Yes, I would actually be surprised to learn that mode is available on any system. I’ve never seen that anywhere, though I only have a M1 Pro and an M4 Pro (and various Intel Macs).
You’re rendering to a framebuffer exactly 2x the size of your display and then scaling it down by exactly half to the physical display? Why not just use a 1x mode then!? The 1.75x limit of framebuffer to physical screen size makes perfect sense. Any more than that and you should just use the 1x mode, it will look better and perform way better!
Then complain about that. That would make a much more sensible blog post and discussion. Asking for a crazy workaround to a sane problem isn't a great way to get good results, especially with Apple. Beyond the obvious performance pitfall, this scale up to scale down approach will also destroy the appearance of some controls. There is some UI that aims for 1px lines on hidpi modes that will get lost if you do this. It's hardly a perfect mode.
Scaling up before scaling down is a sensible approach, especially when you want to run at a slightly lower scaled resolution. It worked fine up to M3 Pro. So whatever you think of it, it's something that worked fine for many years and suddenly doesn't anymore on the newer MacBooks.
The crazy workaround only needs to be done because of what Apple did probably around a decade ago and probably already heard a bunch of crying about and didn't care. No one removed subpixel antialiasing on their own, we do this bullshit because Apple forced us to to make text look halfway decent.
I can tell you that inside Apple, they have something called the standard question, and it goes something like this: “What are you really trying to do?”
If you haven’t personally filed a bug report at feedbackassistant.apple.com, I recommend that you do so. Title it something like “Poor text quality on LoDPI display”, file it in the Displays component, and in the description explain what you’re seeing. Here’s the critical part: you want to attach images showing what looks bad and what looks better, and why the current behavior is a regression and since when (earlier macOS versions for subpixel AA, earlier GPUs for 2x 1x mode). If possible, use the same display, but get an image of historical macOS when it had subpixel AA, macOS with this 2x 1x mode, Windows 11, and then current macOS at the standard 1x mode. I’m not sure screenshots will capture it, you’ll probably need to use a camera.
I know how they think at Apple. If you come at them with a bug written like OP’s blog, they are going to say it behaves as designed. To get them to fix something, you have to be descriptive about what the real problem actually is: the text rendering looks bad. Then you have to explain what used to work and what you’ve tried and bring receipts (the images). Don’t write a novel; write the shortest bug that fully describes the real problem, includes all of the relevant information including macOS versions, hardware info, and display model, and the evidence of the problem, but don’t include a bunch of emotional text or extraneous information (like SkyLight framework reverse engineering stuff).
Now you might say, “I’m not Apple’s free QA”, and you’ll be right. But, consider that you’re spending this time complaining about a problem online and you’ve spent good money on a display you’d like to use and it’s not working the way you want. Fair or not, you care about the outcome, and at this point you might as well take my advice and file a strong bug to make your case. Dupes help, OP should file one too, but be descriptive about the real problem, not proscriptive about bringing back the crazy workaround that they likely intentionally disabled because on the face of it, it makes no sense.
I do know that they read user bugs in the Displays component, because I have filed a few in there recently and they got fixed and they followed up with me about where they were fixed.
Given how fast the Open Source models have been able to catch up their closed-source counterparts, I think at least on the model/software side this will be a non-issue. The hardware situation is a bit grimmer, especially with the recent RAM prices. Time will tell: if in 2–3 years time, we can get to a situation where a 512GB–1TB VRAM / unified memory + good fp8 rig is a few thousands and not tens of thousands of dollars, we'll probably be good.
A few thousands of dollars plus the energy to run the system is unaffordable to most of the world's developers. Not that it is going to be the first way in which the Global South is kept from closing the gap.
You don't need exclusive, 24h access, so people can pool, share or rent the hardware. Solar energy is also now cheap enough that it likely won't really be a problem.
A minor piece of feedback, though: might be just me, not sure if anyone else has this pavlovian conditioning, but seeing the black banner/bar on top with the YC logo/color below and HN background color immediately makes me think someone passed away.
Turning a builder into a formidable founder, which via the PG quote is someone who seems they will always get what they want is in its self a death. A builder... a truth-seeking creator dies. Devoured by someone who gets what they want, a superego. There should be a black bar at the top.
