Mojave: The last great mac OS

[theorist9]

IMO it was Yosemite through High Sierra that were the worst looking MacOS versions on a non-Retina display. When the full system-wide dark mode came about that actually got it looking better, at least to my eyes.

The fact that your non-Retina display was much more tolerable on dark mode suggests it may have been a display calibration issue. High Sierra did look great on my 4k 27" Dell, but only after doing a custom calibration using my xRite i1 Display Pro spectrophotometer. Indeed, I've found all non-Apple displays need to be calibrated to look good on any version of MacOS, and that Apple displays benefit from this as well (though the difference with them is not as striking).

Also, High Sierra did require ≈160 ppi (=4k @ 27") to look good. The last OS on which a low-dpi (~100 ppi) display looked good was Snow Leopard. They changed something after SL to require a higher resolution (forcing me to upgrade to the 4k 27"), and then changed things again after HS to require a higher resolution still (forcing me to upgrade to a 27 5k).

 

[MacHeritage]

I would say the end of that era really came with High Sierra, which was the OS prior to Mojave. It was the last OS to support native subpixel text rendering, and thus the last OS on which text looked great with commonly-available commodity-priced displays ($500 for a 27" 4k). For every OS after that, one needed a Retina monitor (5k for 27") to get pleasingly sharp text. To me, that's a pretty significant breakpoint.

You could reimplement it Mojave using a Terminal command, but it didn't look as good (perhaps because HS was designed to use it, while Mojave was not).

I remember this very well since I am on the 30" Cinema Display. I stayed on HS as long as possible because of this. Text has never looked the same since.

 

[saudor]

They changed something after SL to require a higher resolution (forcing me to upgrade to the 4k 27"), and then changed things again after HS to require a higher resolution still (forcing me to upgrade to a 27 5k).

They did something again in Monterey, which now requires 120 Hz displays or the cursor movement gets slight delays. Can see this behavior myself and been using big sur as the daily driver to get around it.

 

[theorist9]

They did something again in Monterey, which now requires 120 Hz displays or the cursor movement gets slight delays. Can see this behavior myself and been using big sur as the daily driver to get around it.

I don't experience that on my system. I'm using a wired Logitech G502 gaming mouse on a 2019 i9 iMac running Monterey 12.7.2, and my mouse cursor is super-responsive, with no perceptible lag.

Your signature says you're using a Hackintosh. Could that be the issue? You also didn't mention if you're using a wired or BT mouse. Did you test this with a different brand of wired mouse?

 

[saudor]

I don't experience that on my system. I'm using a wired Logitech G502 gaming mouse on a 2019 i9 iMac running Monterey 12.7.2, and my mouse cursor is super-responsive, with no perceptible lag.

Your signature says you're using a Hackintosh. Could that be the issue? You also didn't mention if you're using a wired or BT mouse. Did you test this with a different brand of wired mouse?

It works fine (or at least way less noticeable) with my logitech mx master mouse either through USB or Bluetooth, which is the weird bit. I mostly see it on the magic mouse 2 and it seems the folks complaining are using the trackpad or the magic mouse.

But yeah, I used to dismiss it as a hackintosh problem (even though Im using an apple broadcom chip mounted on a PCIe card) but not so sure anymore since trying out the apple store computers felt different from the 2019 MBP I had before.

 

[MarkC426]

They did something again in Monterey, which now requires 120 Hz displays or the cursor movement gets slight delays. Can see this behavior myself and been using big sur as the daily driver to get around it.

I have 2 Dell QHD (2560x1440) 27" monitors.
Ventura looks amazing in light or dark mode (just changed to dark recently, and love it).....

High Dpi (or Retina) is just an urban myth.
Non-Retina displays DO look great also....

Mouse movement is normal also.