The Great Debate
Once again, another battle is being fought in the Mac vs. Windows war. Personally, I don’t think there’s a war. Or at least there’s nothing worth fighting about. This time, the chosen battlefield is font smoothing. The latest volley in this skirmish includes this wonderfully written post:
While on the surface, the battle seems to be over whether Microsoft’s ClearType technology, or Apple’s anti-aliasing technology is better, it seems ot me that the real debate centers on whether font smoothing should be done for the sake of readability, or so that text is displayed true to the font. Microsoft tends to lean more toward readability, while Apple tends to render fonts as true as possible. As you can see from the article I linked to above, this black and white distinction isn’t nearly as sharply divided as it first appears.
I am of the camp that believes Mac OS X makes fonts much more readable, in general. I also feel that Apple has done a wonderful job upholding font traditions, and that proper font rendering is important, even on screen.