Apple Doesn’t Design for Yesterday | Hacker News Reader

Apple Doesn’t Design for Yesterday

erickarjaluoto.com

24 pointskarjaluoto17 comments

My wife has a 2011 MBP blessed with a 1280x800 screen and the Helvetica face looks pretty bad from a type point of view. It's not unreadable but the type has lost its definition completely.

Unfortunately "after yesterday", things are expensive I.e. to get our definition back, we have to shift the entire unit with an i7, 16Gb of RAM and Samsung 840 Pro and buy a new unit with similar spec, which isn't cheap because you have to buy up front rather than upgrade now.

Hmm.

(I have an X201 with same res as my daily driver and its pretty good with ClearType on windows)

You are the perfect example of the author's point, and the effectiveness of the modern Apple business model.

Well actually a bad example of their business model because they can piss off they think I'm buying another one. She's getting the innards chucked in a T420 with a 1440x900 screen and windows 8.1

The font on that site makes me feel like I'm reading something written on a misaligned typewriter. The x-height is inconsistent especially with v, y, and t.

But maybe I'll like it more tomorrow.

They could have left the old font for old screens. This is a push to make people buy new hardware.

It would be one thing if the hardware offered a significant improvement over 2010 for productive tasks. Not really the case these days. Hardware capability is stuck and Apple is using marketing gimmicks to sell new toys. Thinner, brighter, longer battery, more pixels, gold whatever.

This is not the future. This is General Motors making stylish status symbol cars vs Ford Model T. And they'll make the same car for decades until society needs the cars to solve an actual problem like fewer accidents, less pollution, less gas.

And it's a chicken and egg with software. Not much software really takes advantage of the $10K 10+ core MacPro. The pros are satisfied with a lot less. Only niche fields really want computers like that and even they outsource heavy lifting to cloud render farms.

As always, Apple is Great, Apple is Tomorrow but I still find myself stuck in iTunes Connect, trying to parse generic and insignificant error messages that result in hours wasted for no apparent reason. Fonts are cute, but let's give a look at the backend sometimes.

I don't own any Apple devices, so i feel i need to ask a question that might have an obvious answer:

Do people have the choice of font?

From the sounds of it the newest OSX is squarely aimed at the future of paper-like displays, which is cool, but curses old devices with a badly readable font, regardless of what the user wishes. On Windows i can configure fonts and colors for a whole range of system gui components however i like. Does OSX offer the same, or are users really stuck with whatever a designer liked best that week?

Earnestly asking: Why the downvote? I posted this because i'm genuinely curious.

I am a long time mac user (since 10.0), and I have never actually looked at the appearance settings, so I checked just for you. In OS X 10.9 and 10.10 the only real appearance settings are two color options, and the size of the side bars (scroll bars). You can also change the location, size and hiding settings for the dock. If you really like XML files then you probably have the option of changing the font, but it isn't straight forward.

Personally I have only ever changed the dock location (usually to the right side) and the desktop image.

Thanks for checking. I really wonder what the reasoning is to not include options for that.

I'm sure that there are possibly ways to hack at things from the command line, and maybe even apps developed for such a thing (there used to be, years ago, but I'm pretty sure those APIs got deprecated). But if one goes the common route, that being the Mac OS version of Windows Control Panel called "System Preferences", one has little control other than setting highlight color, overall color (blue or gray). No font options. I'm fine with that, I'm not one to spend time fiddling to get just that right shade of red in the title bar.

As for down votes, you've got enough karma/imaginary Internet points to quit worrying about it. I've seen my own comments get down voted for asking the most innocuous questions couched as politely as I could. Usually involves Mac stuff, too. Which is ironic given the amount of Apple stuff in my house (read: it's all Apple), and I'm typing this on my work MacBook. Yeah, I'm a hater.

As for the fiddling, i get you. For me typically the only fiddling i do is set Win2k colors, narrow space wastes and set a font that's a little less wide than the default. Pure usability fixes. Maybe that's why they never had those options, because Jobs would've ripped off anyone's head who introduces usability issues.

It's not that i'm worried about the downvotes. Occasionally i intentionally post things that i know will get downvoted, but go ahead anyhow because the reality that might be uncomfortable to some still deserves to be voiced.

In this case though there is nothing obvious, so i am honestly curious what about my post someone disagreed with strong enough to click that button. I ask, if nothing else, because an earnest explanation of the downvote might be interesting in itself. :)

> In this case though there is nothing obvious, so i am honestly curious what about my post someone disagreed with strong enough to click that button.

Seriously, don't spend the CPU cycles on it. See this post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8363269. Sure it has 10 points now, but someone down voted it minutes after I posted it. I have no idea why. Maybe a bad day at work, maybe the down voter is just an asshole taking advantage of their 500 karma and anonymity. But you'll rarely get an answer, so move on and let them seethe about it ("I'll show that asshole, with my might power of Down Arrow!") instead of you.

There are ways to change system fonts but it's a similar situation to Windows where your font choices may not fit properly in some spots and some apps may set their own fonts and override your choice. Otherwise it's up to apps to offer font options for things like list views / text views / etc. In general Apple's philosophy is not to offer options that are pretty much guaranteed not to work consistently or produce unexpected results

I'm talking about system GUI components, i.e. window titles, context menus, etc. Those scale appropiately. I have never seen fonts set with the windows controls that don't fit properly. Apps that override stuff look inconsistent no matter what.

I thought Helvetica was actually on the decline nowdays.

And it will be interesting to see how many things change with the move to ultra high resolution screens. I can't imagine fonts should really be a priority, though. Seems this is something that could have easily waited for the market to really be here.

I mean, I fully expect to drop down to ridiculously small type as soon as I can. Would be ridiculous to do so now.

This shows the tricky position Apple is in. They are a progressive minded company with a user base that has grown to also include many traditional / conservative users who don't like change and maybe have little or no interest in the potential of new technology. Difficult to keep everyone happy. Apple has been a bit more responsive lately making some small compromises so I wouldn't be surprised if 10.10.1 improves some of the rough edges of the new UI on non-Retina displays.

Touch screens are not superior input devices. Maybe for some things, but not others... Like maybe typing words.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com