Apple’s Subpixel Font Rendering is Bugged in Mac OS X

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Blake Patterson

On September 20, 2006 I submitted the following Mac OS X bug report to Apple via the ADC Bug Reporter. The bug has to do with OS X’s subpixel font rendering, which is activated if the font smoothing style (in the Appearance prefs pane) is set to “Medium – best for Flat Panel.”

    The ATI X1900 XT video card supports screen rotation in the OS X Displays control panel. A Mac Pro was setup with an X1900, a 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and a rotated Samsung 1600×1200 DVI display.

    See a similar setup:

    http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/macpro/IMG_8822.JPG.html

    ‘Font smoothing style’ in the Appearance prefs pane is set to “Medium – best for Flat Panel.” This setting uses subpixeling, providing up to 3x the horizontal resolution of the screen’s native pixel width, etc. (More about sub-pixeling here: http://www.grc.com/cleartype.htm )

    Sub-pixeling depends upon the orientation of the RGB elements of each sub-pixel cluster that makes up a pixel. When a screen is rotated 90-degrees, the RGB “stripes” run horizontal, not vertical. As can be seen from the below images, where the first image (“broken”) shows the rotated Samsung and the second image (“proper”) shows the standard orientation Apple Cinema 30″, OS X’s sub-pixeling does NOT take into account the new orientation of the sub-pixel clusters, resulting in a rather bold and crude rendering of text on the rotated first (“broken”) image:

    http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/screenshots/osx_subpixel_bug/broken.jpg.html

    http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/screenshots/osx_subpixel_bug/proper.jpg.html

    Apple needs to correct this so that people don’t have to abandon sub-pixeling and use ‘Standard’ (greyscale) anti-aliasing. Microsoft takes sub-pixel cluster orientation into account with Windows Mobile (CE) on the Pocket PC’s. Surely Apple can get this working with rotated screens under OS X.

    Thanks. I’ve encountered, so far, one other user complaining about this issue.

I just checked the status of the big report (Problem ID 4740732, for any Mac OS X core developers at Apple reading this) and I find it’s still “Open,” which means it’s unlikely to be addressed in Leopard – the initial release, anyway. Even just the option of selecting a different font smoothing method for each screen would be a win, here.

Apple, please address this.

Posted in Macintosh | 13 Comments

My Media PC Gives Up the Ghost

Posted on February 3, 2007 by Blake Patterson

So my media PC died. The core of my entertainment center is a Shuttle XPC i8600 (3.2GHz P4 HT) running Meedio under Windows XP. It’s great. It’s my main DVD player and it lets me sit on the couch with my IR remote and browse ripped DVDs and HD streams and watch them with ease, all amid surround sound goodness. Well, it did, until it died.

It seemed it had to be either the motherboard, the memory, or the CPU. I pulled each of the two DIMMs that make up its 1GB of RAM in turn and the unit still wouldn’t work. I gambled that the motheboard was the cause and ordered a replacement from Shuttle ($138 + shipping). Got up at 4:30 this morning and started breaking down the system to do the swap. The end result? Up and running once more. The culprit? Have a look – two bulged capacitors and a smoked IC. A sad way to go….

More pics of the swap process can be found here, for those interested.

As a footnote, sadly Yahoo! bought Meedio and dumbed it down and turned it into Yahoo! Go for TV. Grumble.

UPDATE: The replacement motherboard died, as well, just a few months later! Oddly I decided to roll the dice once more and buy yet another replacement motherboard from Shuttle. When it arrived, I found additional heatsinks on various components in the vicinity of the failure and a different capacitor arrangement. It’s been running fine for some time since, though it’s now in use as an XP / Windows 7 machine in the basement computer room, running primarily as as retro emulation machine.

Posted in Windows | 1 Comment

Live Action Hamster Video Game

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Blake Patterson

I was searching for GP2X videos on YouTube and came across a great little piece. The Live Action Hamster Video Game. If anyone knows the platform, please let me know. (It looks like a Spectrum to me!)

Posted in Other Platform | Leave a comment

My Trip to Macworld San Francisco 2007

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Blake Patterson

So, I’m back from Macworld. And quite an experience it was! I’ve attended PC Expo in New York twice and regularly attend the DC FOSE convention, but Macworld was an event particularly catered to my Apple-centric interests.

The first bit of fun once we arrived in San Francisco on Monday was renting a car and driving down to Cupertino to visit Apple headquarters, a pilgrimage to Mecca I’d not yet undertaken. It was great – larger than life, really. After all these years (I got my first Apple in 1984), to finally visit the Mothership, so to speak. I got a little carried away at the The Company Store, I’m afraid. But when will I be there next?

Tuesday began with the 4:30am alarm sounding in time to get us in line at Moscone West by 5:30am. After a few hours of standing around (thank god they erected a coffee and pastry stand where we were waiting) in the Priority Keynote seating line – tix courtesy of MacRumors which I was helping with live Keynote coverage (which went beautifully), the doors opened and we headed upstairs and grabbed our seats. Seeing Steve Jobs on stage delivering his Keynote address was quite a thrill, but of course, the best part was being blown away by the far-beyond-expectations iPhone. It’s going to be a painful wait.

The rest of the trip, which for me was just that afternoon and the next morning (thanks to baby Rory), was a busy jumble of walking the Expo floor looking at the endless rows of Apple-oriented displays, putting faces with online identities I’ve known, dinners with prominent web folks (two words: Kobe beef), running around San Francisco, and not so much sleeping. I was sad to have to finally depart. It was a memorable experience I am going to try my hardest to repeat next year, or if not then, soon.

Posted in Just Rambling | 2 Comments

I’m Going to MacWorld 2007 in San Francisco!

