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Apple Doesn't Design For Yesterday
HughPickens.com writes Erik Karjaluoto writes that he recently installed OS X Yosemite and his initial reaction was "This got hit by the ugly stick." But Karjaluoto says that Apple's decision to make a wholesale shift from Lucida to Helvetica defies his expectations and wondered why Apple would make a change that impedes legibility, requires more screen space, and makes the GUI appear fuzzy? The Answer: Tomorrow.
Microsoft's approach with Windows, and backward compatibility in general, is commendable. "Users can install new versions of this OS on old machines, sometimes built on a mishmash of components, and still have it work well. This is a remarkable feat of engineering. It also comes with limitations — as it forces Microsoft to operate in the past." But Apple doesn't share this focus on interoperability or legacy. "They restrict hardware options, so they can build around a smaller number of specs. Old hardware is often left behind (turn on a first-generation iPad, and witness the sluggishness). Meanwhile, dying conventions are proactively euthanized," says Karjaluoto. "When Macs no longer shipped with floppy drives, many felt baffled. This same experience occurred when a disk (CD/DVD) reader no longer came standard." In spite of the grumblings of many, Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice.
Microsoft's approach with Windows, and backward compatibility in general, is commendable. "Users can install new versions of this OS on old machines, sometimes built on a mishmash of components, and still have it work well. This is a remarkable feat of engineering. It also comes with limitations — as it forces Microsoft to operate in the past." But Apple doesn't share this focus on interoperability or legacy. "They restrict hardware options, so they can build around a smaller number of specs. Old hardware is often left behind (turn on a first-generation iPad, and witness the sluggishness). Meanwhile, dying conventions are proactively euthanized," says Karjaluoto. "When Macs no longer shipped with floppy drives, many felt baffled. This same experience occurred when a disk (CD/DVD) reader no longer came standard." In spite of the grumblings of many, Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice.
So what's so "tomorrow" about change from Lucida to Helvetica, which impedes legibility, requires more screen space, and makes the GUI appear fuzzy? Is that the definition of "tomorrow" now?
More to the point how does changing from Lucida to Helvetica impede legibility, require more screen space, and make the GUI appear fuzzy? I can't say that I have noticed any of these world ending problems in decades of using the Helvetica font.
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It's general knowledge in typography that Helvetica is the most legible typeface. Low-resolution devices present challenges that keep that from being true, so adaptations had to be made.
Of course, pretty soon if you want security updates you'll have to accept Helvetica, even on your low-resolution device. But you should stop being such a loser with a three-year-old computer and give Apple some more money.
Maybe they'll have "Mac Mode" ready for the iPhone by then.
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Helvetica is print font, not a screen font. It isn't optimized for pixel displays, and even on fairly high DPI displays does not look a nice as fonts optimized for them. Screen fonts take account of the pixel grid and get hand optimized to look good on them.
Apple is clearly hoping that they have a high end DPI that can overcome these problems, but it doesn't appear they have. The 5k display is only around 200 DPI, and Helvetica tends to look a bit naff below about 600 DPI at small sizes. Of course it's a little more complicated because they have sub pixel rendering, but it only affects horizontal resolution and not vertical resolution. To counter this they have made the fonts a little larger, but of course that means everything takes up more space on screen.
Everyone else uses screen fonts. Bitstream derived fonts for Linux and Android. Microsoft has Segoe and Meiryo, designed specially for them. Some phones have reached the point where Helvetica will look good, around 450-500 DPI, although the iPhone 6 Plus is only around 400 DPI.
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Both Apple and Microsoft have been using ripoffs of Helvetica for decades as their default font. That was what all the cool kids did back in the 1980s - if you didn't want to pay for a font, you paid some graphics artist to design one which looked a lot like it but was slightly different. Adobe bought licenses for the real fonts, and if you were in the printing industry and needed the real Helvetica you could buy Adobe Type Manager (originally for Mac, later for WIndows).
All this announcement means is that Apple has finally decided to pay whomever has the copyright on Helvetica for the rights to use it as their default system font. The bit about "tomorrow" is just marketing spin to make it sound like some awesome new thing, when the font itself was made in 1957.
And yes Apple abandons old tech and adopts new tech sooner than the rest of the industry meaning they're often at the forefront of tech which later becomes commonplace among PCs. You can cherry pick some of their successes (e.g. 3.5" floppy, abandoning optical drives) to make them seem brilliant. Or you could list some of their failures (e.g. firewire, lightning thus far, SCSI on the desktop, PowerPC which they abandoned for Intel) to make them seem like bumbling idiots. Apple isn't a prognosticator. They're making guesses about the future just like everyone else. For some reason people are less likely to remember their failures than with other companies.
It makes sense if you've ever designed an OS X app. The UI is defined in "nib" files on a pixel-by-pixel basis. (Nib stands for "NextStep Interface Builder" - this is something that comes from NextStep.)
So instead of saying "this label is here and a text field is to the right of it" you say "this label is at 10,10 pixels and is 100x30 pixels, this text field is at 120,10 pixels and is 400x30 pixels." If you were allowed to change the font, you'd completely screw up every UI.
