Hmmm…almost exact 15 years after the 2007 MS design patent on Calibri (which had a duration of 15 years) they switch to a new, alternative Office-exclusive font for the next 15 years.
Only to be used ‘freely’ for personal use and again probibited to be bundled with, let’s say, other products like LibreOffice.
It’s all about lock-in and revenue, plain and simple. The same business strategy like Apple with the default San Francisco font and Adobe with the default Minion Pro font. I understand why they do it this way, I just don’t like it.
Edgy 10pt Arial Narrow here.
Edit: Can we bring back personalized background color, font color and font like we’re on AIM in 1998?
Aptos was created by Steve Matteson, who is also responsible for Windows 3.1’s original TrueType fonts (including Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New) as well as Segoe, which has been Windows’ default system font since Vista and is also used for Microsoft’s current logo.
Fuckin’ hell though. You gotta respect someone who’s been in the game that long. And his one, single, sole job is fonts. That’s dedication. Or maybe just a gravy train. But either way, dude has predicated an entire career on how letters look. Mad respect.
Is this maybe a ploy to date things again? I can’t remember exactly what it was (I think it was in a Darknet Diaries episode) but there was a court case where a guy came in with a document proving something in his favour. It was a contract or letter from the other side of his case. They managed to prove it was fake because it was in Calibri, Office’s default font, which hadn’t even been invented back when the document was supposedly written.
Amateur. Always use Times New Roman.
On a serious note, it sounds like a transition to fonts that better support scaled 4K and up monitors.
Doubtful it’s a technical decision. That font doesn’t look any better than other fonts on hidpi.
Should have kept the original name though.
“Bierstadt” would have been awesome!
