For a long time I have been experimenting with different devices and different operating systems. One day I was making virtual machines on my Windows laptop and made Windows 7 VM. I have felt slight eye strain and discomfort on the same machine with Windows 11, but the same machine with Windows 7 felt different, very easy on eyes.

Windows XP, 7, old Mac OS X versions (10.9<), old iOS (6<), older Android versions all use sort of skeuomorphic design. None gave me eye strain, no matter which device I used. Back in 2013 when Apple rolled iOS 7 everyone was so hyped with "minimalism", but the day I installed it on my iPhone 5 I felt that I find it harder to focus on. Not like eye strain but just uncomfortable. Everyone said that "people will eventually get used to".

And now after 10 years we have the same design, same flat stuff across all machines. And I still didn't get used to it, still cannot focus and now have eye strain with many modern devices, although not all of them.

Each time I grab my 1st gen iPad with cracked screen I feel… relief? It is just easy on eyes. You can see pixels in it but it is really good to look at. Same with my old iMac that I still use. And same for any old iPhone (4, 2g etc) or Android (I have some old Galaxy noname lying around). All devices share the common skeuomorphic UI designs.

Maybe they all were wrong and interface should actually look beautiful and deep? They told people gonna get used to flat, but it was all blatant lies.

    Oh for sure. I pay attention to this, for example, I know pure black text on pure white backgrounds my eyes don't like. It's harder to read. A number of those older interfaces aren't using pure white.

    Try cat s62 pro phone, zero flicker the radex lupin cant measure any even with low brightness.

    phonky21 I would personally dismiss this idea, i.e. assumption that design by itself is to blame. I think at least when speaking for myself, eye strain from macbook is something a bit more serious than purely design issue. This would probably not be severe enough to fire up whole community who is really desperate, as it impacts their ability to work. But I recall some weird stuff that kind of interesting to discover:

    • I have used VNC recently with M2 air, and I felt eye strain through it. But I did not work for long enough time so it could be neurologically learned response or reflex. But this needs to be tested. Could it be that flicker is at UI level? To test this people need to give some more robust feedback on Asahi Linux, because so far I have not heard anything robust enough to say that absolutely this is eye strain free. Some said its better, but then kind of were silent about it, so could have been novelty placebo.
    • Before sleep few nights ago, I have noticed that in the dark my eyes when closed and opened kind of flicker a bit. This was super weird, but I assume since I have spend all day with macbook, it literally maintained some reflexes there of flicker.
    • Long term usage of BENQ PD2705Q and macbook air m2 still result in higher eye strain than windows 11. All the screen mirroring and other stuff I believe is useless for me. So for this matter I would say UI could be, but this is a bit too much considering that we have posts that clearly outline big difference between some PRO models and Air models.

    All in all, I would say UI and GPU must be considered together, as UI colour gamut is probably closely linked to how hardware behaves. At the same time UI only as a cause is a bit weird, at the end of the day, its a light, text and shapes. There are various printed media you can buy to read, and it uses various designs to present information, including glossy or non-glossy paper, yet it does not cause any issues at all, so UI by itself should not cause it either.

      6 months later

      Registered here to reply to this

      • Apple Products that use ARM Hardware such as the M1 produce different display output than on a x86 machine (Lenovo T490 as benchmark, or a PC with a AMD 6000 series GPU) - I use 6950XT.

      • VNC into those machines from a working well-known setup fixed the issue for me

      • The problems got way less since I used higher refresh on Display

      • I recommend: BenQ XL2546K (240Hz) or better. Maybe I will try the 540Hz variant sometime

      • tmfd replied to this.

        bluetail

        I’ve been wondering if this is related to ARM gpu drivers (as whilst Apple brands its processors it uses ARM technology). I’ve been wondering this as I’ve tried a number of new Qualcomm based windows laptops and they all caused varying degrees of eye strain, whereas intel ones I find better. The surface laptop 7 13 inch was the worst, instantly gave me strain like a MacBook Air 13 inch did, I wonder if they used the same screen supplier. The 15 inch also caused eye strain but felt less so, maybe it was also panel lottery between the two. Tried the Lenovo slim 7 Qualcomm too and that also felt odd, it uses an oled screen though so maybe that didn’t help too.

