I agree, and wish to add that the new graphics stack on Linux is also far superior to MacOS in the same way. By "new graphics stack" I mean Wayland without XWayland.
In fact, of the 3 desktop operating systems, I distinctly prefer the details of how my screen looks on Linux: on Windows, small (plus or minus 25%) changes in scaling factor tend to cause large changes in the details of the rendering of text (e.g., the average width of lines and curves can seem to halve or double or the text can seem to change font) which I find a little distracting.
MacOS is by far the worst of the three. Not only does it look horribly blurry to me (on a normal old monitor -- I do not own any HiDPI monitors) when a non-integer scaling factor is applied (via the Displays pane of System Preferences), but even at the native resolution of the display, it is blurrier than I like because of a decision by Apple long ago to optimize for how closely text on the screen matches how the same text looks like when printed out. (At least one of the terms hinting and anti-aliasing are relevant here, but I don't know the details.)
Windows is further along than Linux in the rollout of a truly resolution-independent graphics stack: on Linux, I have to pass certain flags to Chrome to get it to circumvent XWayland and not be blurry -- and then there are a few bugs -- but bugs I can definitely live with. Also, on Linux, I have to use a special branch of Emacs (named feature/pgtk) to get Emacs to be non-blurry when a non-integer scaling factor is set in Gnome Settings, feature/pgtk has a bad bug (freezing at random times) which I learned to work around (by starting a second "sacrificial" Emacs instance, which luckily would always be the first to freeze, and once frozen would somehow prevent the first instance from freezing).
I was a MacOS user for 10 years, and would still be a MacOS user today if I hadn't spent time on Windows 10 and had my eyes opened to the painfulness of the two aforementioned sources of blurriness (namely, Apple's decision to optimize for fidelity to hardcopy and MacOS's use of a scaling algorithm when the scaling factor is not an exact integer). I always knew during those 10 years that MacOS was too blurry for me at non-integer scaling factors, but I thought it was OK because the 2 individual apps I spent the most time in (Emacs and my browser) have app-specific scaling factors that don't introduce blurriness, and it wasn't until I spent time on a different OS that I understood how sub-optimal MacOS was for my pattern of use and my particular visual cortex.
If you are on a Mac, a good way to experience what I am talking about is to install Google Chrome, then operate the "Zoom" control in the menu of the 3 vertical dots. Note how every element in the viewport instantly changes size. PNG and JPG images (e.g., the white "Y" in the left top corner of this page, but not the white rectangle surrounding it) might become blurry (or stop being blurry) because unlike essentially everything else on a modern web page, PNGs and JPGs are not stored as resolution-independent mathematical descriptions of curves. Well, Windows has a control in its Settings app that has the same effect on every visual element on the OS (including the mouse cursor). And on my Linux box, Gnome Settings has a control that does the same thing. (Safari and Firefox might have the same "zoomability" as Chrome does; I haven't used Firefox on a Mac in years; back when I did, its zoom control zoomed only the text, but not the images; I no longer have access to a Mac, so cannot experiment with Safari.)
This is a major factor. macOS has aggressively optimized for these in recent years, often at the expense of classic 1x display experience. I use 5K 27" and 4K 24" monitors at 2x scaling (this is the default), and the result is excellent.
Maybe so, but the blurriness caused by decisions around antialiasing and hinting was present already in Snow Leopard, which predates the first retina Mac.
I agree, and wish to add that the new graphics stack on Linux is also far superior to MacOS in the same way. By "new graphics stack" I mean Wayland without XWayland.
In fact, of the 3 desktop operating systems, I distinctly prefer the details of how my screen looks on Linux: on Windows, small (plus or minus 25%) changes in scaling factor tend to cause large changes in the details of the rendering of text (e.g., the average width of lines and curves can seem to halve or double or the text can seem to change font) which I find a little distracting.
MacOS is by far the worst of the three. Not only does it look horribly blurry to me (on a normal old monitor -- I do not own any HiDPI monitors) when a non-integer scaling factor is applied (via the Displays pane of System Preferences), but even at the native resolution of the display, it is blurrier than I like because of a decision by Apple long ago to optimize for how closely text on the screen matches how the same text looks like when printed out. (At least one of the terms hinting and anti-aliasing are relevant here, but I don't know the details.)
Windows is further along than Linux in the rollout of a truly resolution-independent graphics stack: on Linux, I have to pass certain flags to Chrome to get it to circumvent XWayland and not be blurry -- and then there are a few bugs -- but bugs I can definitely live with. Also, on Linux, I have to use a special branch of Emacs (named feature/pgtk) to get Emacs to be non-blurry when a non-integer scaling factor is set in Gnome Settings, feature/pgtk has a bad bug (freezing at random times) which I learned to work around (by starting a second "sacrificial" Emacs instance, which luckily would always be the first to freeze, and once frozen would somehow prevent the first instance from freezing).
I was a MacOS user for 10 years, and would still be a MacOS user today if I hadn't spent time on Windows 10 and had my eyes opened to the painfulness of the two aforementioned sources of blurriness (namely, Apple's decision to optimize for fidelity to hardcopy and MacOS's use of a scaling algorithm when the scaling factor is not an exact integer). I always knew during those 10 years that MacOS was too blurry for me at non-integer scaling factors, but I thought it was OK because the 2 individual apps I spent the most time in (Emacs and my browser) have app-specific scaling factors that don't introduce blurriness, and it wasn't until I spent time on a different OS that I understood how sub-optimal MacOS was for my pattern of use and my particular visual cortex.
If you are on a Mac, a good way to experience what I am talking about is to install Google Chrome, then operate the "Zoom" control in the menu of the 3 vertical dots. Note how every element in the viewport instantly changes size. PNG and JPG images (e.g., the white "Y" in the left top corner of this page, but not the white rectangle surrounding it) might become blurry (or stop being blurry) because unlike essentially everything else on a modern web page, PNGs and JPGs are not stored as resolution-independent mathematical descriptions of curves. Well, Windows has a control in its Settings app that has the same effect on every visual element on the OS (including the mouse cursor). And on my Linux box, Gnome Settings has a control that does the same thing. (Safari and Firefox might have the same "zoomability" as Chrome does; I haven't used Firefox on a Mac in years; back when I did, its zoom control zoomed only the text, but not the images; I no longer have access to a Mac, so cannot experiment with Safari.)