27" iMac high resolution ruins computing experience

Gee RMCaird.
Thank you so much for your incredibly useful, insightful and helpful comments.
In case you're not as bright as you think you are, that's sarcasm.

FYI
The reason I have a 27" iMac at the moment is because the screen on the 24" iMac I bought in 2009 had gone defective with weird grey lines all the over the screen.
Apple was unable to fix it even after replacing the screen and logic board twice.
So they gave me a brand new 27" iMac with an even faster processor, because the 24" iMac isn't being made anymore.
I had no problems with screen resolution and legibility on the 24" iMac.

I'm 57 years old and have to use tri-focals.
That's 3 prescriptions (distance, intermediate and reading) in a single lens.
So, thanks for your suggestion, but I've already got glasses.

And if you'd taken the time to look at the discussion in the link i supplied you'll see that I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with the 27" iMac screen.

Thanks Barbara.
I'm trying that now.
It does give me all my width back on the screen.
But menus are even bigger and more garish looking now.
It looks like a monitor for someone who is seriously sight-impaired.
I may have to wear tri-focals, but I'm nowhere near blind yet. lol

I also have the app called TinkerTool and it will let me further adjust certain types of system font sizes not accessible any other way, like the fonts in the menus.
It it could also control the width of the Menu Bar I'd probably be able to set things up just right for what I'd like to see.

Whatever happened to the whole notion of WYSIWYG?
Sigh.

etresoft wrote:

Gee Joey,
That's rude.

No more rude than he was to me, IMO.

Maybe some of you people don't understand the problem(s).

Try this...
With the default 27" iMac screen resolution of 2560 X 1440:
Set your browser up for 12 points for both the Proportional font and the Monospaced font.
Now, go to my web page at <http://www.joeygoldstein.com>.
Press Command 0 in order to turn off any zooming in your browser.
See how small the text looks on the screen?
Now print the page on a printer. Just print page 2 so you don't print the pic.
That's what 12 point typeface is supposed to like.
In order for you to get it to look something like that on screen you'll have to set the browser's default fonts to 16 points or higher.
Now print page 2 again.
See how the type is way bigger on the page now than it looks like on the screen?

Of course with the browser's fonts set to 12 points you could just use the Zoom Command (Command +) 3 or 4 times and get it looking OK on screen. And it will still print out with 12 point fonts.
But to have to do the Zoom Command every single time you access a web page is just too annoying and way less elegant than the Mac UI should be.

There used to be this notion of What You See Is What You Get.
So if you're working in a page layout program with 100% zoom (aka Actual Size) and you look at the rulers on the screen, 1 inch on the ruler will take up pretty close to 1 inch on the screen.
This is a total pain in the *** now to try to set up anything as WYSIWYG.

If Apple ever implements this feature known as Resolution Independence then any monitor connected to a Mac at any resolution will be capable of yielding WYSIWYG output again.
The 27" iMac is way worse in this area than my original 24" iMac was.

I'm also running an old version of Quicken 2007.
There is no way to adjust the point sizes of the screen fonts in this app.
Many of the lists for things like my investments are just this side of illegible.
There are other apps with similar issues.

And to suggest that I go back and get a 21" iMac after what I've been through with my 24" iMac and 2 of these 27" iMacs (the first 27" iMac they gave me had several dead pixels so I returned it and replaced it with the one I'm using now) is just ludicrous.
I thought I was getting a great deal with them upgrading me to 27 inches.
But boy, would I rather have a 24" iMac again now.

This is very frustrating.
And Barbara after trying for the day I don't I can live with 1920 X 1080.
It's legible of course, but just looks really really bad aesthetically.

etresoft wrote:

So, if I understand correctly and add up all of the complete repairs and new computers, you are on iMac #5, with the current one being a year and a half newer and about $700 more expensive than the one you actually paid for) and it still isn't good enough for you.

Sorry, I own just one of these things and paid full price for it. It is about as close to perfect as you will find on this unicorn-less planet.

It's my 3rd iMac.
I bought the 24" machine.
It's screen went defective around 1 year later.
That didn't make me very happy.
They couldn't fix it and because the 24" iMacs were no longer being made, they gave me a brand new 27" iMac with a faster processor instead.
I was overjoyed about that for about a day, and then I noticed the bad pixels.
They gave me another new 27" iMac, and although I was not exactly overjoyed anymore because of all the hassle of having to transfer all my data twice, but I was content
That contentment lasted for about a month when I began to realize more fully what a pain in the *** this resolution thing was going to be for me.

I'm happy for you that you're happy with your 27" iMac.
They are very impressive machines.
But the problem I'm describing, whether it affects you personally or not, is very real and is easily correctable with proper implementation of Resolution Independence (as I understand it) or by offering a resolution that yields WYSIWYG output on this monitor.

