This is not to say Apple are not successful, they are easily the company more successful in their (s) field. Ironically, it is this leadership position that makes it so difficult for a company based around an alternative approach, to find a clear path forward. What Apple seem to be tempting, is to repeat since the 1980s and 1990s, strategies that have come to dominate the tech world. Watch Apple there, but perhaps the most important is the typeface that they were designed for it.
Comes with the SDK for Apple watch is an internal designed typeface called - in the tradition of the Apple font, after a town, San Francisco. According to John Gruber Apple were developing a cast of ' Apple without ' for years and it seems that San Francisco could be the result of this work. It is the first major internal typeface designed by Apple at any time, before, they relied on a redesigned version of Myriad and Neue Helvetica, Lucida Grande last replacement in the latest OSX, Yosemite.
So there was speculation that San Francisco will replace unpopular Neue Helvetica on iOS and possibly a later version of Mac OS x. It would be certainly curious business as mark aware that Apple does not unify the entire ecosystem. Sebastian's with a posted useful model of Yosemite to San Francisco on a retina display, and in this shot, it certainly looks a very plausible choices:
Here's a mockup of OS X Yosemite to San Francisco as the characters instead of Helvetica font. http://t.co/xwzX5P6O8F pic.twitter.com/Ee9mSZ6Q5D
-Sebastiaan de with (@sdw) November 18, 2014
No matter how ubiquitous Apple intend to San Francisco to become, I can't help but feel that this is a bad solution to a certainly difficult problem.
While some commentators have drawn a comparison with Google Roboto, San Francisco appears indeed as an attempt to merge Neue Helvetica with DIN: as far as San Francisco differs from Helvetica, it corresponds DIN and vice versa.
San Francisco has a number of questions that you will find also in Helvetica and DIN, the difference is of course that Helvetica and DIN were designed for the screen. San Francisco has a certain visual rhythm that appeals, but there are clearly visible awareness of a grid of pixels. The meeting points of the strokes are not quite acute, the letters do not lead another, and there is simply too little distinction between the letters.
Google has managed to commission a good font Roboto, Mozilla commissioned a large cast in Fira without. How can you for Apple, a global, multi-billion dollar company to get something as fundamental as the right typography?
Descriptive uses image of San Francisco via Shutterstock.
Benjie Moss is editor-in-Chief at WebdesignerDepot. It is usually training for a marathon. You can follow him on Twitter @BenjieMoss. More articles by Benjie Moss
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