There have been many, many, desktop improvements since 1995, some of which came from the Mac, some came from Windows and some came from UNIX/Linux & friends.
- Arguably the dock, though it's probably contentious
- Ubiquitous instant search (e.g. Spotlight)
- Gesture-based automatic tiling of windows to left/right side of the screen, tiling presets
- Smooth scrolling, either via scroll wheel or trackpad
- Gesture-based multi tasking, etc
- Virtual desktops/multiple workspaces
- Autosave
- Folder stacks, grouping of items in file lists
- Tabbed windows
- Full-screen mode
- Separate system-wide light and dark modes
- Enhanced IME input for non-latin languages
- App stores, automatic updating
- Automatic backup, file versioning
- Compositing Window Managers (Quartz, Compiz, DWM, modern Wayland compositors...)
- The "sources bar" UI pattern
- Centralized notification centers
- Stack view controlelr style navigation for settings (back/forward buttons)
- Multi device clipboard synchronization
- Other handoff features
- Many accessibility features
- The many iteration of Widgets
- Installable web apps
- Virtual printers ("print to PDF")
- Autocomplete/autocorrect
- PIP video playback
- Tags/Labels
- File proxies/"representations"
- Built-in clipboard management
- Wiggle the mouse to find the pointer
None of these can be said to be at their final/"perfect" form today, and there are hundreds if not thousand of papercuts and refinements that can be made.
The real issue is probably due to management misunderstanding designer's jobs, and allocating them incorrectly. The focus should be more on the interactions and behaviors than necessarily on the visuals.
The Dock came from NeXtSTEP circa 1989. It had square edges and no Happy Mac. (So did Mail.app, TextEdit, some of the OS X Finder, and a whole bunch of other things.)
To the untrained eye it looks like an Apple innovation because most people couldn't afford NeXt computers unless you worked in a university or research lab.
Just to clarify the meaning of the measurement, it doesn't mean they're 98% interoperable across everything, it's across the specific set of goals for 2025. (Which is still really good!)
I think they realized that shipping the features out of sync meant nobody could use them until all browsers adopted them, which took years, so now they coordinate
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
Valve / Steam presumably has good data on what controllers and peripherals people are using, so I'd imagine their port choices are based around that. Here's a June 2024 post talking about Steam Input and controller market share: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail... . At the time of the post they say "59% of sessions are using Xbox controllers, 26% are using PlayStation controllers, 10% are on Steam Decks"
Steam input controller says nothing about the interface being used (USB A vs USB C). A single USB C (with DP support, I hope) port in 2026 sounds like a bad design.
Because think they need to be backward compatible with decade old peripheral controllers. People tend to get grumpy about this. Yet nobody flinched when XBox ditched KinectV2 with Series S/X.
For PC's people are used to adapters. And USB-C is superior in every way.
A self declared general compute device should have a least two USB-C outs that can drive displays.
For 2026 (12 years into USB-C spec) I would expect a minimum of 2 3.2 capable fully wired USB-C ports.
Even better something newer that could do near 40GBpS or better.
Like USB Gen 3×2
(Written on usb keyboard connected to 4k monitor that also charges the MBP it's plugged in)
For controllers you can use any cable you want. The Xbox controller will charge just fine on a C-C cable. I don't think they should have gone all in on USB-C like laptops have, but there should have been more than one USB-C and one should have been on the front. Pretty much the only thing you need USB-A for these days is mice/keyboard with non removable cables. Which are becoming increasingly rare.
What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.
there is almost no one who has multigigabit internet and even for people that do, you spend significantly less than 1 percent of your time on that device downloading. its a complete non issue. this device is a midrange at best pc, so having a gigabit connection is exactly where it should be. if you want to have the best of the best build a pc.
That's an exaggeration. Affordable multi-gigabit fiber is widely available in plenty of metropolitan areas in the US and Europe and mid-range motherboards have included 2.5 GbE for years now and the NICs themselves are dirt cheap. I don't think it's irrational to be disappointed.
That's why I specified that it's widely available in plenty of metropolitan areas, not a large part of the country. Internet service absolutely is abysmal in the US as a whole, but many large cities do have affordable access to fiber.