        I’ve also used the same external monitors (Apple studio display and lg ultra fine 5k) with various Apple silicon devices and all cause problems whereas when connected to an intel windows desktop they’re much better, again leading me to think my issues are related to Apple silicon and potentially underlying ARM technology (due to issues with Qualcomm based windows laptops).

        Just a suspicion for now. Would be interesting if anyone else has the same conclusion.

          Donux I have used VNC recently with M2 air, and I felt eye strain through it. But I did not work for long enough time so it could be neurologically learned response or reflex. But this needs to be tested. Could it be that flicker is at UI level?

          Currently using Apple Screen Sharing on my 2009 13" MacBook Pro to control my M1 Air.

          The 2009 (which I recently bought for only $20 😉) is running Monterey with dithering disabled, and the M1 Air is running Ventura.

          The 2009 is fully usable for me and extremely stable. The only issue is PWM and pixel inversion but on this laptop they (miracuously!) do not worsen reading ability or cause brain fog at ALL!

          The 2009 screen still looks just as good (and remains fully usable) even while screen sharing into the M1 Air.

          (I am using "Full Quality" mode to avoid compression artifacts, which shockingly runs fast enough over WiFi for most tasks — even on this laptop from 15 years ago)

          So in this case, using uncompressed screen sharing does not worsen the screen at all!

          The really old graphics card in this laptop is definitely helping too. There's a big chance it simply lacks the functionality to even be capable of creating the newer kinds of image enhancement/post-processing effects.

          (In addition, the Monterey version on the 2009 is the unofficial OCLP port, so the firmware version wasn't touched and — unlike official Apple updates — the drivers in this Monterey port are much more likely to be similar or identical to older OS versions)


          However, there are definitely cases where screen sharing does cause issues:

          • If the stream is treated as a "video" (e.g. an H.264 stream), the GPU's decoder might add post-processing and oversharpening. Sometimes this happens on GPU hardware itself, other times it's due to the "video enhancement" settings in Intel HD Control Panel and such. I've seen this happen on many newer laptops

          • If the desktop is captured after the GPU's post-processsing step, all of the strain-inducing image enhancements and dithering can get transferred over the stream. Fortunately, this doesn't happen with standard VNC to my knowledge — but can happen if you're using a more complex setup (e.g. a capture card)

          • If the stream has too many compression artifacts, especially red and blue edges (which can also be caused by GPU post-processing), in some cases this messes with your depth perception and causes strain

          • If the stream is using multi-pass compression, this means the whole screen will be flickering between slightly different colors every half second while the image keeps reloading to a more precise version

            I use the NoMachine app in most cases because it lets you disable multi-pass compression and set both encoding and decoding to run through software only. However, there are still many compression artifacts

            (with the exception of the 2009 MBP, where I use Apple Screen Sharing instead in order to get a fully lossless stream + trackpad gestures support)

            tmfd I believe the M series GPU gets a different resulting image.
            Even on Asahi Linux, the image has vertical lines and during drag operation, I can see green lines around the Window I am dragging. It feels like looking through a filter. When I move my eyes left and right I feel like I am staring through a window with lots of bars in front.
            Now - knowing that Apple did enormous efforts to make their Displays 'Pop' and that Apple tells you to only use their Displays on their machines, that tells a lot.

            And there are telltale signs that to be true. E.g look here https://www.eizoglobal.com/support/compatibility/pc/mac/apple-m1/ where EIZO tells you they do things different and with image.
            Maybe it was the banding and other things?

            EIZO does have settings in their Color Edge Displays to circumvent this behavior it appears.

              bluetail Even on Asahi Linux

              Are you running Asahi on one of the 14"/16" mini-LED Pros or are you running it on an Air / TouchBar Pro?