Posted on December 7, 2006 by Blake Patterson

I’ve never been before, but I will be attending the upcoming MacWorld San Francisco in January. Should be great. While in the area, I will also be visiting the Apple campus in Cupertino, a personal Mecca of sorts I have never visited either. I will be going with Arn who runs MacRumors and attending the Steve Jobs keynote on Tuesday by way of priority keynote tickets, helping Arn with live coverage for MacRumors. Should be quite an experience. Thanks to my kind wife for letting me go and watching baby for my three days away!

Maybe I’ll see you there.

Posted in Just Rambling | 4 Comments

Wii Composite vs. Component Cables

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Blake Patterson

I finally received my Wii component cable, which I ordered before I even had a Wii, allowing me to run in 480p mode on my Pioneer plasma as well as providing a higher detail overall image with more accurate colors. I’ve taken some comparative photos of various Wii screens as seen through both the stock composite and the new component cables.

Have a look for yourself.

Posted in Other Platform | 4 Comments

Super Mario 64: Looks Better on Wii

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Blake Patterson

I love Super Mario 64. It may be the best game I’ve ever played. It’s basically perfect.

As everyone reading this knows, SM64 debuted as a launch title on the Nintendo 64 back in 1996 and it, alone, justified the purchase of the console. Being such a big fan of the game, the first thing I did when I got my Wii was to download SM64 for its Virtual Console, just to check it out. I was also curious to see how well the Wii would handle N64 emulation in general.

Well, the game runs as smooth as glass and the audio seems perfect, which was great to see. But I noticed something else. The polygons looked a little cleaner. Were my eyes tricking me? I fired up my trusty N64 on the same TV and started switching between it and the Wii, looking at various screens to make sure. I quickly confirmed what I had suspected. Super Mario 64 on the Wii renders at a much higher resolution than on the Nintendo 64.

As is the case with most N64 games, SM64 runs in a non-interlaced 320×240 screen mode on the N64. When modern, progressive-scan TVs encounter such a signal, they double-scan them up to 480p. My 50-inch Pioneer PDP-5060 plasma display is one such television. It doesn’t anti-alias or work any other such magic to smooth out the image, so the 320×240 source is rendered in all its original blocky goodness, but at 480p. The absence of said blocky goodness in the Wii’s rendering of the game indicates that the SM64 engine has been modified to output at the Wii’s native resolution of ~640×480 progressive. That’s right – it’s too clean to be general jaggy-smoothing laid onto the 320×240 feed on the way out the door.

To illustrate my point, I have taken several crude photos of the same scene in the game as rendered on both systems. The N64 is tied to the TV via s-video while the Wii is a composite source (my component cables are on back-order – damn you, Nintendo). As such, the color fidelity of the N64 should appear superior to that of the Wii. Have a look at the side-by-side photo gallery.

The nice take-away is this: Rejoyce, SM64 nuts, Mario’s first (and best) foray into 3D is now here in high res!

Posted in Other Platform | 13 Comments

Nintendo Wii = Retro Goodness

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Blake Patterson

New consoles everywhere. Playstation 3. XBOX 360. Wii.

So, I got a Wii. Yes, I got in the car at 6:30 in the morning and drove to the Bailey’s Crossroads Best Buy in Arlington, VA and got in line. I was #53. They had 87 units, so I got one when the store opened at 9. It was an interesting experience. Right of passage, etc. And I took some pictures.

The controller is as good or better than I imagined it could be. Excellent stuff. I’m having fun with Zelda, Monkey Ball, Wii Sports, and Need For Speed: Carbon. What might even be more fun is the Nintendo Virtual Console that runs retro games downloaded from Nintendo. Some of the supported systems: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, NEC TurboGrafx 16, NES, SNES, Nintendo 64. Greanted, I don’t need Nintendo taking me by the hand to get retro games up and running, but it’s nice how easy it makes it for lay folk.

I can’t wait for Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid 3!

Posted in Other Platform | Leave a comment

The Ultimate Basement Mac Collection?

Posted on October 11, 2006 by Blake Patterson

I must say, I was shocked and awed when I ran across the amazing space that is the basement Mac collection of Flickr user soyburger. I must admit that this Mac aficionado has handily defeated my own basement collection that I refer to as my own Byte Cellar.

What’s more impressive than just the sheer number of machines in his basement is the minimal, futuristic styling of the room as a whole. The presentation. And, as I did with my basement, our friend soyburger has clearly sought the help of IKEA in implementing his vision. Bravo.

Posted in Macintosh | 1 Comment

External Status LCD Project

Posted on September 30, 2006 by Blake Patterson
Mac Status LCD IO-Warrior

I’ve long used Bresink’s Hardware Monitor to keep a tab on the vitals of various Macs I’ve used in recent years. After upgrading from a dual G5 2.5 to a quad-core Mac Pro, I hit the Hardware Monitor website to grab a Universal version of the app. That’s when I noted that external LCD support had been added to the program. Right now the only officially supported LCD controller is Code Mercenaries’ USB-based IO-Warrior.

I put my order in right away.

This weekend I received both the IO-Warrior 24 [Internet Archive] kit as well as the white-on-blue, LED-lit 4×24 LCD I ordered. I made some free time this afternoon, pulled out the soldering iron, chopped up an old SCSI cable, and got things together. The result is most technoglorious. (See photos.)

See another user’s IO-Warrio project [Internet Archive] involving custom code pushing iTunes and EyeTV data from Mac to LCD.

Next step: construct a balsa wood enclosure painted flat black. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: It wasn’t balsa wood but PixelBlocks that came to the rescue on an enclosure…

UPDATE: The application that drove this project, Hardware Monitor, was declared end-of-life on June 19, 2017. The applications is still available on the product website and supports Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar to macOS 10.12 Sierra.

Posted in Macintosh | 5 Comments