This is not true, at least around where I live. Gigabit ethernet(which is gigabit for only the downloads, and <50 mbps for upload) is 110$ per month. Comcast is the only internet service provider who offers speeds over 50 mbps.
So I make due. If I want to download a 40gb game, I take a break. I read a book, or eat dinner. It works itself out, and I can play my game.
My point was that 1 Gbps+ internet is available in enough select metropolitan areas that saying "almost no one has it" is inaccurate, not that it's widely available everywhere to the average user.
Obviously the subset of users with multi-gig fiber is relatively small, but not practically zero like the comment suggested. Anecdotally, 3 Gbps fiber is widely available in my medium sized US city of about ~500k for as low as $110. I paid the same for asymmetrical gigabit cable internet in the last city I lived. It just depends.
2.5Gbit via PON fiber is getting common, but you won't get that from Comcast. US isn't great at internet speeds anyway. I've had symmetric 1gbit for ages here in EU and you can even get 10g in some places.
So you can theoretically download an AAA title like the new kingdom come at 84GB in just under 5 minutes instead of 11 min. That's cool and all, but does it actually matter? I mean, with games of those sizes you're going to spend hundreds of hours in the game most likely. It's an extremely first world problem that takes minutes, maybe once a month.
It's more so the fact that 2.5 GbE NICs are really cheap and already fairly common in consumer devices. And game downloads aren't the only use case, file transfers could benefit from the extra headroom
Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?
"the average bitrate for a 4K Blu-ray DVD can range between 48Mbps to 75Mbps. Some discs can also carry around 100Mbps or even 128Mbps, but these are more rare."
Even on the high seas the large Blu-ray releases require only about 40-50Mbit, maybe you can get even larger releases (requiring ~100Mbit for streaming) but then a single movie would take up 100GB+ of space and it is such an overkill, no one really needs it.
Games are super large nowadays. IIRC Steam uses P2P for the update downloads, so you should be able to saturate whatever link you have, and the SSD should be substantially faster than 1Gbps. So anyone that has a > 1Gbps internet connection should benefit from something higher than Gigabit.
You'd be wrong C to A is still pretty standard for controllers in my experience.
As for gigabit fewer and fewer people have ethernet routed to their office/TV area much less >1gig networking to take advantage of anything better than a 1 gig.
I agree that gigabit Ethernet is adequate for the type of product this is. But I do find it funny that the Wifi chip on this is very likely capable of 2Gbit. We somehow entered a world where WiFi is typically faster than Ethernet.
Cat 5e is rated for 2.5 Gbps at the full 100 m. Practically, I've not gotten any frame errors on a 30 m Cat 5e link up for 100 days @ 10 Gbps - but 2.5G is where the cheap consumer products are anyways.
Wi-Fi for gaming is usually plenty fine though, especially if you're not in a very dense area.
For pretty much all computing history wired has been faster than wireless. And it seems reasonable that high speed wired should be simpler and easier than wireless. It's only just in the last few years the speed of wifi in devices has overtaken wired.
It almost seems silly to even include a wired port when the wifi chip is faster.
Wired networking is faster than wireless, just not in the consumer space.
Most data center networking is 10s of gigabits on the lower end. People are throwing out 10/40gb hardware at this point. There just isnt any pressure in the consumer space. Most people don't even have 1gb internet connection and that is where they access most of their data.
It always has been faster in the consumer space too. It's really only just now with MIMO and 160Mhz wifi bands that wifi is faster on most devices than ethernet.
I wired my whole place with 10Gb - couldn't do it in the wall (as in, hidden) so I have flat cables around the door frame and wall corners. I was willing to accept the cables, just to get 10Gb.
Not sure what we're disagreeing about, I'm not saying it's not a useful thing to have just that most people don't have it and don't intend to have it so it's not a useful spec bump for Valve to spend money on.
I'm personally planning on going through the pain to get ethernet run (luckily I have both a basement and an attic so it should be fairly easy) in my house and if I ever build new there will be whatever is the best standard at the time in the walls (and maybe some dark fiber but I'm less sure on that) but I also know I'm a vast minority of users at the same time. I'm also in a pretty big minority having a >1 gig symmetrical pipe into my house to make a 10 gig connection to my devices actually worth while.
