It's actually because of ClearType that I hate screwing with layout.
This doesn't really effect the iPhone, but a lot of apps completely ignore your intended subpixel layout. Windows or X/Wayland can be set correctly, and many apps do handle that correctly, but many don't.
Many enable subpixel hinting when it is clearly disabled by the user. Want greyscale because your monitor fringes hard? Too bad. Want aliased because it is a low resolution display or you hate fuzzy fonts? Too bad.
Also, many apps do detect correctly, but only detect your primary monitor, not the monitor the window is on. Doesn't effect you if you're single monitor.
And to further shit on broken apps: there are apps that are already using DirectWrite on Windows, and are force overriding the correct (default) settings. Why?!?! You were so close!
And to shit on the Internet as a whole: people screenshotting text for their websites that have Vista-era Cleartype tuning clearly in it. Isn't so bad on RGB monitors, but almost unreadable on BGR or any V orientation.
And one last insult: DirectWrite and Freetype only support RGB, BGR, VRGB, and VBGR. There are many other weird ass configurations, such as LG C2s having RGBW (which causes extreme haloing on text), and another OLED panel (forgetting which monitor) has RBG (why?!).
So screw it. I won't use non-RGB monitors until we live in a world we're doing 300% DPI equivalent (ie, 5760x3240 in a 24"; best I can get in a commodity is 4k in 24", or 200%), and I can't see the subpixels anymore no matter how much I squint.
This is a great example for all the edge cases one has to deal with when shipping software, especially when rolling your own solutions rather than using the OS's frameworks.
All of this complexity actually makes me quite happy that Apple doesn't even attempt to do sub-pixel hinting anymore. Finally no more weird colors when zooming in on text.
I've dealt with this on Windows and Linux, and on Linux it was even worse. There I usually had to turn it off altogether.
It was never an issue on Macs for me though, even before "retina" resolution was a thing. Which by the way turned out to be a genius way to solve the issue, even though people didn't realize at the time.
However, I also remember that many people just didn't notice or didn't care. Completely fuzzy display and they just thought that was how it was supposed to be. In the XP era, people would just set the screen resolution lower to something like 800x600 to trade subpixel fuzziness for regular fuzziness.
VGA cables and later cheap VGA-DVI adapters didn't help either. You got VGA fuzz plus subpixel fuzz, total mess. Fun fact: Just last year I sat down at a shared desk at work and noticed a slight fuzziness, and after some investigation saw there was a USB-C dock -> VGA out -> HDMI adapter horror-show going on. Nobody noticed!
This doesn't really effect the iPhone, but a lot of apps completely ignore your intended subpixel layout. Windows or X/Wayland can be set correctly, and many apps do handle that correctly, but many don't.
Many enable subpixel hinting when it is clearly disabled by the user. Want greyscale because your monitor fringes hard? Too bad. Want aliased because it is a low resolution display or you hate fuzzy fonts? Too bad.
Also, many apps do detect correctly, but only detect your primary monitor, not the monitor the window is on. Doesn't effect you if you're single monitor.
And to further shit on broken apps: there are apps that are already using DirectWrite on Windows, and are force overriding the correct (default) settings. Why?!?! You were so close!
And to shit on the Internet as a whole: people screenshotting text for their websites that have Vista-era Cleartype tuning clearly in it. Isn't so bad on RGB monitors, but almost unreadable on BGR or any V orientation.
And one last insult: DirectWrite and Freetype only support RGB, BGR, VRGB, and VBGR. There are many other weird ass configurations, such as LG C2s having RGBW (which causes extreme haloing on text), and another OLED panel (forgetting which monitor) has RBG (why?!).
So screw it. I won't use non-RGB monitors until we live in a world we're doing 300% DPI equivalent (ie, 5760x3240 in a 24"; best I can get in a commodity is 4k in 24", or 200%), and I can't see the subpixels anymore no matter how much I squint.