
Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco - professionis
http://typedetail.com/san-francisco.html
======
empressplay
That's not the San Francisco font I remember...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%29)

~~~
mortenjorck
[https://twitter.com/jimray/status/534880834025566208](https://twitter.com/jimray/status/534880834025566208)

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namuol
> The typeface is licensed exclusively to registered third-party developers
> for the “design and development of applications for the Apple Watch”. [1]

Cool. Another font for web designers to wrongfully assume I have installed on
my system.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(2014_typeface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_\(2014_typeface\))

~~~
mortenjorck
That practice died out years ago with the rise of browser support for @font-
face and the hosted webfont industry. Of course, you'll still encounter legacy
sites that assume installed fonts, but no professional designer is going to
specify type that way on a new project.

~~~
walshemj
Ah you mean yet more stuff to download and slowdown page loading

~~~
azinman2
Unless it's cached.

And yes, more stuff to download to make your experience nicer to have design
and heterogeneity in our lives.

~~~
walshemj
Depends is it worth the extra page weight and slower speed to cater for the
designers typographical choices in 99.99% of cases no its not.

------
cpr
Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes?

I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in
a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be
destined as the system font in 10.11.

Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-
to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain
frustrating. Maybe readability trumps taste, but in that case, just go back to
Lucida.

~~~
cmelbye
You're unhappy with the readability of San Francisco? I've heard the opposite
from most people who have seen it on the Watch.

I think it's quite a beautiful typeface, and I'm glad they're expanding its
usage to their new keyboards and iOS/OS X. I think it will work out great for
them.

~~~
petilon
It does look good on the Watch. But that doesn't automatically mean it would
be a good choice for other uses. In my subjective opinion it looks pretty bad
as OS X system font. Take a look: [http://9to5mac.com/2014/11/19/how-to-use-
the-apple-watch-fon...](http://9to5mac.com/2014/11/19/how-to-use-the-apple-
watch-font-as-the-system-font-on-os-x-yosemite/)

~~~
cmelbye
We're operating off of rumors and a font hack that uses a font designed for
hi-fidelity mockups of Apple Watch apps. I'm going to wait and see what Apple
releases.

------
timothya
On a related note, here's a comparison between Apple's San Francisco and
Google's Roboto, along with FF DIN and Helvetica: [http://www.fontshop.de/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/comparison...](http://www.fontshop.de/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/comparison.pdf)

~~~
wodenokoto
The lower-case a in the PDFs doesn't display the same as the lower case a in
the linked website.

~~~
timothya
They look the same to me... here's a screenshot of them side-by-side (PDF on
the left, website on the right):
[http://i.imgur.com/ToQFktD.png](http://i.imgur.com/ToQFktD.png)

------
jug
I'm postively surprised. I didn't expect this from Apple, but it actually does
look good with the Windows font renderer here (Firefox, so I assume
DirectWrite), down to at least 9px. The hinting could perhaps be better on a
few letters but I expected none care taken whatsoever. Of course, this could
be a lucky accident, not sure if Apple did this intentionally. The thin
weights seem OK as well, something else that can not always be expected. Looks
decent for general use unless Apple prevents that by licensing.

I never liked Helvetica Neue in user interfaces so I'm happy to soon
(hopefully) see it gone from iOS.

Edit: OK, so it's only to be used by either Apple or Apple apps.

------
Aloisius
The Apple Watch Design Resources license where the font seems to have
originated is pretty strict about using this font:

 _Limited License. Subject to the terms of this License, you may use the Apple
Font solely for purposes of design and development of applications for the
Apple Watch. The foregoing right includes the right to show the Apple Font in
screen shots, images or mock-ups of an Apple Watch application._

[https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/](https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/)
(after clicking on Apple Watch Design Resources)

------
hartator
To install it now:
[https://github.com/supermarin/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont](https://github.com/supermarin/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont)

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chinathrow
License confusion here. Isn't that font Apple only? How can that blog
([http://www.nicholastodor.com/blog/use-apples-new-san-
francis...](http://www.nicholastodor.com/blog/use-apples-new-san-francisco-
font-on-your-website)) make it available for download?

~~~
detaro
I expect it's going to be taken down soon (someone uploaded it to github with
some config for OS X, and that got DMCA'd)

------
thanatropism
Ask type professionals: what are good typefaces for spreadsheets (tabular
numeric data), onscreen and in print?

Onscreen I've been switching Excel's default to Consolas, which is more
compact yet more readable. Other programs have unchangeable defaults (but they
rely more on fix-width, too).

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
If you choose a Opentype typeface with Tabular figures as an option, you could
have a high quality typeface that prints out the numbers that are fixed width,
but might be significantly more aesthetically considered than standard
monospaced font.

Here's some typefaces that are for the most part, _only_ numbers, that I think
might look rather nice for just tabbed numerical data:
[http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/claimcheck](http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/claimcheck)
[http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/greenback](http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/greenback)

------
Quanttek
The font rendering on the linked blog article is pretty atrocious on my PC:
[http://i.imgur.com/DL5pZKE.png](http://i.imgur.com/DL5pZKE.png)

This is in Firefox Developer on Linux with the Infinality font rendering
installed.

I'm probably doing something wrong

------
derrasterpunkt
For those of you with a Developer Account, the fonts can be downloaded here:

[https://developer.apple.com/watch/human-interface-
guidelines...](https://developer.apple.com/watch/human-interface-
guidelines/resources/)

The rounded version is missing in the package, though.

The whole font is in the iOS-Simulator[1], but they don't seem to be usable.
They have a ".San Fransico …" name.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/534865299234127872](https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/534865299234127872)

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rdancer
This is a ridiculously incomplete sample sheet. Most of the iOS, OS X, and
Watch OS users will need to display characters outside the non-accented
English alphabet.

Nerding out about minute-to-nonexistent differences from Helvetica is cute,
but how will it actually look in real-life application?! Way to miss the
point.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Given that the majority of HN is an English-speaking audience, it's all that
most folks need.

~~~
cead_ite
…The majority speak English as _one_ of their languages :)

------
thisisblurry
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but could someone explain why a handful
of letters (G, J, K, M, etc.) have emphasis?

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melted
I like it. It just looks "right" somehow, and it's more optically dense, so
it'll look good on all kinds of screens as well. Picking Helvetica Neue was a
bit of a brain fart on Jony's part.

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gpvos
Can we do away with those s-t ligatures please? They're visually disturbing
and serve no purpose. In a font for reproducing ancient text, okay. But not in
any modern text please.

~~~
Aloisius
I don't see an st ligature. I forced ligatures on and off on the Apple
supplied font and see none (not even for th or fi):

[http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png](http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png)

~~~
gpvos
Oops, sorry. It seems the font got blocked somehow, and one of my fallback
fonts apparently has them. Sorry again, that was a useless comment of mine.

------
nblavoie
This font sucks.

~~~
izzle49
agreed this font sucks

