Joe Maller on Sub-Pixel Anti-Aliasing With Rotated Displays

Joe Maller:

That is just preposterous. Aside from his observation being completely wrong, he also revealed a bug in OS X: The current system doesn’t recognize rotated pixel orientations, sub-pixel rendering on rotated screens should probably be disabled automatically.

It’s hard to photograph individual pixels, but Maller does a pretty good job proving that sub-pixel rendering definitely looks different on a rotated display. Garrett Murray concurs. [Update: Fixed link.] So I stand corrected: if other factors weren’t enough, the iPhone’s rotating screen probably does rule out the use of sub-pixel anti-aliasing.

★ Monday, 3 December 2007