Actually 1.6 is ugly aswel.. them clowns at mojang screwed up the rendering path, so trying to force anti-aliasing on java/opengl using gfx card control panel no longer works, so the game has jaggies, it used to be you could get nice AA screenshots without shaders, now you can't get them at all.
You can only use that shitty looking FXAA type setting, which basically just blurrs the entire screen, only some retard at mojang would consider that to be better looking, and it blurs everything including GUI elements and TEXT.. honestly so fking stupid.