[c0nsumer]

Yeah, and I'm not terribly interested in getting into the details of how everything renders... I just want a display that works and doesn't make my eyes feel funny.

The PA27JCV (which I don't expect to have back from warranty repair for 3+ weeks) looked fine, and I'm now at day 5 of using the U3223QE and it's fine. So this is my solution to the problem I guess.

[DiabloD3]

Unfortunately, that might be your only solution.

From what I can tell from photos of your new monitor's pixels, it has a polarizer that is of similar taste of my Dell U2414Hs, just much newer. It aims for natural reproduction, which means pixels aren't sharply defined from neighbors, and subpixels blend together.

I prefer monitors like these, so I can't really argue with your choice. Sadly, due to a lot of younger kids being raised on phones (which have exceptionally sharp screens), modern high end screens keep being pushed towards sharper and clear to a fault.

Apple refuses to adjust rendering, since Apple's own taste in screens prefers natural over sharp. Even their OLEDs clearly have a film on them to hide the subpixel misalignment; the side effect of this is their brightness and contrast is lower, but eye fatigue is also lower.

Unfortunately, this is why I won't take OSX seriously: I bought a MBPr many years ago, I really tried to like OSX, I tried to understand why people like it, but it ultimately is a death by a thousand cuts, and entirely Apple's fault.

That MBPr ran OSX for a year, then Windows 10 a bit, and then Linux until it died. The text rendering was only fatigue-free on Windows and Linux, OSX had always been too fuzzy, especially with dark themes.

If you're not willing to break up with Apple, yeah, you're stuck just buying Apple-friendly monitors. A lot of OLEDs are just too clear and sharp and I don't disagree with you on sending it back.

[c0nsumer]

With the advent of new RGB (three column, like most LCD) OLEDs I wonder if Apple's next high-end display is going to use that. It'd be a whole bunch of things aligning for a good ecosystem.

And I know this is a whole lot of personal preference, but I like macOS. It works well for me. It's a good UNIX(-like?) with professional-level apps.

I support/maintain/use Windows systems for a living so I'm comfortable there as well, and I'd be mostly fine on a Linux but the lack of pro-level apps for some of my hobbies (namely, map making) and sufficiently-user-friendly equivalents for a few other apps (eg: rubiTrack, Hazel, Photos.app) is a problem.

(A bunch of years back I made a conscious choice to do less sysadmin-ing at home, even if I have to pay a bit more. It's freed up mental capacity for using computers as a means to an end vs. an end itself. And it means I don't have the flexibility of Linux or other OSS things at times, but I've been able to work within that. But I'm getting way off topic here...)