Part of it is display technology. Calibri was chosen for an era where typography was increasingly digital but serif fonts rendered badly on the low-resolution screens of ~2009.
Aptos is still sans-serif but I think its shapes are too subtle for a low resolution monitor from that era. It looks much better on "Retina"-esque devices that are viewed in closeup.
The psychology of type is complicated. Some of it is fashion; some of it is innate; some of it is cultural which is neither completely arbitrary nor completely immutable.
In addition consumers begin to spot things that look out of place and attribute negatively to that. Calibri definitely looks "quaint" these days with its very rounded, extremely soft shapes.
I still use fonts with good hinting that pre-date Calibri (e.g. Verdana) because they were hinted for displays that didn't always have anti-aliasing available. On this display I intentionally turn AA off and override browser choices because I like crisp fonts not blurry smeared fonts.
I don't have a 4K display and I would suggest to OS makers to smarten up and turn AA off today because you don't need AA on higher ppi displays.
Fonts, like layout and design goes through fads and I dislike the current trend of "let's make everything spindly and hard to see in a sea of endless whitespace". For me, my perspective on typography is that the most important part of it is the user experience, i.e. readability!
I don't care how uniquely sculpted an individual single character in isolation is. What's important is readability. Can the reader view the text with flow in comfort? If yes, then it is successful. If not, then it's just faddish presentation that needs overriding with more sane choices. Part of that is also the weight of the type, there needs to be balance with the page background also so the letters don't shimmer, etc.
> I dislike the current trend of "let's make everything spindly and hard to see in a sea of endless whitespace".
Actually, the peak of that phase is gone for several years now. We’re already back at proper contrast, borders, and shadows. Take a look at more recent redesign, or just the front page of Dribbble, to notice that.
Part of it is display technology. Calibri was chosen for an era where typography was increasingly digital but serif fonts rendered badly on the low-resolution screens of ~2009.
Aptos is still sans-serif but I think its shapes are too subtle for a low resolution monitor from that era. It looks much better on "Retina"-esque devices that are viewed in closeup.
The psychology of type is complicated. Some of it is fashion; some of it is innate; some of it is cultural which is neither completely arbitrary nor completely immutable.
In addition consumers begin to spot things that look out of place and attribute negatively to that. Calibri definitely looks "quaint" these days with its very rounded, extremely soft shapes.