Originally Posted by
kaiser_soze 
When it comes to operating system upgrades from Apple, I am jaded, skeptical, and cynical. All for good reason.
The reason is this: there has long been one MAJOR problem with Apples OS, WHICH THEY HAVE STEADFASTLY IGNORED, meanwhile devoting a lot of effort to a lot of stuff that is frivolous in comparison.
The One True Problem with Apples OS: SCREEN TEXT THAT IS NOT UNDER THE IMMEDIATE CONTROL OF SOME PIECE OF APPLICATION SOFTWARE IS RENDERED IN SUCH A WAY THAT THE PHYSICAL SIZE OF THE TEXT ON THE SCREEN DEPENDS ON THE PHYSICAL PIXEL DENSITY OF THE DISPLAY!!!!!
This situation is LUDICROUS. It is ludicrous that Apple has ignored this for as long as they have. It is LUDICROUS that whereas they should have corrected this horrific shortcoming a long, long time ago, they have persisted in ignoring it and have instead directed their efforts at the likes of the boot animation.
For every Apple-apologist out there who will be eager to spring to Apples defense and try to find some way to refute what I am saying, please take note of the following more detailed explanation of the problem. You are no doubt aware that the physical pixel density of the screen varies from one display device to the next. You have probably heard, for example, of retina display. Now, there are good reasons why the same sort of high-resolution should be offered in the regular computers. But unless and until Apple corrects this shortcoming in the regular OS, this cannot be done. The reason is simple. Excepting the text where the font size used at the display is controlled by some piece of application software, all the rest of it will shrink physically in size. The quantity of pixels used will not change, and because that same, fixed quantity of pixels will take up less physical real estate on the screen, it will shrink. The extent of the shrinkage is the same as the extent in the increase in the physical pixel density. This will apply to the menu bar and everything else that you see across the top of the screen, and to the drop-down menus, and to all of the windows that you open and that are provided by the OS itself, such as the system preferences window. All of this is rigidly fixed to a fixed quantity of screen pixels, and when the screen pixel density increases, all of this shrinks in size. Like the Incredible Shrinking Man from that old science fiction movie, eventually it all becomes so small that it simply vanishes.
Now that you understand the problem and you understand that it is real, surely you as well find it perplexing that Apple has not long ago fixed this. Surely. It is manifestly a problem, and it is manifestly something that Apple should have fixed a long, long time ago.
There is another related problem. If you happen not to like what Apple calls font smoothing, which would more appropriately be called font smudging, then you will want to disable it. If you go into the settings for Appearance, there seems to be the ability to disable font smudging. It would appear that if you simply deselect the box that is labelled Use LCD font smoothing when available, that this would disable font smudging altogether. But it doesnt. There is even a logical inconsistency between that selection and the selection immediately below, where you select a font size associated with Turn off text smoothing for font sizes ___ and smaller. There are multiple problems with this. First, you cannot select a font size any larger than 12. Why not? Who decided to put this arbitrary limitation here? Software engineers who do not have any better sense than to put arbitrary limitations of this sort into software have no business being allowed near a compiler. Second, these settings only seem to have any effect at all for applications that cooperatively, voluntarily conform to these settings. It is apparently the case that applications can ignore these settings, and it is apparently the case that text generated from within the OS, i.e., the text that shrinks physically when the physical pixel density is great, simply ignores these settings. Or is the text that you see, in the very same window where you make these selections, larger than font size 12 and therefore immune to the setting, due to the arbitrary restriction, notwithstanding that you have deselected the box? IT MAKES NO SENSE.
I WISH THAT EVERYONE WOULD STOP ALL THIS SILLY BABBLE ABOUT THE BOOT ANIMATION AND SO FORTH AND START TALKING INSTEAD ABOUT THESE VERY REAL SHORTCOMINGS THAT APPLE NEEDS TO ADDRESS. AS LONG AS THE CUSTOMERS ARE EVIDENTLY TOO IGNORANT TO REALIZE THAT THIS IS A PROBLEM, APPLE WILL LIKELY CONTINUE TO IGNORE THIS INDEFINITELY. THE LAST MAJOR REVISION TO THE OS WAS AT THE VERY BEST A JOKE, AND THE SAME WILL LIKELY BE TRUE OF THIS ONE, AND THE NEXT ONE, AND THE ONE AFTER THAT, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS THE PAYING CUSTOMERS STOP ALL THIS BABBLE ABOUT BOOT ANIMATION AND SO FORTH AND START TALKING INSTEAD ABOUT THIS REAL, BONA FIDE PROBLEM!
