New to the Mac world - MBP having screen issues

Hi I'm a Mac Newbie.
I used to be a PC.
I just got a Custom 2.2GHZ MacBook Pro with the 160 G HD upgrade and the new matte LED LCD (an earlier thread talked about some of the issues of the LG vs. the Samsung LED - mine is the Samsung 9C68, production week 25)

I am not sure if it's just my eyes getting used to higher resolution and widescreen, but even at the highest resolution 1440 x 900 something about the text makes it hard to read. I have tried to change the font size in Safari, but this did not seem to make a difference (not sure if I was doing this right). Going to a lower resolution makes the text even more blurry.

Unlike others, I am not having problems with yellowing - it's just there is something slightly uneven about the display. Sometimes it's fine and the text is very crisp, whereas other times it appears ever so slightly fuzzy.
I'm thinking perhaps if I disable the adjust to ambient lighting sensor that might help make it more consistent if that is in fact the problem.
However, I am just wondering if this is one of those "bad" Samsung LED LCDs that recently got rolled out and that I should try to exchange it. Something just does not seem quite right about this screen - It just should be sharper than it is.

Any responses most appreciated.

 

that is because you're using safari and it has an effect on the text to make it blurry or something like it, you can download firefox and try

 

I was going to say it might be the fuzzing Safari does to letters. Play around with your laptop more and see if it's a Safari-centric phenomenon.

P.S. How do you find out what brand of screen your laptop has?

 

I downloaded Safari for Windows when it was first released as BETA and the type looked awful. I read an article describing how Safari is more accurate and how windows people do not know what looks good because they are so used to looking at crap. But I think the Safari type was just blurry, and was hard to read.

So yeah if you are specifically having trouble with Safari try another browser first.

 

agree with the above. its not your display, just safari (take comfort in the fact that you dont have a hardware problem)

firefox is the way to go. you could also check out camino if you want, but imo firefox is the best all around.

 

Is the fuzziness seen across the board, in everything? Or is it just in Safari?

 

The fuzziness that the guys are referring to here is how Mac OS renders fonts. Mac OS renders fonts differently than Windows. Most Windows users immediately see the difference quite literally. Since the setting is system wide everything is affected.

You can change the level of font smoothing somewhat. Go to the Appearance Control Panel and adjust the Font Smoothing setting to see if you can find a happy medium.

Strange as it may sound to you I actually prefer the way Mac OS renders fonts. I use Windows and Mac OS on a daily basis so I see both. For whatever reason I prefer the way Mac OS looks. I even like the way Safari for Windows renders fonts. To each his own.

 

Hi there - thanks for the response. I downloaded Firefox - does seem a bit better. Also, I am playing around with the font smoothing. I have a copy of Windows that I'm going to download maybe will see if that will help. As for finding out what screen you have - it is explained in other posts about the LED LCD but basically you go to Display in System Preferences, Colour, Open Profile on Colour LCD, and go to line 13 if ends in 8 its Samsung, if its 7 its LG. Check out the other posts though - they explain it a lot more. It does seem a bit easier on my eyes though I'm still having eyestrain. I think I should have got a glossy. I'm kicking myself and am seriously thinking of returning this machine even with the restocking fee. I mostly do text, wordprocessing, email, scanned document online database searching, internet, music and media stuff. Having totally accurate colours for professional purposes isn't really relevant for me, though being comfortably able to read from the screen for hours (mostly indoors) is. I wish there was somewhere near where I live - Vancouver/Victoria BC to check out the new LED Glossy.

 

Ditto on what previous posters have said, it is more than likely just the way OS X smooths fonts that you're noticing. I would suggest just giving it a bit of time, I hated it at first when I bought a MBP but after not too long it wasn't so bad. I still far prefer ClearType in Windows though (this is probably what you're used to seeing).

 

Wow... this is not making me feel good about possibly buying a Mac.

 

Would this problem occur if you were running Windows. Can you use ClearType if you install Windows on your MBP? Then everything should look normal, right?

 

Thanks - I'll try installing Windows and see what that does.
Does anyone know if there's a fix for this in Leopard?
Also, does anyone know if it might be the matte coating on the screen that diffuses light, but also diffuses picture display, ever so slightly? In other words, I'm wondering if the glossy led lcd would be crisper, even with the font rendering issue.

 

Even if that does help, it would only work while you're in Windows. If that's the only way the text will look sharp on a Mac, wouldn't it make more sense to just use a PC instead?

 

Well, what is the return policy on a MBP? Why would Apple not make text as sharp as Windows...that seems like a terrible mistake! I just ordered a MBP...now I am worried.

 

Are you really serious? If viruses don't stop you from using Windows then a font smoothing concern (which is basically a personal preference) shouldn't stop you from wanting to get a Mac. Personally I like the font smoothing. I don't know what people are seeing but I am looking at Firefox and Safari on this same page and they are identical. It's OS X's way of font smoothing.

 

Hi - I am still happy I got a mac for the capability of using the applications of Mac OSX however, and the wonderful benefit of a Mac is that now you can also run Windows.

I am not thrilled with the font rendering quality in Mac OSX and cannot comment yet about it in Windows. Though I will get that going soon just to compare. My worry is that I should have chosen a glossy screen because that would make text appear sharper even with font rendering, which would help. I know the glossy vs. matte debate rages on, but anyone care to put in their 2 cents?

 

Natastar, please let us know how the text looks in Windows. I am very interested in finding this out, thanks.

 

Well... kind of, yeah.

Maybe I'm just lucky... but I've never had a virus in Windows. If I did, the anti-virus software must have handled it.

Smoothing? Not to my eyes. It looks blurry (fuzzy?) to me.

In fact, here's exactly what I'm seeing:

 

SoundsGood......were both those images taken on a Mac? Is Safari causing that blurriness? Is that Firefox running on a Mac?

 

No, they are from a PC.

Yep, I believe Safari is causing the problem -- but from what I understand, all text on a Mac (system wide) uses the same font rendering. Therefore, all text on a Mac should look similar.

 

First I meant Spyware, not virus because there is no way to dodge it so that's why I made that statement. Windows woes will still keep people using Windows regardless how series things get so a font concern is just what it is, a concern.
I saw the pic and if anyone is having text come up like that then it must be Safari on Intel because I just checked the Notebook Review homepage using Safari and Firefox side by side and I get absolutely no blurriness on either browser. Your pic shows blurry text, I don't get that on my Mac at all.
I am using a dual PPC G5 tower.

 

Just to clarify things a bit. There isn't a "fix" in Leopard because there isn't a problem. The difference in displays is a fundamental difference in philosophy concerning sub pixel rendering. Windows smoothes fonts with an emphasis towards producing clear text for screen viewing while sacrificing font accuracy. Mac OS smoothes fonts in order to maintain font accuracy which can introduce some of the artifacts that you see. Font accuracy is very important to the publishing industry (huge Mac business) that need to see what the final product will look like prior to printing.

 

For those of us that are not in the publishing business, is there a way to turn off this "smoothing" of the fonts?

 

See, I actually prefer the way OS X smoothes fonts. When I used Safari on Windows, it was very noticeable, but I prefer it.

 

You can adjust it in the Appearance Pref panel. You can't turn it off completely.

I will say that I think Safari for Windows over smoothes fonts a bit. I don't believe Safari for Mac is quite as extreme.

 

To clarify a couple things that seem to have been brought up; yes, the way that you're seeing text rendered is specific to OS X. If you put a version of Windows on that same MBP, it will look the same as you are used to seeing on previous LCD's. It's an OS thing in the way it smooths fonts, has nothing to do with the hardware itself.

Also, don't worry too much about the matte vs. glossy and sharpness debate; for what you're seeing it won't make any appreciable difference either way. In general, glossy adds some contrast and saturation, not sharpness. Glossy may seem a little sharper overall on panels with a poor black level, but this is very subjective and dependent on several other factors as well (lighting, viewing angle). That aside, MBP LCD's in general have excellent black level representation, so I kinda doubt that's a problem here.

Font smoothing is really a user preference issue at the end of the day. OS X just does it differently than Windows, some say better, some say worse; but for the majority of people that's really all it is.

Also thought I'd point out that it makes no difference if you're running an Intel based or PPC based computer as the architecture of the CPU plays no role at all in how fonts look. Monitors and software however, can.

 

hi - ok, finally have installed Windows XP with Boot Camp. Wasn' too bad just took awhile esp. because I thought I had to update firmware. Turns out I didn't. Anyways I do find text looks a little sharper in XP - plus this OS lets me increase the font size across the board, which OSX doesn't. I'm still not that pleased with the display. Compared to my old Fujitsu LifeBook the Mac Book Pro is way nicer and brighter, and the whole package is lighter and generally much more "modern" looking and feeling. There is just still something not sharp enough though in the display. I'm still finding text difficult to read - even compared to the old "clunker" Fujitsu that I'm now typing this on. Very strange. Could it just be habit>? I dunno....

 

Bummer. That would really bug me as well.

 

You can always turn off text anti-aliasing for fonts of a certain size and under via the terminal. So try something like:

defaults write -g AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 128

then restart and your fonts should look just like they do in windows.

 

Huh? No habla Ingles.

 

Hmm...do you know off hand what resolution and size the LCD is on your Fujitsu notebook? Or the model number might help. It's sounding more and more like you're probably used to a panel with a higher pixel density, and that may be the difference you're noticing with the MBP LCD.

Also, did you already try messing with the ClearType settings in XP? There's actually a nifty little applet made by Microsoft that will let you tweak it to your liking (you can grab it here when you have the time).

 

Hi - my Fujitsu is a Lifebook E2010. The resolution is on 1024x768 - the LCD is 14inch (not a widescreen). Not sure about the pixel density, but I do find the contrast in colours, for example when typing text is a little better than on the MBP. It is also a matte screen though. I do also find everything generally easier to read in a lower res, and websites cover the full screen and text looks larger than on the 1440x900 or whatever of the MBP. Any ways around this? Of course it's nice to have the larger screen and be able to have multiple windows side by side, however if you can't really read/see them well what is the point?

Haven't tried messing with ClearType settings....

Also, I'm still not convinced that some of this won't be fixed with a glossy screen coating instead of a matte one. I guess I've been influenced by the reviewers saying the new LED glossies on the MacBookPro are better than the mattes. And, specifically that the matte coating's purpose is to diffuse somewhat and this could be the fuzziness factor. Here's a link to the article I'm talking about http://gracefulflavor.net/2007/06/1...os-led-display-glossy-v-matte-all-over-again/

Anyways, the consensus in all the matte vs. glossy debate seems to be - decide for yourself, because it's subjective - so off I'm going to the Apple Reseller to check out display models.

 

The glossy screens are a bit more crisp than matter screens. I noticed that then I was shopping for my MBP. I went back and forth in a side by side comparison and I chose the glossy screen. The glossy screen was a bit more sharp, colors were obviously more vivid, and the screen was a tad brighter.

 

Hi, so I went to a bunch of Apple resellers today and I had a look at another matte screen - mine's fine in terms of hardware. Then I had to go to a different store that had a new glossy on display and when I compared my matte next to the glossy I immediately knew that the glossy was what I wanted. To me the text looks sharp and in focus compared to the matte - though the difference is very slight, however for whatever reason I'm very sensitive to that bit of fuzziness that I'm picking up on the matte and it hurts my eyes because they are trying too hard to focus. The glossy on the other hand was seemed a lot easier on my eyes and allowed me to see text very clearly from a good distance and not have to squint and lean in. This is such a good example of how you should never just go with what you think is the best because that's what everyone else says. It is so important to decide for yourself. Hopefully the campus store where I got my MBP (on Tuesday) will take it back and do an exchange....I don't even mind paying for the restocking fee....

 

Cool. Sounds like you'll be a happy camper.

I think I'll go take a peek at the glossy MBP myself.

 

Open up finder. Go into applications, then utilities. Open terminal. Type that.

 

Ahhh... thanks.

Is that like using "Run" on Windows?

 

Kinda sorta, but MUCH more powerful. The Terminal is one of the biggest advantages OS X has over Windows. Although, now Windows has something similar called Power Shell I believe.

 

not sure if this will help but there is a firmware update

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookproefifirmwareupdate13.html

from the web site:

"About MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.3
This EFI Firmware update fixes a display issue on 2.2/2.4GHz 15-inch MacBook Pro models."