Alex Hardy

In a riveting bit of non-news, Apple and Microsoft have extended their deal which allows Apple to supply core Windows fonts (such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana) with Mac OS X. In a joint statement the two companies said:

Apple customers, developers and web designers can safely specify fonts knowing that their documents, presentations and web pages will appear as they are meant to be seen on screen and in print.

While this is obviously good news (ie: any other decision would be unthinkable), I can’t help but feel like an opportunity has been missed. With Windows Vista only just released, and Mac OS X Leopard almost here, is consistency through mediocrity the best we can expect in the year 2007?

Must we resort to CSS image replacement or sIFR to create a simple heading?

Granted, Verdana is OK (at small sizes) and Georgia is nice too. Arial however is a sorry substitute for Helvetica and in widespread use simply because it was cheaper. Instead of a handful of “web safe” fonts, why don’t we have hundreds? Surely billion dollar corporations can take a font licensing fee on the chin to elevate design across the web? Helvetica, Gill Sans and Futura would be a good start…

While we’re dreaming of changes let’s ban Comic Sans

Posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 am under Apple, Design, Development, Toolbox, Web standards. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.