All through the 2000s Apple developed non-integer scaling support in various versions of MacOS X under the banner of “resolution independence” - the idea was to use vectors where possible rather than bitmaps so OS UI would look good at any resolution, including non-integer scaling factors.

Some indie Mac developers even started implementing support for it in anticipation of it being officially enabled. The code was present in 10.4 through 10.6 and possibly later, although not enabled by default. Apple gave up on the idea sadly and integer scaling is where we are.

Here’s a developer blog from 2006 playing with it:

> https://redsweater.com/blog/223/resolution-independent-fever

There was even documentation for getting ready to support resolution independence on Apple’s developer portal at one stage, but I sadly can’t find it today.

Here’s a news post from all the way back in 2004 discussing the in development feature in Mac OS tiger:

> https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/45544/mac-os-x-ti...

Lots of of folks (myself included!) in the Mac software world were really excited for it back then. It would have permitted you to scale the UI to totally arbitrary sizes while maintaining sharpness etc.

> This is correct and also increasingly affecting me as my eyes age. I had to give my Studio Display to my wife because my eyes can't focus at a reasonable distance anymore, and if I moved back further the text was too small to read.

> (I now use a combo of 4K TV 48" from ~1.5-2 metres back as well as a 4K 27" screen from 1 m away, depending on which room I want to work in. Angular resolution works out similarly (115 pixels per degree).)

The TV is likely a healthier distance to keep your eyes focused on all day regardless, but were glasses not an option?

If you can get used to using it (which really just requires some practice), the screen magnifier on Mac is fantastic and most importantly it’s extremely low latency (by this I mean, it reacts pretty much instantly when you want to zoom in or out).

Once you get used to flicking in and out of zoom instead of leaning into the monitor it’s great.

As an aside, Windows and Linux share this property too nowadays. Using the screen magnifiers is equally pleasant on any of these OSes. I game on Linux these days and the magnifier there even works within games.

Oh man... I'm in the same situation wrt eyesight. Are you coding on the 4K tv? I have enough space to make that configuration work. TIA