Oh wow, the nineties called and they want their grayscale-only AA back... To make a point he conveniently totally forgot to talk about RGB decimation / subpixel rendering. WTF !? Seriously...
If he really thinks that there's only one step between #484848 and #494949 then I'd suggest reading a bit on MS' ClearType and using a magnifier to take a closer look at how Windows or OS X fonts are rendered. Hint: it's not grayscale anti-aliasing.
I honestly don't think that using dithering "because pixels are small" would provide better result than sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
If he really thinks that there's only one step between #484848 and #494949 then I'd suggest reading a bit on MS' ClearType and using a magnifier to take a closer look at how Windows or OS X fonts are rendered. Hint: it's not grayscale anti-aliasing.
I honestly don't think that using dithering "because pixels are small" would provide better result than sub-pixel anti-aliasing.