"But wait! They just changed the font!"
Well, yeah, and guess what? Actually they added some new APIs in the recent versions of iOS and OS X to try and make UIs less defined by individual pixels and more fluid to try and fix that. But the basic answer is that OS X UIs are laid out using pixels and that makes changing the font dangerous. And that Yosemite does indeed make older apps look weird as the font metrics the UI was designed for no longer apply.
As they've gone to a narrower font, for the most part, the issue is just more whitespace rather than labels being cut off. But there are issues, and that's why you aren't allowed to change the UI's look.
Helvetica was invented in 1957, so it wasn't created by Apple either. And no sans-serif font can be "most readable".
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This is just another sight that I was correct when I said that Apple computers are poised to become accessories for Apple's iOS devices, rather than the other way around. Apple, clearly, now caters to two groups: iOS device users (who will also be the biggest spenders on apps and media) and creatives. I don't see a problem with this, from a business standpoint it, as it makes perfect sense; I do see a problem from it from the standpoint of software developer and Apple user who loves his 17" MacBook Pro and wishes they'd once again target his demographic.
Creatives will naturally gravitate to the best available displays, which means either the retina-class iMac or MBP, or the Mac Pro and whatever their display of choice happens to be, and Apple definitely has them covered. Helvetica looks just fine on retina displays (honestly, I think it looks just fine @ 1200p on a 17" display, too), so these users won't be likely to complain.
They sell the most expensive hardware to the group least likely to buy a lot of apps and media from Apple, and I agree, that's the way to go. Users of iOS devices have voiced that they want the look and feel of their iPhone, iPod, and iPad everywhere they can possibly get it. Well, those use Helvetica, they also use flat neutrals, transparency, and blur. Apple catered to those users, who are likely to buy the cheaper computer and spend more on apps and media, without a second thought.
If you're not in those two categories or, at least, don't follow either of those spending patterns, I won't say Apple doesn't care about you at all; they certainly care about anyone who wants to give them money, just just don't care enough to give a shit what you want.
Again, I fully agree with this from a business perspective. Unfortunately, I have my own business, which comes with its own perspective, and if that's the view Apple wants to take, it's sadly incompatible with reality for a lot of professional users. It really saddens me, as they were making strides toward developing a huge presence in professional fields before Jobs passed; that has not only slowed, but reversed, since then. It doesn't seem to be hurting their sales, yet, but I imagine it will when they start making more obviously negative changes to OSX's UI. They'll still sell to iOS users and creatives, and they'll probably remain the college student's PC of choice; but, by crapifying the interface (observation of others in this thread, which I've already stated I don't necessarily agree with -- but, me vs them, they're the majority, so I'm using their opinion for my point) on lower-end-but-still-current hardware, which the mass market is more likely to be able to afford when they choose to buy Apple, they're removing much of the allure of their platform. This can't be a good thing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
artist types who couldn't construct a proper double-blind study to save their souls.
Some studies have been done. However, I found none that even considered Helvetica as one of the options. So far I have seen no data to support the assertion that Helvetica is "most readable" or "most legible".
A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts
What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?
Another Comparison of Popular Online Fonts
What makes you think professionals are even qualified to make the call? Presumably you're talking typographers, graphic designers, etc - artist types who couldn't construct a proper double-blind study to save their souls.
While that may be true, there have been a LOT of studies on typeface readability and legibility over the past 150 years or so, of varying quality.
After having spent some time reading these studies, I've basically come to the conclusion that we've learned basically nothing beyond three basic facts:
(1) readers don't do well with "weird" typefaces except in ornamental or occasional use -- use something that's close to what reader are used to encountering when they will read more than a few words in the font
(2) bigger fonts make reading easier
(3) unless the font has really unusual features (e.g., some characters that don't look like "standard" letterforms), overall design can usually fix most problems -- i.e., doing things like tweaking size, space between lines, space between words, etc.
The last point is really important. Most discussions of typeface legibility have to do with things like serifs, x-height, size of holes in characters like 'o' or 'p', etc. But as long as the letters actually still have standard shapes, you can usually tweak the size or spacing to make it just as legible.
Beyond that, it's basically personal preference and what people are used to. There are studies that seem to show small effects for everything -- serif fonts are better, except when they're not. Justified text is better than ragged right, or the reverse. (Hyphens are bad, or they aren't.) Double-spacing is necessary, or it's not. Larger spaces after periods or punctuation help readability to a small extent, or they don't make a difference.
Frankly, having read a lot in the literature of typography, I think the problem with most of these studies is that overall design matters most, and I'm not talking about the design of the study (though that's important), but rather the typographic design and use case.
Some typefaces will perform better when spacing is tight, others seem better if more space is available. Some typefaces are good for people with various disabilities or vision problems, but readability may be different for those with "normal" vision. Some typefaces look better than others when a smaller size is used, but people express a different preference when text is larger... or when resolution is varied... or....