              In my case, on the M1 mini-LED Pro, Asahi felt the exact same as macOS (as in no improvement at all — I definitely noticed greenish display artifacts too)

              But on the M1 Air (and probably the TouchBar Pro too), it's noticeably better than macOS and felt like it had less display artifacts

                DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

                Update — despite macOS actually being usable, I'm "generally" switching back to Ubuntu 18.04 + MATE desktop on the 2009 MBP instead of macOS Monterey. I was originally using Ubuntu on here for a few weeks prior to trying macOS, and I've realized it was definitely a bit better. Here's why:

                • Still very thrilled how usable I could get macOS on here — even figured out how to disable dithering!
                • macOS on here is definitely good enough for some tasks. The ability to use Apple-quality multitouch gestures on a screen that's "pretty comfortable" is still a blessing. When I need to use very multitouch-driven apps over screen sharing (like Blender), IMO it's still worth booting into macOS for that.

                • And, unlike modern devices, my vision in the real world still feels amazing after using macOS on here!

                However…

                • The 2009 running Ubuntu was PERFECT (except for PWM). Completely flat and still image to me.

                • On the other hand, although the image remains "still", there is a VERY slight "false 3D effect" on macOS. Slight enough where I didn't notice at first. The screen still looks flatter than any newer MacBook — which is why I consider it "very usable"! — but it is "kinda there". But on Linux, I didn't see the effect at all.

                • Fortunately it's mild enough to not affect most tasks. I'm typing this post on macOS, for example, and not having issues!

                • BUT when I started writing some code over screen sharing (i.e. super information-dense content where every single letter matters), I noticed the letters going kinda blurry and feeling like they were slightly floating on macOS. I didn't have this issue on NoMachine through Ubuntu. I tried the macOS version of NoMachine but had the same issue.
                • This means the issue is likely OS-level (something added by the display compositor), because the GPU and LCD are "known good" on Linux.
                • Lining up with my theory about the false 3D effect in the Stillcolor thread, I can literally see "extra" red and blue artifacts around edges if I look very closely at the screen on macOS, which I didn't notice on Linux! The super low resolution screen makes this easy to spot…

                TLDR:

                Most usable MacBook yet. But despite a safe GPU and panel, macOS itself still manages to slightly post-process some colors. This means Ubuntu on here is more comfortable especially for coding.

                In addition, battery life is WAY better on Ubuntu + much less fan noise.

                However, macOS is "more than good enough" on the 2009 to boot into when I need full multitouch support, and this remains my most usable macOS device.

                It's just that Ubuntu works even better for me.

                BTW, unfortunately I don't have a microscope, but this would be a perfect device to test, since there is a clear difference between macOS and Ubuntu on here 👀

                (interestingly, this 2009 MBP situation is totally different compared to a 2008 15" MBP I tried… the 2008 still shows a "false 3D effect" on the same Ubuntu install, and is slightly more exaggerated on macOS, implying that the 2008 also has a panel or GPU issue. On the 2009, issues seem to only be caused by macOS itself since Linux is fine.)

                  in my case after upgrade to android 14 i got headache and migraine before update with the same phone no headache at all,i already downgrade to 13 but still got headache and i already buy a new one with the same exactly type with original android 13 and still got headache,so confuse and depressing,is it possible after downgrade android there is display setting from android 14 that still there in my phone ?

                  maybe i will try format all nvram my phone but the imei will be gone too

                  DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

                  Update to confirm that it was in fact NOT placebo — reinstalled Linux on the 2009 MBP and the display quality is SO much better than on macOS Monterey.

                  The small false 3D effect I saw on macOS is gone and there are so much less red and blue artifacts around the edges of windows and buttons. Also, NoMachine on Linux looks more relaxing.

                  (The really funny thing is that I'm currently using subpixel text rendering on Linux, whereas macOS "technically" uses grayscale in screenshots — but despite that, there are STILL less subpixel artifacts in Linux when I physically look up close to the screen compared to in macOS.)

