The Colors On My Mac Are All Screwed Up

How do you fix a computer screen that has inverted colors?

Press and hold the “Windows” key. Press and release the “-” key until the screen returns to its normal size. Press "Ctrl-Alt-i" to turn on color inversion.

I used a wet wipe on my MacBook's screen, and now my screen is ruined. Is there a way I can fix this?

Thanks for the A2A.Hmmm… Are you sure it is ruined? Perhaps there are just some streaks on the screen?Try this: dip a cloth into slightly soapy water and wring it out until it is just damp. Now wipe down your screen carefully, moving first from left to right across the screen, then from top down. Next, take a dry, lint-free cloth and dry the screen, again, moving across, then from top down (do not move in circles). Did that fix it?Whatever you do, do not try acetone or alcohol. You will make the matter worse. If all else fails, take your computer to an Apple Store or Authorized Apple Service Center for further assistance.

Why does something on a Mac screen look so much better than the same thing (such as a webpage in the same browser) on most PC screens?

To be honest, I'm not sure it has anything to do with hardware at all (assuming comparable screen sizes and resolutions, of course). The only thing I could think of would be if Apple was using IPS displays for their notebooks, but that's not yet the case. It seems like the major PC manufacturers, like Apple, offer LED-backlit displays on their notebooks, so they're comparable in terms of fundamental technology.The venerable Joel Spolsky has a great post on the software roots of the subtle image differences I think you're referring to here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/it...To borrow from his post, both Windows and OS X use sub-pixel rendering to improve the appearance of the font at lower resolutions, but they do it in different ways. As Joel writes,Apple generally believes the goal of the [rendering] algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little blurriness.Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.So, as you can see from Joel's image below, you clearly get different results. Obviously, whichever one is more preferable is a matter of personal taste. I tend to like the OS X approach to font rendering myself, but to each his (or her) own. I suppose you could argue that the OS X approach is more aesthetically appealing on a subconscious level because it more closely mirrors print conventions, which we're accustomed to (for now, anyway), but I'm sure there are those out there who prefer the Windows approach for one reason or another.

How does Mac OS X compare to Windows 7?

I recently "switched back" from Mac to Windows (though still on Mac hardware for my laptop). The advantages to me are:Much better development tools. Microsoft Visual Studio and C# beat XCode and Objective-C hands down. If you need to develop a lot of custom/one-up applications, it the fastest development environment with the best debugging support.Support for 10 bit-per-channel color, and wide-gamut displays without going to proprietary solutions. If your work involves color management or color grading, this is critical.Support for Blu-Ray and stereo (3D) monitors. Our company does 3D work, and there's no good solution for Macintoshes.More hardware choices. Apple isn't putting much attention into its Pro desktop line anymore. If you need cutting-edge hardware, like 12-core Xeon systems with 48 GB of RAM and 10-bit/channel color, you need to go to sources other than Apple.As far as the UI and appearance go, I have no trouble bouncing back and forth between them, once I made sure "control" and "command" keys were in the same place (i.e., swapped) when I switch back and forth. They look very close these days.  Windows 7 now has something that works a lot like the dock, and something that works a lot like spotlight, so if you're used to launching applications from the dock or typing its name in Spotlight, the use case is the same.Disadvantages to Windows? You need to make sure you don't let naive users access to them because they're more frequently targeted by malicious software writers. For this reason, we still use Macs for our office guest and admin workstations. They're just less likely to be messed up by a stupid, careless, or computer illiterate person.For example, I had a visitor from a charity we support doing some work in our office. I caught her trying to get a "free" music file that was actually a  ".exe" containing a virus. (There are  malware sites that match the name of nearly any music file, and offer up an "exe" with the music.) While I'm pretty sure the guest account on a PC would have stopped the install, if not the malware detector, the Mac gives an extra layer of protection because people don't target them as much. We don't allow her or that charity near our office anymore. Not only do we want to have nothing to do with music piracy, she would also show up with USB sticks that were completely saturated with viruses and trojans.