Typeface is just one of many elements of proper design. And usually reactions like "Oooh, you simply CAN'T use that font on a screen!" or "No, no, no! That works well for newsprint and headlines, but no one would ever like long text blocks with that!" are just based on what people are used to, not what would actually be more legible or readable.
For example, there are situations where people have come to expect serif or sans serif fonts. Expect people to complain if you don't use the standard choice in those situations. That's not to say one or ALWAYS better than the other -- it's just a combination of what's expected and the other design choices.
Sure, sure, 300 years of technology have it all wrong and a few "recent studies"
Did you even look at the link? The guy looked at something like **50 studies** from the past century or so. And there have been at least a dozen more I've seen dealing with readability in a variety of fonts since that article was published in 2008.
show one more way for hipsters to be "smarter" than everyone else.
What do "hipsters" have to do with this?
And by the way, frankly, I prefer serif fonts too for reading -- I think sans serif fonts looks stupid. (Actually I kinda dislike them in general and have been known to change my browser defaults to remedy this situation -- but my personal preference is different from what actual studies show about legibility/readability.)
To mock your most absurd claim further (your last one): you can make sans-serif letterforms distinguishable, barely, with 5x3 pixels to work with.
Yes, to mock you back: this is of course the most common usage case these days with high-res screens. :)
Look, the question is about LEGIBILITY, not ability to render. At small enough sizes, serifs can't even be placed on fonts -- you're correct. But this has nothing to with whether people prefer to read 8-point or 10-point text in serifs versus sans. And basically there some studies I've seen recently which show people to prefer serif fonts for reading at smaller font sizes and sans only at larger sizes.
But it's a small effect, and I don't know if it's actually significant -- point is, if you're dealing with enough pixels to actually display serifs, there doesn't seem to be a strong preference one way or the other. And if you have fewer pixels, serif fonts will essentially look like sans anyway, so again they're about equivalent.
5K screens
... which are a ridiculous extravagance.
Apple's current 5k screens are way too small. A 27" display properly goes at the opposite side of your desk, but it only takes about half that distance for pixels at this density to be, practically speaking, invisible.
A 5k screen should be at least 32", and even that is pressing it. I'd say 36".
I'm currently running 2 WUXGA monitors, giving me 3840 x 1200, at the far side of my desk. This is about the ideal placement, and while the pixels aren't quite invisible, they are small enough (for me) as makes no difference.
A 5k screen at 27" is, in my opinion, a huge waste of money.
That's only true at very large sizes—say 5% of your total field of view or larger—and it is IMO highly debatable even at those sizes.
At small sizes, particularly for people whose vision is less than perfect, Helvetica Neue makes Comic Sans look readable by comparison. It's not a question of the screen's resolution; no matter how precisely you render two letters that are separated by a distance that's less than your eye's circle of confusion, you still can't distinguish the strokes from one another.
For example, on my brand new MacBook Pro with retina display, I have no trouble whatsoever reading Courier New at 11 point. It is easily readable, and every letter is visually distinct. Same goes for any number of other fonts, including the venerable Lucida Grande. On that same hardware, my eyes struggle with Helvetica Neue even at 18 point, which means if I want it to be readable, I would get substantially less content on the screen even when comparing it with a fixed-width, serif font!
And the reason for the readability problems are a decided lack of legibility in Helvetica Neue. With Helvetica Neue 12 point, when I look at the word "pill", the "p" touches the "i" until I'm six inches from the screen. And depending on where the letter happens to fall, it may or may not be possible to tell the difference between "pom" (the juice) and "porn" (naughty stuff on the Internet) without getting ridiculously close to the screen. Sometimes the gap is visible, sometimes it isn't. In other words, the tracking is simply way, way, way too tight to qualify as legible. Remember that when designers use Helvetica, they painstakingly tweak the kerning to ensure readability at the target output size. As a general display font without that level of hand-tweaking, Helvetica and Helvetica Neue are crap.
But Helvetica Neue's problem goes way beyond over-tight tracking. The most critical requirement for a font to qualify as "legible" is that you must be able to distinguish letters from one another. Helvetica Neue fails miserably at this, though not quite as badly as Helvetica or Arial.
For example, look at a lowercase "L" and a lowercase "i" in almost any font, and you'll see that they are decidedly different heights. This is deliberate; it makes it possible to tell the difference between a pillow and a plllow, (which I believe is Ancient Egyption for an unreadable typeface, but I could be wrong).
Not in Helvetica Neue. They're the exact same height. This makes it excessively hard to read text that combines those two letters, particularly at small point sizes where the gap in the lowercase "I" is often hard to see.
And speaking of "I", is that a capital "i" or a lowercase "L"? If you're reading this in Slashdot's default font (Arial) or in Helvetica or Helvetica Neue, you probably can't be certain, because the two letters are nearly indistinguishable. So when I say I'm "Ill", do I mean that I'm sick, or that I'm three years old in Roman numerals? At 13 point, even on a Retina display, a capital "i" and a lowercase "L" can look literally identical, depending on where the letters happen to fall and how font smoothing interacts with them. And that's even with getting my corrected-to-20/20-vision eyes as close as a couple of inches from the screen.
Legible, my ass.
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