                  The good thing about this is that I finally have a device where the screen totally changes simply based on what OS it's booted into, which I really want to test further in the future

                    DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs See if you can access what timings and connection mode it uses for the screen in both.

                    I'm 100% certain that color profile a tinting makes a significant difference as well. Spent 2 days using my Macbook M1 Pro Max after some tweaks.

                      async I'm 100% certain that color profile a tinting makes a significant difference as well

                      My theory is that messing with the color profile gives macOS less "room" to add in those red/blue/yellow fringes around contrasting objects.

                      Ubuntu is using no color profile at all on the 2009 MBP. I also set macOS to a null color profile. This makes me even more confident about my theory that it isn't necessarily just the pure color adjustment itself (although it does play a part) — instead, it's the fact that making a heavily modified color profile helps limit how much macOS can "enhance" the screen.

                      Another finding if you're interested:

                      The most extreme tweak you can do is limit the screen to only use one color — specifically green according to the information about chromostereopsis as it apparently focuses the closest to the physical depth of the display. On Mac you can do this with the bottom 3 image adjustment sliders in BetterDisplay, on Windows the best method is the NegativeScreen app (you can modify the Red preset in its config file to make it green).

                      Of course, it's good to check with a macro shot of the display whether that actually did entirely turn off the red and blue pixels.


                      This strategy was surprisingly effective on some Windows laptops for me, but there's some devices that remain unusable even after an extreme change like this.

                      2015 15" Retina MBP is still unusable even after AMD dither disable + green pixels only. And I think I know why…

                      • Took a close up shot of 2015 pixels. Even though only green pixels were lit… the darker greens actually shifted towards blue. The way the pixels were manufactured actually shift in physical hue based on intensity (red/blue had similar issues). On some of my other laptops this isn't the case.
                      • The very blue backlight glow on the 2015 also reinforced darker colors appearing differently.
                      • Green pixels were slightly lit up even outside of the boundaries of sharp objects, implying either macOS or the panel is adding an intentional glow to everything.
                      • When using only blue pixels instead of green, there was very red "trails" both when scrolling and even when I just moved my head around. Despite this, could not detect any red pixels even in a slow-motion recording. Given the 2015 has backlight flicker, I have a feeling that the backlight itself was built to alternate between a bluer and redder tone based on intensity. M1 Air and iPhone 14 Pro have similar issues (in appearance — I know that the iPhone OLED isn't backlit).

                      Finally, both this + last reply I wrote through NoMachine on the 2009 (connecting to my newer Mac). However, this time I'm using NoMachine on Ubuntu instead of Monterey. I'm still using GPU drivers on Ubuntu, and both OSes have dithering fully disabled.

                      With NoMachine on macOS, even though I was able to write my previous reply and felt "OK", the whole time the letters felt "slightly" floating above the background and the "Post Reply" and the green slider on the right were "popping out at me" on macOS, and I did feel some strain after. This wasn't coming from NoMachine — the whole native macOS Monterey desktop felt like this.

                      On NoMachine via Ubuntu — with the same quality settings — the 2009 screen feels totally flat, and it's MUCH easier to look at the left side. I feel like I'm more frequently gazing directly at the words (instead of at the gaps between the words).

                      I'm now 100% confident that there is an (additional) OS-level issue with the macOS compositor, given that even on this laptop that isn't even officially supported, using macOS Monterey is still able to generate issues (albeit more mild than usual)

                        5 days later

                        DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

                        I absolutely agree. MacOS is touching up Video or altering signal stuff without explicitly telling.
                        EIZO states that it would force a YUV Signal on their Displays and that they need to run a different mode on their Displays to get rid of Gradient issues on M series processors

                          bluetail This is a reason why fan boys should be testing ginny pigs and real pros - rolling on stable machines. Some smart folks probably did not even need to go through the de-portification crusade.

                          dev