Eventually, I think it's quite likely that Apple will adopt San Francisco across all its operating systems, but that will only happen after a lot more behind-the-scenes typographic tweaking. It may look good enough as a drop-in replacement right now, but everything from stroke widths and hinting for non-retina displays to kerning tables and metrics within the interface will get some attention before anything other than the watch ships with these fonts.
San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#22Looks like a straight up knockoff of Google's Roboto font: https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752 Only big difference I can see is the 'Q'.
Only if Backbone is a knockoff of Ember.
A better comparison would be to say that they both fall into the same typographic category; they are both humanist sans families with a bit of geometric rigidity; both have been compared to the classic DIN type.
That overlay isn't particularly useful; it only shows that the two families have comparable metrics and tend to follow the letterform patterns common to the category. A better visualization would be a closeup overlay of some characteristic letters, or a pangram set in each.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#23Looks like a straight up knockoff of Google's Roboto font: https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752 Only big difference I can see is the 'Q'.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#24This looks really good. Sleek and friendly at the same time. I just wish there was a way to bring the old dock back, then I might upgrade.
Dark mode makes the dock non-ugly, at least. It's not the same as before, but it's inoffensive, especially with Reduce transparency / Increase contrast.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#25Isn't this against the license for the font? I thought that it was explicitly for the use of designing apple watch ui.
Uhhh yeah. This "project" is basically a binary blob of Apple's new San Francisco font and a script to hack it into OS X's font system. This is totally illegal in the United States.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#26I might not be in the majority, but I actually like the new system font Helvetica Neue. I am a huge fan of it and on a Retina Display it makes so much sense. Understandably those who do not have the luxury of a Retina Display, I can understand the frustration, but having said that, I think the whole system font change thing has been blown out of proportion. Even though I like Helvetica Neue, I really dig the new San…
The trend of using ultrathin fonts everywhere will be short-lived and date interfaces quickly. It's a trend inspired totally by the mere fact that high dpi displays can render them without pixelated artifacts, and not because they make sense for design or readability on a fundamental level.
Thin weight type has uses in good design, but the way it's being applied ad nauseum today is a gimmick.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#27The font looks really fresh but it only has Latin glyphs, hopefully they will add Cyrillic and Asian range this winter.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#28I might not be in the majority, but I actually like the new system font Helvetica Neue. I am a huge fan of it and on a Retina Display it makes so much sense. Understandably those who do not have the luxury of a Retina Display, I can understand the frustration, but having said that, I think the whole system font change thing has been blown out of proportion. Even though I like Helvetica Neue, I really dig the new San…
The trend of using ultrathin fonts everywhere will be short-lived and date interfaces quickly. It's a trend inspired totally by the mere fact that high dpi displays can render them without pixelated artifacts, and not because they make sense for design or readability on a fundamental level. Thin weight type has uses in good design, but the way it's being applied ad nauseum today is a gimmick.
iOS hasn't used ultrathin Helvetica since its early betas, and I'm not aware of anywhere substantial in Yosemite that uses ultrathin. I believe mostly everything is regular Helvetica.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#29I might not be in the majority, but I actually like the new system font Helvetica Neue. I am a huge fan of it and on a Retina Display it makes so much sense. Understandably those who do not have the luxury of a Retina Display, I can understand the frustration, but having said that, I think the whole system font change thing has been blown out of proportion. Even though I like Helvetica Neue, I really dig the new San…
The trend of using ultrathin fonts everywhere will be short-lived and date interfaces quickly. It's a trend inspired totally by the mere fact that high dpi displays can render them without pixelated artifacts, and not because they make sense for design or readability on a fundamental level. Thin weight type has uses in good design, but the way it's being applied ad nauseum today is a gimmick.
Modern fonts have been frequently thin before the invention of retina screens.
The overuse of thin fonts might look dated in the future, but I don't agree that this trend is totally inspired by retina screens. If anything, I think Serif fonts have seen the greatest resurgence on web due to Retina screens. High DPI screens will impact our perception of all fonts, just as sans serif grew in popularity on lower dpi screens causing their perception to be more modern and technological.
In general typography as a whole has become much more interesting on retina screens. So yes, fonts look better now than ever before so don't cheat by using superthin because its trendy.
Re: San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite
#30After looking over the Yosemite change logs, as a non-iPhone user, it looks like a new font was all I had to look forward to. Every other update seems to concern sharing content between the desktop and iOS devices.
And now I'm finding out this new font- my only real reason for a 5GB update- is so unpopular that a hack to replace it is front page on HN.