- 24" you need 4k
- 27" you need 5K.
- 32" you need 6k.
Windows subpixel aliasing (Clear Type) manages a lot better with lower pixel density. Since Windows still has a commanding market share in enterprise, you might be right about the industry standard for HiDPI but for Apple-specific usage, not really.
Totally agree with those resolution suggestions. Personally I have a 32" 4k, I wanted a 5k or 6k back then (just too expensive) - but now I wish I had just got a 27" which is better suited to 4k - regardless it was a LOT better on the M2 Max with HiDPI working.
This still baffles me. Never mind Windows; I can get sub-pixel font rendering with the ability to fine-tune it on virtually any major Linux distro since around 2010.
Meanwhile, Apple had this but dropped it in 2018, allegedly under the assumption of "hiDPI everywhere" Retina or Retina-like displays. Which would be great...except "everywhere" turned out to be "very specific monitors support specific resolutions".
OP dances around the key context that this isn’t hidpi, but rather a 3rd party hack that uses hidpi rendering to supersample their “native” 4k resolution by 2x, since the end result looks more pleasing to them than the native 4k render.
It’s actually around 1.5x for the default resolution out of the box and 1.3x for “more space” setting on m1/m2 MacBook Air. 1.1x supersampling on Macs makes it worse because down sampling to pixel alignment becomes a hot mess.
Those numbers of 1470x956 are “points” or “looks like” values, not the size of the frame buffer. The frame buffer for “looks like 1470x956” is exactly 2x that, or 2940x1912. On a 2560x1664 display, that’s a 1.148x scale factor. Again, nowhere near 2x, even on the “more space” setting.
If you’re counting by the framebuffer than the only 2x is the hidpi-forced-into-lowdown like the link suggest. The ratios I’m referring to is the UI scaling against the physical display pixel dimensions.
Apple basically settles into 220 dpi physical displays (250 moc MacBook Pro), rendering UI at a 2x scale as a default, except for MacBook Airs.
And prior to Apple’s re-entry into the display market, everybody internally was likely on 2x HiDPI LG UltraFine displays or integrated displays on iMacs and MacBooks.
Fractional scaling (and lately, even 1x scaling “normal”) displays really are not much of a consideration for them, even if they’re popular. 2x+ integer scaling HiDPI is the main target.
But to be fair, until last year there were no retina monitors in the market except the Apple ones. In 2025, the tides turned, there are now way more options both for 5k and 6k retina displays.
Tbh I'm not even sure what the issue is here. I have a personal M1 macbook and a work M4 and a 4k display. I don't see any issues or differences between them on my display. The M4 seems to be outputting a 4k image just fine.
The article could just be AI slop since it just contains hyper in depth debugging without articulating what the problem is.
Right, I just went though all of the scale options on my M4 with 4k monitor and none of them rendered blurry. Might be a very situational bug. Doesn't seem as widespread as the title makes out to be.