My setup is far from my ideal one so I'm on wifi for a lot of things but I was just pointing out the business reasons they probably went with the 1 gig port, there's just not that many people who are looking for or could take advantage of a 1 gig port.
Personally I'd never go for 10g copper, just run some fibre back to your cupboard.
For APs sure, do copper for POE, but not for computers. I doubt APs will need >1G in practical places for the next decade, and I don't think 10g does poe anyway (maybe 2.5g does)
The steam controller also revealed has a USB-C, as does Hori's official steam controller.
However, you can charge it from things that aren't USB ports. Charging bricks are cheap and most people have one for their phone now, except some unfortunate old iPhone users
Yes but the cord it comes with will likely be a C to A cable. A lot of controllers have come with USB-C ports on them now but ship with C to A cables. Microsoft, Sony, 8Bitdo; all controllers I've gotten that have a C port but came with the usb-a for the PC/charger end.
I feel like part of the problem with going beyond gigabit Ethernet is that copper beyond 1 gigabit is expensive with limited adoption. SFP+ fiber is superior and not even expensive any more, but there's no consumer adoption.
Most controller/headphone dongles come with USB-A, so 2.0 in the back makes sense. Radio for new steam controller is integrated.
I have a Y-splitter for my PS5 controllers and if I didn't, I would have had some sort of controller dock. I assume I would do the same for this. Either way, TV is too far from my couch for a cable, so I wanted to keep playing and charging I'd use a powerbank from my coffee table.
Gigabit Ethernet...that's sad, I'd take 2.5G, so I can better stream my legally ripped Blu-rays. I assume most people don't care because they would use Wi-Fi or their switch only goes to 1G. Better than JBL making android TV sound bar with 100mpbs.
I think it purposely designed, so you don't try to build a NAS on it.
I think the decision of usb2-a at the rear is for wireless keyboard and mouse adapters. Those ones can behave abnormally on usb3-a, plus it’s nice to have those ugly adapters out of sight.
Also just old wired mice and keyboards. The desktop use scenarios. If you use both ports for those at back. Any temporary faster devices make more sense at front.
A lot of devices that you commonly plug and unplug like flash drives and passkeys still make sense as USB-A for a lot of people because of the specifics of the USB spec.
C to A converters for devices are technically verboten since they would allow an enduser to make a A to A cable, which can fry hosts if you plug them into eachother if they don't support USB OTG. You can lose certification if you try to ship a device with a C to A converter.
Because of that, USB-A devices with an optional A to C converter (or neater devices that have both plugs on them natively) are what makes a lot of sense for a lot of people for the kinds of devices that live on a key chain. So it makes sense for that to be the default on the front of a desktop, IMO.
I imagine this has decent Bluetooth support out of the box even if not mentioned? Its hard to find a WiFi chipset these days that doesn't have some kind of Bluetooth support.
Maybe proprietary headset dongles, but if its just bluetooth its probably not needed.
> I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable
while things can be charged with USB-C cables, the only thing I've ever received A C-to-C cable is... a USB-C wall charger. Granted I haven't gotten a USB-C iPhhone yet and I gotta imagine that one is C-to-C.
Generally lots of pack-in cables I've seen in the wild for charging devices continue to be USB-A-to-C. Switch 2 ports are USB-A, PS5 front port is USB-A... we're still getting there.
The steam machine has a bespoke wireless connector for the (new steam) controller so it doesn't pollute the Bluetooth network and cause lag.
Yes, the controller is charged through usb-c, but you can just use any charger around to charge that. I mean, the battery should last for 30+ hours so you only need to charge it on a weekly or biweekly basis with heavy usage.
Could it be a synergy with the Steam Frame's dual band wireless dongle? I'm guessing they would really want users to plug that into the front of the device.
Adapting A ports to C is much more convenient than going the other way. I have a whole sack of passive A to C dongles that stick out less than 1cm from the port.
These remind me of the Elliptic Curve pieces from another post on the HN front page right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44315321) I wonder if the poster was inspired by that one to also post these here?
Anyway, these are pretty cool/unique looking! I hadn't seen curved origami like this before.
The jobs created by the need to build and maintain robots (and industrial machinery in general) are very few compared to the amount of jobs the machines replaced. The new jobs that the industrial and other technological revolutions created were mostly in other economical sectors, like services and commerce.
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