Yosemite: how to increase menu font size?

I have been using Macs for 15 years or so but by no means understand the technical issues, and don't care to go there. What "we" want is to be able to read what's on the screen--don't "we"? I found a solution that works for me, and hopefully it will help others as well. I am sure your solution will be tried for those who care to. Very best.

Hi Nate, I am surprised that you signed your message "respectfully" when you actually went out of your way to insult me. Perhaps you just needed to assert your superiority? You certainly could have crafted a sentence that reiterated your solution without being so hurtful to me. I hope you will enjoy your apparently "upper class" solution because I'm enjoying my apparently "lower-class" solution. I'll remember not to post anything on this message board again for fear of another insulting retort to an otherwise helpful suggestion. Very best to you anyway.

Barby Gale wrote:

Hi Nate, I am surprised that you signed your message "respectfully" when you actually went out of your way to insult me. Perhaps you just needed to assert your superiority? You certainly could have crafted a sentence that reiterated your solution without being so hurtful to me. I hope you will enjoy your apparently "upper class" solution because I'm enjoying my apparently "lower-class" solution. I'll remember not to post anything on this message board again for fear of another insulting retort to an otherwise helpful suggestion. Very best to you anyway.

Barby Gale,

I am very, very sorry that you considered my response insulting or in any way demeaning toward you personally. I certainly did not intend it to come across that way. I intended it as a cautionary alert because I believe that the step you have taken puts your health at risk in several ways with regard to eyestrain and fatigue. If you check earlier comments on this and similar threads, you will see that several other well-intended persons suggested the same proposed solution you did in earlier messages, and they received similar cautionary responses from other fellow members, not much different from what I was trying to explain to you metaphorically. Perhaps I should have chosen a different comparison, explaining for example that setting your screen's resolution to a setting for which it was not intended is similar to permanently using someone else's prescription eyeglasses because yours are broken. I did not mean to insult you and I beg you to accept my apology for wounding your feelings, as that was definitely not my intent at all.

I hope you will continue reading and posting to this and all other boards in which you participate, and not allow yourself to be deterred by anything I may have said, even if you perceive it to have been expressed in an inartful manner.

Again, I am respectfully yours,

Nate

Make sure to register any complaints you have about the text size in Yosemite, with Apple Feedback

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Barby Gale wrote:

Hi Nate, I am surprised that you signed your message "respectfully" when you actually went out of your way to insult me. Perhaps you just needed to assert your superiority? You certainly could have crafted a sentence that reiterated your solution without being so hurtful to me. I hope you will enjoy your apparently "upper class" solution because I'm enjoying my apparently "lower-class" solution. I'll remember not to post anything on this message board again for fear of another insulting retort to an otherwise helpful suggestion. Very best to you anyway.

Ok, Barby Gale. I am still troubled by the effect that my earlier response had upon you, so maybe the way Wikipedia explains the issue is a better way to say it:

"Scaling

Bitmap fonts look best at their native pixel size. Some systems using bitmap fonts can create some font variants algorithmically. For example, the original Apple Macintosh computer could produce bold by widening vertical strokes and oblique by shearing the image. At non-native sizes, many text rendering systems perform nearest-neighbor resampling, introducing rough jagged edges. More advanced systems perform anti-aliasing on bitmap fonts whose size does not match the size that the application requests. This technique works well for making the font smaller but not as well for increasing the size, as it tends to blur the edges." (emphasis supplied)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_font

I am 79 years old and believe me when I say that I have no desire to behave smugly or to hurt anyone else's feelings. I am sorry that my first attempt at explaining what I meant in a somewhat colloquial manner offended you.

Best wishes, Nate 😀

Hey Nate,

I read your reply to Barby Gale and I didn't think you were being condescending or hurtful. It's nice that you are so concerned, and went out of your way to smooth any ruffled feathers, but it's unnecessary because your original reply was respectful and informative. I just wanted you to know that a totally unbiased reader sees no need for apology.

banacan wrote:

Hey Nate,

I read your reply to Barby Gale and I didn't think you were being condescending or hurtful. It's nice that you are so concerned, and went out of your way to smooth any ruffled feathers, but it's unnecessary because your original reply was respectful and informative. I just wanted you to know that a totally unbiased reader sees no need for apology.

Thanks very much, banacan for that reassurance. I really appreciate it!

I am disappointed that Barby Gale, after appointing herself as a judge of 'netiquette, has chosen not to acknowledge my apology or my additional explanation, but I guess I should not be surprised.

Apple has created a serious eyestrain and productivity concern for many users with the introduction of Yosemite, and we should not IMHO be put in the position of hunting for kludged solutions to overcome it. It is a technical problem which requires a technical solution.

Regards, Nate 😀

Hello Nate

I too have found your posts really helpful, and completely agree with your comments ....

"Apple has created a serious eyestrain and productivity concern for many users with the introduction of Yosemite, and we should not IMHO be put in the position of hunting for kludged solutions to overcome it. It is a technical problem which requires a technical solution."

Leonardo Da Vinci is reputed to have said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"

Certainly in design terms simplicity is perfection ...... Yet in it's attempts to make Yosemite 'look simple', the most basic aspects of usability seems been compromised, and Apple has made life just way too complicated. If it wasn't so sad it would be laughable.

