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phonky21

  • Feb 26, 2024
  • Joined Dec 16, 2023
  • 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.

    • I would not recommend to get it if you already have problems with PWM and dithering. And I am skeptical of the very idea of all-around display, it may worsen already poor vision even more. Also it will definitely cause nausea, motion sickness and headache. The thing is too big and also has external battery which is a huge disadvantage

    • I cannot use OLED smartphones at all but somewhat can watch LG Oled TV for not much prolonged period, especially with all those unneeded smart features turned off (such as automatic saturation, color controls, AI features, noise reduction, individual zones backlight control etc)

    • I never owned any old Macbooks (2010-now) and only have M1 and I would say that eye strain starts to kick in after just 40 minutes or so. What I did is that I changed color profile to sRGB to limit the color space (so it would not use fake colors to emulate P3), changed color profile to sRGB in Firefox as well (there are settings in about:config starting with gfx), disabled dock (it appears only when I move cursor on it) and its animation (as well as lots of other system animations), enabled contrast, disabled transparency. Only after all these manipulations the laptop is somewhat bearable to use.

      Still it is years behind my old but still working iMac 2012 which I find the most comfortable computer to use as it does not cause any eye strain at all. Whats important to note is that I use multiple Mac OS X versions on it, each on different SSD – original 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.10 Yosemite and 10.12 Sierra. Was thinking of updating it to Mojave but I don't like the performance, still I need it for some software that is no more aupported (and I cannot find old versions of it)

    • Galaxy M33 works for me, kind of. At least it feels like I get less eye strain with it compared to SE 3. Writing it straigh outta Galaxy. There are newer models of this one today with better specs but the same display (I guess).

      Display itself is not color-accurate and shows slightly wrong colors (tends to look like generic RGB) and maybe it is even 6 bit display but the OS does not seem to be doing dithering of any kind. Still device seems to be good for reading and watching videos

    • Kev I have Air M1 and I am still on Monterey (12.7) and it gives me unbearable eye strain. Not sure if your pain is related to newer OS. Anyway, I would suggest to try it with true tone on/off or night shift

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