blurry font on yosemite

findik wrote:

I really don't understand why people keep upgrading to Yosemite before testing, if you are using computers 2013 or before. Mavericks is perfectly fine. Apple did a big mistake with this Font issue and Yosemite as a whole. It seems it is going away from professionals as a global change, they are reducing the functions of their basic software to target iphone/ipad at the same time. It is clear that they are targeting Mac towards iPhone groups, which is their strategy and we cannot do anything about it. As you said this is the 3rd revision on Yosemite, and rather than improving crucial things like fonts etc, it is implementing "emoji" stuff for teenagers to better chat I guess. But I just don't understand why not giving to professionals "options" to choose interface, GUI, font etc, would not be so difficult for them.

I agree. I'm sick of seeing so much emphasis on iFrivolous-stuff while the OS goes slowly downhill. What mystifies me is that Apple can afford to do better with the Mac OS. Why the heck not do a decent job on it?

Yosemite has some advantages over Mavericks and I would not like to go back to 10.9; I like the new photo app (dropped iPhoto immediately), I like the integration of internet accounts (gmail, linkedin,... ) and overall I like the simplified look. The font rendering is, at the moment, the real issue with Yosemite.

Yesterday I installed Fira as system font and it's really night and day: readability is dramatically improved, text looks sharp and clear. Helvetica Neue is really a bad font choice, that's it.

As for the professional use of a mac, I would never use it. I have a mac at home for my leisure time, but at work I use other operating system.

enryfox wrote:

Yesterday I installed Fira as system font and it's really night and day: readability is dramatically improved, text looks sharp and clear. Helvetica Neue is really a bad font choice, that's it.

How does Fira compare as a working system font to Lucida Grande which I installed via the Schreiberstein solution?

Best wishes, Nate 😀

Nathan Silverman wrote:

How does Fira compare as a working system font to Lucida Grande which I installed via the Schreiberstein solution?

Best wishes, Nate 😀

I tried both and I personally prefer Fira; Lucida Grande has a sense of deja-vu and it always looked too big for my taste (even after scaling it to 12 points instead of 13). Fira is very clear and readable; moreover it looks like "new" to my eyes.

Anyway swapping the system fonts is very easy, you can tried them all in a matter of minutes.

bye

Nathan Silverman wrote:

How does Fira compare as a working system font to Lucida Grande which I installed via the Schreiberstein solution?

I have tried both and like both. The size of the slightly larger Lucida Grande does not trouble me. I am sticking with Fira Sans on my main Yosemite drive for the moment, mainly because I cloned it from the more up-to-date of the two Yosemite installs on my guinea pig drive, and it happened to be the one with Fira Sans. The other one has Lucida Grande, and it may get revived at some point. I have also replaced quite a few icons. Overall, it looks much better to me.

Total boot times, in which I include time for Font Explorer Pro and cDock to launch, seem to have improved, even before applying the 10.10.3 update, but I am not sure why.

findik wrote:

I really don't understand why people keep upgrading to Yosemite before testing, if you are using computers 2013 or before. Mavericks is perfectly fine. Apple did a big mistake with this Font issue and Yosemite as a whole. It seems it is going away from professionals as a global change, they are reducing the functions of their basic software to target iphone/ipad at the same time. It is clear that they are targeting Mac towards iPhone groups, which is their strategy and we cannot do anything about it. As you said this is the 3rd revision on Yosemite, and rather than improving crucial things like fonts etc, it is implementing "emoji" stuff for teenagers to better chat I guess. But I just don't understand why not giving to professionals "options" to choose interface, GUI, font etc, would not be so difficult for them.

I dont think Apple want to neglect the Professional. I just think that they have completely lost control of their software.

Not ONE app including LOADs of system services are working troublefree. The iOS too is totally whack out of place. Weird messages popping all over the place etc etc etc..... Safari is 100% incapable of being used in a develop environment as its performance is worse than FireFox and Chrome... It is an utter mess.

It is NOT that Apple dont have the BUG Reports and FeedBack - they do... I just dont think that they are able to fix them. If they were, they would have.

And they try. We have had numerous of Updates to OS X 10.10 and iOS 8. But it all just keeps getting worse.

The roar in the community is grand. All the friends I have and colleagues are ALL complaining. NOT ONE is happy.

This is a field Day for Microsoft & Android !

