Top all-time · #508
Bjango
Company blog · bjango.com/articlesdesignprogramming
Bjango is the company blog at bjango.com, writing about design and programming. Since 2009, 114 different Hacker News readers have linked it 141 times, most often “iStat Menus – advanced system monitor for macOS”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Makers of iStat Menus, Skala and other great apps.
Most-linked posts?
- iStat Menus – advanced system monitor for macOS23 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2016-11-21
- Mac external displays for designers and developers17 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2016-12-13
- Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 213 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2022-04-01
- /articles/6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-11-05
- Design Tool Memory Usage6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-09-04
- IStat Menus 45 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-06-18
- Photoshop CS6 improvements4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-03-22
- /mac/skalapreview/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-10-17
- Sub-pixel text rendering and mobile OSs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-11-20
- Vector icon speed runs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-19
What Hacker News says?
Better to have usage stats always visible like iStat Menus: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ Fans don't tell the whole story. Network traffic is super useful to see as well. Also, if your computer never gets hot enough, it can be doing plenty of unwanted background work without setting off the fans.
Comment linking /mac/istatmenus/
on “Completely Silent Computer”Submitted The vocal effects of Daft Punk as a story · 432 points
HN discussionOne of my fav macOS apps is iStat. It lets you keep track of all types of stuff from the menu bar... https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Comment linking /mac/istatmenus/
on “An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up”Submitted SVG passthrough precision as a story · 128 points
HN discussionThis article from 2016 explains the problem: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ Basically, the ideal PPI of mac displays is a multiple of 110 PPI. So, for retina quality you need a display of roughly 220 PPI, which is what you get from 5K at 27 inch. A 27 inch 4K display is around 160 PPI. If you use that in 2x mode, things will appear too large. If you set it to scaled mode to make things appear the p…
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “Why can’t you buy a good webcam?”Submitted Blur Radius Comparison as a story · 123 points
HN discussionFor reference, the 16” MacBook Pro has a 3072‑by‑1920 display. This means the 27” 4K monitors that are the industry standard now for some reason at 3,840 x 2,160 are almost twice the size, yet have barely more resolution than the MacBook true retina screen. MacOS can do scaling to adjust for this, but it uses the least amount of resources in native or pixel doubled mode. Any display that is between the resolutions I…
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “Why can’t you buy a good webcam?”Submitted Opacity Precision as a story · 36 points
HN discussionIdeally, you want a screen that natively runs at a resolution that’s a perfect 2x multiplier of a mainstream 1x resolution that has the right amount of screen real estate for the screen size. So for example, a 20”-24” screen should be 4K so it can run at 1920x1080 @ 2x. Similarly for 27”, you want 5K which is 2560x1440 @ 2x. This is a really good post describing how it all works: https://bjango.com/articles/macexter…
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays2/
on “Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator”Submitted 1px is not enough as a story · 19 points
HN discussionBut does Xcode convert PDF and SVG to various PNG assets? https://bjango.com/articles/svgassetcatalogs/ It's my understanding, as a designer, that it was auto-generating 2x and 3x PNGs as from your vector assets, and that's what actually got bundled in the final app—and that PNG compression was not good compared to what I could get by going through ImageOptim. I would be quite happy to be wrong about that. It would…
Comment linking /articles/svgassetcatalogs/
on “I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app”Submitted Color matching for web, iPhone and iPad development as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThe problem is that there are no external 2x displays on the market (apart from the recalled trainwreck that was LG ultrasharp 5k): https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ Scaling is horrible on MacOS since it basically bumps up the 1x resolution to the next integer multiplier and then does a per-frame raster resize leading to performance drops, blurry edges and other render artifacts. Meaning that your onl…
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “MacOS Mojave removes subpixel anti-aliasing, making non-retina displays blurry”Submitted Matching drop shadows across CSS, Android, iOS, Figma, and Sketch as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIt's better than 1080p as it is much sharper and crisper, but 1080p at 27 inches results in rather large UI elements. An effective resolution of 2560x1440px (as seen in any iMac 27) seems like the proper resolution for a display of that size. Read more about it here: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “2018 Mac Mini Review”Submitted Gradients as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI've been for many years a happily paying customer of iStat Menus [1], from which this seem to be the heavily inspired of. [1] https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Comment linking /mac/istatmenus/
on “Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar”Submitted Photoshop CS6 improvements as a story · 7 points
HN discussionWe’re working hard on it! It’s going to be good. There’s some more info on this page: https://bjango.com/mac/skala/ Thanks. :)
Comment linking /mac/skala/
on “The vocal effects of Daft Punk”Submitted Bjango's Complete App Design Workflow as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSadly you need a 5k screen for a 27" display to get to 200+ DPI: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ The LG UltraFine 5K is the only affordable display on the market with that resolution, and it's plagued with issues.
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “Text Rendering Hates You (2019)”Submitted Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionA few tips/software recommendation in no particular order: - On iTerm2 you can setup a system wide hotkey to toggle a floating terminal in front of all your windows, whatever you're doing [1]. This works even in full screen apps. It really changed my workflow with iTerm, and is really handy. - For system stats in the menubar, I really recommend iStat Menu [2]. It's paid (12$ for a license), but the quality of the gr…
Comment linking /mac/istatmenus/
on “macOS Setup after 15 Years of Linux”Submitted My Mac app icon design workflow as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays2/
on “macOS Sequoia Preview”Submitted 1px is not enough as a story · 5 points
HN discussionit doesn't work great, elements are comically too big on 32" 4K or just too big on 27" 4K, you need to scale it to 1080p but then it's too small. MacOS is made for 5K 27" monitors for high DPI (Retina) resolutions or non-high DPI 27" 2560x1440. The only high-DPI 4K screen that works great OOB is the 21.5" 4K Apple display. * https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpX561_X…
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays2/
on “Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer”Submitted The life and death of a fake hotdog app. as a story · 4 points
HN discussion5K at 27" enables you to use 2x scaling which is much lighter on your hardware. Scaling 4K at 2x leads to a sizing which looks like 1080p (just much sharper), which may be too large depending on your distance from the screen. Using anything but 2x scaling will tax your hardware, slow down the computer and blur the image. Read more about it here: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
Comment linking /articles/macexternaldisplays/
on “Apple updates its iMac line”Submitted Gold digging on the App Store as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
