So I ran Windows 10 for a little while on my 5K iMac, not virtualized. Because I like torturing myself for your benefit, I guess.

Holy fucking god, what a piece of shit. I didn’t realize Parallels (virtualization software for Mac) was making it better than it otherwise would be, primarily by somehow implementing its own scaling algorithm (or something, I don’t really understand) for fonts and other items.

In other words, fonts and interface elements look a lot better when Parallels runs Windows 10 at the very same resolution rather than when it’s run natively. As I said, I don’t know why. But it’s glaring and means that I will never run Windows 10 natively on any personal machine with high-dpi monitors.

So of course that means I will never run it at all because I will never use a non-high-DPI monitor again at home. Regular monitors are for chumps.

What’s puzzling is that Windows 8 on the same hardware actually looks better at high-resolution. So on a newer OS the one thing they should have better support for actually works and looks worse. And not just a little bit worse, either. Like a whole world of worse, an apatosaurus of worse, a megalodon of worse, a Jupiter of worse.

You get the picture.

What is Microsoft’s end game here? Do they think destroying the desktop experience is going to help them? Why implement a new scaling algorithm that is incredibly inferior to what existed in Windows 8? I can’t imagine this would look better on a tablet, so what happened?

The new scaling algorithm makes everything look like the ass end of a rhinoceros at any resolution I tried. At first I was blaming Firefox which has also reduced their font rendering quality noticeably in the last few years in their quest to break absolutely everything, but it was not just Firefox this time.

I just don’t understand the goal here. Breaking scaling on the desktop doesn’t make me want to move to a tablet or phone, or even have anything to do with Microsoft on the desktop again for that matter.

This just seems pointless.

There is this tool which does fix most of the scaling issues, but then breaks things if you have mixed-DPI monitors.

Microsoft and Mozilla should join forces to form the most asinine, user-hostile company in existence. They’d rule that space like no one has ever ruled it before.