I sincerely hope that Apple will find their way once again !

I'm back again to update my blurry font woes after updating to Yosemite. Well, I've updated to OS X 10.10.3 and guess what.......the blurry font still exists (see my previous posts).

Gee, I suppose Apple never listened to all my font bug reports that I sent to Apple Feedback xx times. Unbelievable they wouldn't fix this font rendering BUG by now. I guess they don't care. I have no more fixes to try because none work. I tried them all. It's clearly a Yosemite BUG, but this bug is obviously not important to Apple. Maybe some people don't care that their system font isn't clear and crisp, but I do and blurry affects my work.

I bought my MacBook Pro in March 2013 and paid good money for it. The font was beautiful and perfect in Mavericks and I want that back!

Not so in Yosemite and guess what, I'm not going to give up my current MacBook Pro to buy a retina because I DON'T WANT ONE. I was happy with what I had.

No, my MacBook Pro doesn't "Just Work" after upgrading to Yosemite. Sorry for the rant, but what else can I do when Apple doesn't listen to feedback.

I found this post last year when I was looking for my font fix. It's from MacRumors when they were still beta testing Yosemite:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1743720

"There is a visual bug in Safari with font smoothing on a non-retina display. When you first open it, fonts are sharp and crisp. But as soon as you start using it, it’s like font smoothing turns into a sludgy motion blur like stretch."

Have you tried any of the replacement fonts. such as Fira Sans? There is also a way to use Lucida Grande as the system font.

Yes, I tried the font replacement Lucinda Grande, but it didn't look good in some apps like Chrome and native apps like Notes so I aborted.

Do you recall what the problem was with Chrome and Notes?

The font was squished in the Chrome's URL. I use Notes app a lot and prefer 20pt. and that size doesn't look good with Lucinda Grande. I believe Notes always used Helvetica.

I found this on Apple's website so Apple is aware of the problem. I already have LCD font rendering checked. If I uncheck it, the font looks worse.

OS X Yosemite: If screen text looks blurry or jagged

crystalship wrote:

I found this on Apple's website so Apple is aware of the problem. I already have LCD font rendering checked. If I uncheck it, the font looks worse.

OS X Yosemite: If screen text looks blurry or jagged

"If the fonts on your screen look fuzzy, blurry, or jagged, you can turn on font smoothing in General preferences. In apps that support it, font smoothing reduces jagged edges to make fonts appear smoother.

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click General.
2. In the bottom section of General preferences, select “Use LCD font smoothing when available.”

   Some people find that text appears blurry when font smoothing is turned on. If you’re not sure which setting you prefer, try reading text on your screen with and without LCD font smoothing, then choose a setting.
   

So either Apple:

1) doesn't know whether setting it on or off eliminates blurry or jagged text; or

2) they know but don't tell us; or

3) it depends on what apps you use and they have not provided us with the information as to individual apps that support it;

4) nor have they automated the preference to turn smoothing on or off upon detecting whether the app in use does or does not support it!

This does not sound like the Apple of Steve Jobs days. This sounds like Microsoft.

Nate

Nathan Silverman wrote:

This does not sound like the Apple of Steve Jobs days. This sounds like Microsoft.

Nate

The "fix" suggested by Apple for the blurry fonts is simply to disable anti-aliasing, like suggesting to turn off the radio if the audio quality is not very good. They are aware of the issue, but they just don't care.

Believe me, today's Microsoft is faster in fixing issues and is listening more to their customer complaints. This is just arrogant Apple, the trillion dollar company who think anything they do is perfect and cool by design; and, as I said before, the mac line of business is a minor contributor to apple revenues: less interest, fewer investments, fewer talented people working on it.

Enrico

An old thread, I know, but just to add my experience…

I found that I needed to un tick LCD Font Smoothing in General Preference Pane – this fixed the 'general' blurry text in Safari and other apps. Logged out (not restart), and back in again.

However, this didn't fix the blurry menus. So, I ticked reduce transparency in the Accessibility pref pane, and this worked. But I like transparency, so I turned it On again.

BUT – when I turned transparency back on, the clear menu's remained. Safari is fine, the Finder is fine, my menulet icons are clear I wonder if the menus are cached, and just needed to be refreshed ... Of course, it might revert, but it's looks fine at the moment, after about 30 mins of menu opening. And transparency is working (look at the pink colour showing through).