sierra backup, and this AFPS drive boots up just fine over USB.

I didn't know you could install Mojave on an HFS+ partition.

 

[ChrisChaval]

I have an external USB 3 SSD with my AFPS High Sierra backup, and this AFPS drive boots up just fine over USB.

I didn't know you could install Mojave on an HFS+ partition.

sorry you are right, I was not being clear:

Mojave installs on external USB 3 drives using APFS, no problem (a problem may be trying to force Mojave to install on HFS+..., read a thread about that on MR ...)

Now, HS did default on HFS+ on external USB 3 drives (thunderbolt drives did support APFS)

So, being on HS on an external USB 3 SSD I was forced to create a partition on my USB 3 SSD. no APFS, no volumes.

Mojave installed on that partition on APFS automatically

 

[Lioness~]

I keep finding reasons to hold on with that Mojave upgrade.

No hurry here, I let others deal with the 1st bugs and bad stuff.
High Sierra is just fine

 

[ChrisChaval]

I keep finding reasons to hold on with that Mojave upgrade.

No hurry here, I let others deal with the 1st bugs and bad stuff.
High Sierra is just fine

took the plunge

just did the clean install

all well for now

 

[Riwam]

took the plunge

just did the clean install

all well for now

If the initial release of any OS was "all well"... there would be no need for updates.
High Sierra for instance reached 10.13.6 when Mojave was released. The same applied to previous OS.
In my old Macbook I have for instance Yosemite 10.10.5 which was the final release of it.
Waiting for further updates of a new new OS has never harmed anybody... while jumping too fast might in many cases do it.
I do not understand what brings people (who should think in a reasonable way since they use logically built systems like computers) to install even Betas in their work computer!...
"If it ain't broken don't mend it" seems to me a wise thought.
I am not as a principle against improving things but... let others find out bugs and problems if they are so fond of taking potentially risky steps.
Common sense in my humble opinion.
Ed

 

[ChrisChaval]

If the initial release of any OS was "all well"... there would be no need for updates.
High Sierra for instance reached 10.13.6 when Mojave was released. The same applied to previous OS.
In my old Macbook I have for instance Yosemite 10.10.5 which was the final release of it.
Waiting for further updates of a new new OS has never harmed anybody... while jumping too fast might in many cases do it.
I do not understand what brings people (who should think in a reasonable way since they use logically built systems like computers) to install even Betas in their work computer!...
"If it ain't broken don't mend it" seems to me a wise thought.
I am not as a principle against improving things but... let others find out bugs and problems if they are so fond of taking potentially risky steps.
Common sense in my humble opinion.
Ed

you are perfectly right

If this was my work machine, I would not have risked it so early on

Fortunately, I am allowed to use my Mac to relax (and to test some new OS) and what brings me to install .0 releases ... mostly curiosity and a lot of courage I guess

I do not install betas though

 

[kohlson]

I do not understand what brings people (who should think in a reasonable way since they use logically built systems like computers) to install even Betas in their work computer!...

Ahh - the continuum of the human experience!

 

[EugW]

Definitely still a bit buggy.

Woke from sleep and lost my keyboard. Unplugged it, and it was sensed via Bluetooth, but I couldn't type anything with it. Plugged it back in and was connected via wired, but still couldn't type anything with it. Had to do a hard reboot to get it back. Never had this in High Sierra.

So, the usual rule of thumb still applies. If non-buggy functionality is important to you, you might want to wait until something like the .3 update.

 

[stillcrazyman]

I bravely installed Mojave on my Late 2012 27" iMac - Non Retina display.
I see no noticeable difference in the font rendering or screen proportions.
Did I miss something ?

 

[EugW]

I bravely installed Mojave on my Late 2012 27" iMac - Non Retina display.
I see no noticeable difference in the font rendering or screen proportions.
Did I miss something ?

Not everyone would notice the difference, but the default in Mojave is to no longer use subpixel rendering. See the picture I posted above. Subpixel rendering uses the adjacent different coloured subpixels to render the font, not just different shades of grey.

Another example is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

If you had an early colour Mac, the text would look like the top pic.

With High Sierra, it would be like the bottom pic.

With Mojave, it would look like the middle pic.

The bottom pic is the best quality in most cases, but for some reason in Mojave Apple has chosen to go with the middle method. Not sure why. Luckily with the Terminal command posted earlier in this thread, you can turn subpixel rendering back on in Mojave.

 

[stillcrazyman]

@EugW - Thanks for explaining that. I only noticed it a bit after reading a few posts about it, and even then, only on Dark mode.

 

[EugW]

Thinking about it now, perhaps one reason they turned it off in Mojave is because most Mojave machines don't need subpixel rendering, and presumably having subpixel rendering off saves on CPU/GPU cycles. As mentioned, for Retina screens it's completely unnecessary. And I guess they figure a lot of users of older machines wouldn't notice the difference, and those of us geeks that do would find the command to turn it back on.

My two Mojave machines are Retina, but I turned subpixel rendering back on my for my 5K iMac, because I am using a 2010 2.5K iMac as an external monitor.

 

[hallux]

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.

I'll jump on the bandwagon. Are you buying for everyone then? My 2012 MBP still performs exactly as I need it to, I have no reason to replace it right now.

 

[AlexJoda]

I'll jump on the bandwagon. Are you buying for everyone then? My 2012 MBP still performs exactly as I need it to, I have no reason to replace it right now.

The same here. Just bought me a MBP 2012 (non retina) last week for little money, put a new fast SSD and 16 GB RAM inside and installed Mojave. This is the last MBP which is upgradable in that way and is able to run the latest MacOS Mojave. I only need it for occasional use when a mobile computer is nessessary. For every more demanding tasks I have my 2017 iMac 5K or my virtual machines on our hosts. After using the terminal commands for subpixel antialiasing the MBP seems usable again.

Before that 2012 MBP I used a 2008 MBP which was also upgraded to maximum of 4GB RAM and a SSD and it serves me well until last week. The solid construction and good repairability/upgradebility and the long usable life was one of the best aspects of these MacBooks. It is sad that since the first Retina MBP this is no longer the case. The upgrades with SSD and RAM and a fresh battery from time to time brings this 2012 MBP to nearly recent standards (with the additional bonus of an Ethernet port, SD card reader, FireWire port, USB3 A Ports, MagSafe and a DVD writer). I don’t think that this sealed $5000 MBP from 2018 is that much usable in 6-10 years any more.....

 

[Paapaa]

Luckily with the Terminal command posted earlier in this thread, you can turn subpixel rendering back on in Mojave.

Can someone verify that the command indeed activats subpixel antialiasing? So the letters have that distinctive red-blue color fringe around it?

 

[EugW]

Can someone verify that the command indeed activats subpixel antialiasing? So the letters have that distinctive red-blue color fringe around it?

I already posted a screen grab earlier.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n-retina-screens.2142805/page-5#post-26585296

 

[antibolo]

I never liked subpixel antialiasing. I always thought the red and blue fringes were distracting. I always disable that feature on my Linux workstation.

I'm kinda surprised that this is apparently a big deal for many people.

With that said Apple should have kept it as an option. But I guess that's current day Apple for you...