There's no doubt about the fact that Apple has been *very good* to me about all of this.
But then again, why are all these monitors on these machines going defective?
Do they have some sort of a quality control problem?
Is it a design problem?
And how they could put out the 27" screens without trouble-shooting the issue I'm describing here is really lame, IMO.

I'm only posting here in an effort to get someone at Apple to listen and to do something about this in future OS or firmware updates.
But, as the tenor of this thread demonstrates, it looks like I'm just peeing into the wind.

Here's another example of this problem raising its ugly head.
I use Thunderbird to read and post to Usenet.
TB is a Mozilla app and it has the same font implementation as Firefox where the Command + keystroke zooms the message text for reading.
But when I'm posting or replying to a message myself, it only uses the font sizes specified in the the TB Preferences. I.e. Zoom doesn't work when you're writing a message.
If I want to be able to read what I'm writing I need to use 16 point fonts.
So now anybody reading my posts on Usenet is seeing a really large typeface on all of my posts.
Etc., etc., etc.

New problems like this seem to arise every day I use this machine.
Sure there are workarounds for much of this.
But it's a pain in the *** to have to figure out a work-around every time you want to do something simple, like posting to Usenet.

Agnt86 wrote:
Something to also take into consideration is the new 27"iMac is that it also has a redesigned display. The 24" had a max resolution of 1920 × 1200 and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The new 27 has a much higher resolution 2560 × 1440 and a true 16:9 ratio (same as HD televisions).
The higher resolution is great for things like photo and video editing but you will notice issues with text. The best option I can suggest is to reduce the resolution closer to the original you were used to (1920 x 1200) but with the new aspect ratio it will be trial and error to find something comfortable.
Of course you can always try the third party applications to adjust some settings, just be advised that results may not be as desired and Apple does not support third party applications. If it becomes unstable, you could in for a reinstall or worst case, erase and install.
As always, back up you data before any changes, and often.

Hope this helps.

1920 X 1200 resolution helps for some things but makes far too many other things garishly large and ugly.

I've basically learned to live with all of this, to a large degree.
Most apps allow you to zoom text and graphics on the screen.
Many of them also have printing features that allow you to make your printouts look more like the viewed screen view.
So for basic computing needs there's no real problem.
But when I get into publishing types of activities (eg. I've written my own jazz guitar methods book) there is no way to get a What You See Is What You Get view on screen, so I have to do experimental printout after experimental printout just to see how the final printout will look.
Etc.

And the fonts used in certain applications, like Apple's own Logic Pro, for menus and lists can simply not be zoomed, so squinting is the only option.

Generally speaking, it's just a big drag that Apple has decided to abandon the whole WYSIWYG paradigm in their personal computers.
It's just a drag to have to work this way.
Luckily, I'm a very lazy person and end up doing very little in the way of actual work on my computer anyhow.

Which 3rd party applications that deal with these types of problems are you talking about?

Message was edited by: Joey Goldstein

Joey Goldstein wrote:
Thanks Barbara.
I'm trying that now.
It does give me all my width back on the screen.
But menus are even bigger and more garish looking now.
It looks like a monitor for someone who is seriously sight-impaired.
I may have to wear tri-focals, but I'm nowhere near blind yet. lol

I also have the app called TinkerTool and it will let me further adjust certain types of system font sizes not accessible any other way, like the fonts in the menus.
It it could also control the width of the Menu Bar I'd probably be able to set things up just right for what I'd like to see.

Whatever happened to the whole notion of WYSIWYG?
Sigh.

For anyone still following this...

This, i.e. using the 1920 X 1080 resolution along with TinkerTool, seems to be the best way to proceed, for me right now.
Tinker Tool allows me to reduce the font sizes of some fonts within applications where some of the fonts now look aesthetically too big because of the lower resolution.
Some apps don't like this very much, eg. Thunderbird, but mostly it works out OK.

The Finder View Options can be adjusted so that list text in Finder windows and the text of desktop icons windows isn't too big.
Of course the size of Desktop icons can be adjusted too, as can the spread of the grid.

The only things I can't adjust to my liking are:
1. The width of the System-wide Menu Bar and the size of its font.
2. The size of the fonts used and the width of the text box used in the Dock's List View of Folder contents.
3. The size of fonts used in dialog boxes.
Etc., etc.

It's not exactly WYSIWYG, but it is much closer.
Now, when I use a screen font of 12 points and go to print the document also using 12 points the printout looks much more like the screen.
Etc.

It's really too bad that the AppleDisplayScaleFactor command doesn't work very well across most applications, because with the 2560 X 1140 screen resolution and a display scale factor of about 1.2 the sizes of things on the screen are just about right.

Oh well.
Maybe there will be some fixes for this built into OS X Lion.
Probably not though.