

Apple Doesn’t Design for Yesterday - karjaluoto
http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/apple-doesnt-design-for-yesterday/

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monstermonster
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)

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

~~~
monstermonster
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

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Zikes
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.

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Detrus
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.

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olgeni
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.

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Mithaldu
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.

~~~
mikestew
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.

~~~
Mithaldu
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. :)

~~~
mikestew
> 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](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.

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taeric
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.

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jsz0
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.

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