I am a professional designer who expects my Mac to function as a serious workhorse, (not some sort of super-sized iPad) and allow me to get on with the job in hand. Yet I am finding that Yosemite is impeding my ability to work effectively and quickly. Trying to work around it's visual limitations, is an infuriating distraction. As well as eyestrain I am developing RSI as a result of all the extra key tapping from 'zooming in and out' just to be able to see what's on the screen. It certainly doesn't feel very sophisticated!

I own several different Macs, and rather than finally ditching an ancient Power Mac Quicksilver, running Tiger (which my IT guy advises is obsolete), I have gone back to using it in favour of struggling with my new MacBookAir running Yosemite. By comparison the ui is so much more user friendly, and the applications are so much simpler (without the accumulated bloatware). So much for progress.

For all that 'new fangled' stuff such as internet, email, phone I now tend to use (shhh....) a Samsung tablet and phone*. For me the winning advantage of the Samsung Tablet over an iPad, is that the keyboard has navigation cursor buttons < > which makes typing so much easier ...... I guess we are back to the Steve Jobs mantra that 'form follows function'.

Actually what is very obvious after using a touch screen on a mobile device, is that going back to a portable device, (such as the MBA) that relies on a track pad or mouse seems very, very old fashioned indeed ..... I think Apple are behind the curve on this.

The genius of Steve Jobs was that he understood that to achieve good, relevant, usable design, ruthless editing is just as important (if not more so), as good ideas. Apple seem to be getting distracted by too many 'good' ideas that lack real relevance.

Keep up the good work Nate

Regards

(*N.B. to my surprise, all my contacts and calendar stuff syncs perfectly courtesy of a google email account, and everything connects via Dropbox, Evernote and Inkpad)

Please excuse my earlier post - I took to long to edit it - if anyone can tell me how to remove it I would appreciate it. Stupid Apple yet again. Not user friendly

Thank you very much Sassi Cat, for your reassuring and kind words and also for your excellent treatment of the subject of Yosemite's sharp deviation from the principles of Steve Jobs, and its effect on the user community.

If you have not already done so, please consider using Apple's OS X feedback page at:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

to share with Apple the points you have so eloquently made!

Your critique combines the philosophical with the practical in a way that, who knows (?) could make a difference with whatever group of Apple people are assigned to collect and analyze this "feedback" data and pass it up the chain of command, perhaps all the way up to the knighted one, once said to be Jobs' "spiritual partner" who, having received all the former adulation, should be willing to read and take to heart the present criticism as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ive

I would encourage everyone to join in cross-posting to Apple's "Feedback" site above.

Best wishes, Nate 😀

poor baby. suck it up buttercup. Its not that bad at all, barely can tell a difference. Apple you guys are great

Might have been mentioned in the links (I didn't follow them), but System Preferences: Accessibility: Display: Reduce Transparency

made huge difference in usability for me.

thank you Julia that was so easy have a great week

I will replace my new macbook air with a PC. It is unusable. Apple needs to consider whether there could be lawsuits because of this. Users were sold computers they could use, and then made them unusable. Safari was the main reason I liked the MacBook.

Had the same reaction to Yosemite! What was Apple thinking?!

Obviously, they weren't thinking! The menus were particularly hard to read-- smaller, blockier... reminded me of OS 9, IIRC... and the overall look and color is far too reminiscent of Windows '98!

After puttering around with the various Accessibility options, the General anti-aliasing option, I ended up installing the Lucida Grande font! https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite

Works great! The Safari tab text is now mostly readable; the menus are clear; I've even been able to reduce the brightness of the screen, thereby helping battery life.

Upping the font size in the Finder via View options really helps, too. Now, if only we could get rid of the Microsoft Excel shaded coloring for folder icons and bring back the fully colored labels in List View, we might have an OS again!

In any case, that's the recommendation from this happy user for now! (Of course, if someone puts out a Chicago menu font fix... or a slightly larger LG one, I'll go for that, even more!)

Several people have suggested that Apple should remember that older users may have age-related visual difficulties. This, of course is true, but it is evident that the problem is affecting a much wider group of Mac users - and I am one of them. I have been using Macs since my student days - from Power Macs through to my Macbook Air which is running Yosemite. My problem - thanks to Apple, is that I cannot use my new laptop since I have visual problems (which are not age-related). My brother collects old Macs (yes, rather sad, but each to their own!). From the early Mac Plus monochrome display through to the superb (in my opinion) Snow Leopard,

I have made extensive use of computers in my research and professional life as a scientist. I upgraded my old MacBook Pro 17” to Snow Leopard. A few years later I purchased the later Macbook Pro 17” which came with Mountain Lion in-order to run my (expensive) upgraded software. By comparison with Snow Leopard I have found Mountain Lion a great disappointment , In-fact, I would go so far as to say that with each “upgrade” to MacOS what I see onscreen looks less and less like a Mac. A recent purchase of a MacBook Air (I needed the portability) already loaded with Yosemite has meant that I am unable to continue with projects that I began on my other laptops. I do have an IPad which is useful, but I do NOT want my laptop to be a larger version of a touch screen tablet. The main problem is that Apple appear to have forgotten the reason that most Mac users would never consider using a PC. Previous on-screen displays reflected the involvement of programmers with an in-depth understanding of typography. However, most software engineers are NOT typographers and it shows. My current problems associated with severe iritis means that my new MacBook Air is unusable and I have also had to limit the time I spend on the laptop loaded with Mountain Lion. Apple’s sole concession for users with visual difficulties is far too limited in scope.

I am just thankful that I kept my old Mac which is still running perfectly with Snow Leopard.