Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pixel Perfect

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 142 posts

Re: Pixel Perfect

#61

Post by abruzzi »

cageface wrote: post #10
arrrg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the hate, dude? Can you point out anything that is actually wrong with the piece?

I could quote specific claims from the piece but it's just too annoying to enumerate all the breathless reasons he gives why this is yet another Apple product that makes everything that came before it trivial and irrelevant. I'm fed up with this kind of PR masquerading as tech journalism. He's not a journalist. He's part of Apple's third-party marketing arm and he gets compensated for writing this kind of trash with…

So would you be willing to go back to 9 pin dot matrix for print? That's kind of Grubers point. Printer scaled from 144 dpi to 1200 dpi quickly, while displays stagnated at 72-100 for a ver long time. We're finally seeing movement on that front, and eventually it will be really hard to go back to the blocky pixelated 100-130 dpi screens. I know I can't.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#62

Post by jcampbell1 »

jmduke wrote: post #30
jcampbell1 wrote: post #27

I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1] That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design. I can't wait until I can read the Economist…

I'm interested in this. As someone who doesn't pay that much attention to typography (beyond the obvious 'Papyrus is bad' stuff) what makes individual typefaces preferable over a standard typeface for all similarly structured content? (Besides branding, that is.)

Don't worry about it too much. Most people don't care. I am the kind of guy that walks into the Google offices and immediately thinks "What the fuck is this place, a daycare center?" Most people disagree, and think the Google decor is wonderful. My opinion is likely not mainstream.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#63

Post by rglullis »

arrrg wrote: post #41
cageface wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.

Sure. And? What’s your point? Apple met separately with loads of journalists. I don’t see anything special about how they treated Gruber.

How many of these journalists are known to be critics of Apple, or write about them in a more direct, non-ass-sucking way?

Re: Pixel Perfect

#64

Post by delackner »

LoganCale wrote: post #46
sbierwagen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pure marketing. There's no objective, measurable difference.

Yes there is. Certain typefaces are objectively easier to read than others, and some work better for certain content than others. Some are best for body text, some are best for headlines, etc. Some are optimized for low resolution screens, some for print (and as such work well on high resolution screens).

A great recent example that appeared on HN was the typeface designed for road signs, which the designers then put through Germany(?)'s test suite for legibility at distance in various road conditions and determined the new font was objectively legible at greater distance than all previous standard road-sign fonts with which it was compared.

[By request, I found the original article: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag... ]

Re: Pixel Perfect

#65

Post by lmm »

harpastum wrote: post #53
FrankBooth wrote: post #9

Think about that: a laptop with no performance tradeoff compared to a high-end desktop. Compared to a high-end desktop which has barely seen updates since 2010, and includes a GPU released in 2009, sure.

The point being made was that it is a desktop- class machine. Generally, laptops have always been convenience and portability, and desktops have had power and price point. Obviously there are exceptions to any rule, but in this case, the display is actually better than any desktop I've seen, and the SSD and CPU/GPU give it all the power necessary for 95% of users. The price point is definitely high, but otherwise it…

You've always been able to get a laptop that was as good as the desktops of 2-3 years ago, and never one that's as good as the current ones. Saying "desktop-class" is a nonsense; this is no different from previous efforts.

Now, if you're saying we've reached the point where the extra CPU etc. of a desktop are not worth it for most users, then I agree with you. But again that's nothing specific to the macbook air; any modern laptop will have the same properties.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#66

Post by reedlaw »

panacea wrote: post #50
jcampbell1 wrote: post #27

I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1] That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design. I can't wait until I can read the Economist…

Un-anti-aliased (aliased?) Verdana at a certain size (11 or 12 point? Can't recall) was the very best pixellated optimised font for the web when Gruber designed his blog. He hasn't redesigned since.

His blog is nearly unreadable on my non-retina display. I can only imagine how small the font looks on a Macbook Pro.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#67

Post by colmvp »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #57
colmvp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sans fonts are close to over" I'm curious as to why you believe this. Some of the most versatile fonts are sans-serif, i.e. Helvetica, Gotham, DIN, Gill Sans, Futura, and Franklin Gothic.

You are right, I don't believe that. I was exaggerating, and mostly thinking about how impossible it is to make a serif typeface that works on low dpi displays. TNR is the only serif face that is well hinted in my opinion. There are much better options with sans typefaces, which often look nice on low dpi displays. My point was mainly that we are currently choosing among sans and TNR, rather than among all typefaces.

That's true but I've always thought of it because serif generally feels warm and historic, while sans-serif can often feel modern and emotionally detached.

For quite a number of European and American fashion sites, most use sans-serif because they want to appear bold, but emotionally subdued from the user, letting the photos of the products and models do more of the talking.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#68

Post by tsahyt »

delackner wrote: post #64
LoganCale wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is. Certain typefaces are objectively easier to read than others, and some work better for certain content than others. Some are best for body text, some are best for headlines, etc. Some are optimized for low resolution screens, some for print (and as such work well on high resolution screens).

A great recent example that appeared on HN was the typeface designed for road signs, which the designers then put through Germany(?)'s test suite for legibility at distance in various road conditions and determined the new font was objectively legible at greater distance than all previous standard road-sign fonts with which it was compared. [By request, I found the original article: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04…

Do you happen to have the link to that? Must have missed that and I'd like to read it.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#69

Post by delackner »

tsahyt wrote: post #68
delackner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great recent example that appeared on HN was the typeface designed for road signs, which the designers then put through Germany(?)'s test suite for legibility at distance in various road conditions and determined the new font was objectively legible at greater distance than all previous standard road-sign fonts with which it was compared. [By request, I found the original article: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04…

Do you happen to have the link to that? Must have missed that and I'd like to read it.

http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag...

Re: Pixel Perfect

#70

Post by [deleted] »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #38

Unfortunately, a laptop is still a laptop. Small keyboard, inferior mouse (or lack thereof), single display, performance constrained by battery life. The performance margins are getting slimmer, but for a little over the price of the high end MacBook Pro (about $3000 with tax), I could build you a 64-core AMD G34 with 64 gigabytes of RAM, that would utterly destroy the Macbook performance-wise. Obviously, to each the…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN