Yosemite font size is too small for vision impaired

I had considered a Mac with retina display . . . no way, at this point. If apps, like Mail, are saying this many points in size equals this many pixels, it will be impossible to read. Yes, I can decrease my screen resolution, but then I lost real estate.

This is not a global solution, but for Safari, this mostly fixes my problem:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=17844779&postcount=6

Default zoom at 150% is definitely much better on my iMac 27". No, downscaling is not an option, i didn't buy this computer to down size it.

I also set the font to a minimum of 14, but increasing it more breaks lots of websites. A higher zoom level has some issues with some websites, but it's overall a great improvement.

Chrome is much better in this regard, but I want to use Safari.

Yes, most people are just focusing on how flat dock is, dull yosemite looks etc, I don't like it either but the issue is readability and contrast with respect to background (easy on eye). Issue is not only the font-size, they made a big mistake by making it thin. They made it with iOS, may people gave bad feedback about readability, then added a feature "bold", but same mistake here in yosemite. There is a feature in the Accessibility option to increase contrast and reduce transparency, these help but still not as good as before. Thus I use my macbook pro retina with mavericks with best for retina option, but iMac retina with lower resolution. I suggest you all (since apple does not allow me to show you the link), tekrevue site (or any site you find), where article title is the new icons of os x yosemite-a-side-by-side comparison, now just focus on (not flatness) but 1. activity monitor icon, 2. calculator, 3.calendar icons.

1. activity monitor, it shows that thy chose "thin" line as graph, this is a problem when there is a plotting something, it will be hard on eye when that plot is small (no problem when things are big like this icon, however nothing is like power point presentation, we read pdf papers or write articles)

2. calculator: the font and numbers are thicker, easier to read. 3d also gives additional easiness on eye but I won't touch on this, if Apple chose flatness, fine. But look at the color also, create terrible contrast. In high school if you take a drawing/painting class and make a painting, the first thing you learn is: make background "dull or pastel-like" color to bring the main item frontside on eye better. By choosing hot colors like folder color hot red or calculator color like this, then you create distraction and eye strain. Weirdness enough apple and (microsoft) is going in the direction of reducing color like side bars in finder "to reduce the distraction etc", became a fashion, but in reality it becomes now harder on eye in desktop management.

3. The calendar icon, this is striking, and shows my point clearly, I suggest you find in google anywhere these comparisons, left previous version, has 3d effect, right yosemite version 2d flat. Again lets say flatness is OK, but look at font thickness and darkness level. This is the exactly the issue people are having when reading smaller fonts than this of course. It will be very helpful when you use fat fonts and darker fonts, then you don't need to change monitor color/contrast settings. Now on my iMac retina with yosemite, everyday I am trying to change setting since after 3 hours in front of pdf reading I feel strain on my eye. Apple followed Microsoft on this and made a big mistake with respect to font and color scheme. Again the problem is not Helvetica vs Lucida (partial issue), but also font thickness and darkness, color schemes on the desktop environment. What do I mean by color scheme, even finder previously was better on light blue compared to gray. Now I have to put increase contrast, then finder background with stripes became very dark gray, background is more visible compared to main object texts. Again the idea is to make the background lighter, the main objects darker. Whoever designed the OS X before was perfectly know what he/she was doing. New guys really don't know about this, such a mistake is unacceptable.

Sorry, in the previous post I saw the grammar mistakes, and edited but website did not allow me to "save", so all edits have been lost.

All I care is productivity and reading/writing text. Dock is "auto-hide" mode. It was also like that in previous OS X versions, so I don't care 3D/2D issues. But in previous OS X the background colors were right too, very easy on eye in discriminating the contrast.

Font: I already brought back Lucida, partial solution. I need to bring normal font weight ("fat") and darker fonts for easy read. Anybody who checks the previous version(s) and Yosemite version of iCal icon with text will understand what I mean in my above argument. Thin fonts do not help in reading, on eye, initially many websites adapted thin fonts and then now some of them reverting back, in my opinion everybody should revert to normal font weight for their own eye's health. It is really make a difference, after I use retina for 2 years, my eye number did not increase. People think retina is luxury or for photographers, it is for everybody who does real work in front of the computer for more than 3 hours. I wish Apple UI designers had spent that much time per day reading text in front of the computer before making such a crucial decision. Yosemite font weight issue is global, it affects all computers including retina, since that font-weight and color-weight are globally chosen parameters in the OS X. Apple should give an option to change the settings or option like classical-mode or they hopefully change themselves.

I just reduced the ical icon images pre and current version, icon size same, font size same, cut the visual effects to focus on the context, which is in this case the date, which is 17. Which one is easy on eye? This is my point.

After every effort to keep using Safari, I gave up and switched to FireFox for two reasons:

1) Safari has hard-wired the font selection in and ignores the Schreiberstein solution to switch back to Lucida Grande within Safari, whereas FireFox recognizes the Schreiberstein patch, and lets you go even further in manipulating fonts with add-ons like Theme Font & Size Changer, etc.;

2) As your suggestion demonstrates, Safari does not allow you to enlarge the font size independently of the zoom level of the entire screen, whereas FireFox accepts an add-on which allows you to zoom the text without zooming the screen - NoSquint.

The fix you suggested leaves you stuck with using Helvetica, and bloats the screen, which is not necessary in FireFox. I tried my best to make Safari acceptable, but concluded that Apple has made it impossible, and now I have grown to prefer FireFox and will stick with it as long as all this increased flexibility is available. I feel some loyalty to Apple, but my loyalty to my own healthy eyesight and vision is greater.

Respectfully,

Nate

Apple must have changed global font settings it seems. Interestingly when I look at the text in reduced calendar icon image above, on the right Yosemite calendar text looks grayer, when you look at it in big sizes you don't notice this. This is like printer settings, setting dark level, say set to 2: global (font_dark_level=2). And also font weight must be reduced so, they must have somewhere font_weight set to different value like 1 etc. The options must be buried somewhere, and globally affecting every program (and our eyes) unfortunately.

findik wrote:

Apple must have changed global font settings it seems.

Indeed they did. At one of the media sessions Tim Cook made a big deal of saying how Apple has moved away from Lucida Grande and adopted Helvetica. It got applause from the crowd, but a roll-of-eyes from me.

Yes, but that's the easiest issue to solve, just google it and there is a way to bring Lucida back. But how can we make the fonts thicker and darker, that's the problem. Please just check the ical image in my above post. There we cannot much discriminate differences in font types, but we see one is darker and thicker, which makes a huge difference in readability.

Aside from the fact that the icons and the dock items look like kindergarten decoration and are an embarrassment, I don't think they are worthy of much time and attention.

I think the big problem is the loss of productivity due to the fonts and backgrounds causing eyestrain and headaches. Otherwise, our complaints don't carry much weight because they are being dismissed as just differences of opinion as to style - artistic debate. They are treating us like Classicists ridiculing Picasso.

I would encourage examples demonstrating the text and background problems.

Best wishes, Nate 😀

Nathan Silverman wrote:

... because they are being dismissed as just differences of opinion as to style - artistic debate.

I would encourage examples demonstrating the text and background problems.

I disagree with the "style" item because it is . . . well, not a style thing. Style is how one feels about a painting or a shirt and is highly subjective (maybe even 100%). I didn't go to the optometrist because I didn't like my girlfriend's pocketbook and I didn't go the podiatrist because I should have worn black shoes instead of brown (both well-fitting). Apple's choice to adopt this new flat design, skinny fonts, no buttons, and so on can easily be demonstrated in terms of time to accomplish a task, burning eyes, upset users, hacks to fatten fonts and show buttons, etc. (Incidentally, how many apps/hacks were there that would skinny up fonts or remove buttons?)

The second -- examples -- is good as long as the examples were done in, for instance, time studies. No way anyone at Microsoft or Apple gave half a room of people one (let's say old?) design and the other half new and compared the time it took a task to be completed.

Apple's top strategy (work in progress) is unifying the look and feel (GUI) of its apps across its devices including iCloud.

This OS X Yosemite system font scheme issue, is causing certain OS X apps to look defective and almost unusable when compared to the same app in iOS.

I am almost sure that a fix is coming in the near future (OS X 10.10.3?).

If not, Apple's "unification across device" strategy and goal will be deemed a failure.

Just my humble opinion.

Tim Murray2 wrote:

Nathan Silverman wrote:

... because they are being dismissed as just differences of opinion as to style - artistic debate.

I would encourage examples demonstrating the text and background problems.

I disagree with the "style" item because it is . . . well, not a style thing. Style is how one feels about a painting or a shirt and is highly subjective (maybe even 100%). I didn't go to the optometrist because I didn't like my girlfriend's pocketbook and I didn't go the podiatrist because I should have worn black shoes instead of brown (both well-fitting). Apple's choice to adopt this new flat design, skinny fonts, no buttons, and so on can easily be demonstrated in terms of time to accomplish a task, burning eyes, upset users, hacks to fatten fonts and show buttons, etc. (Incidentally, how many apps/hacks were there that would skinny up fonts or remove buttons?)

The second -- examples -- is good as long as the examples were done in, for instance, time studies. No way anyone at Microsoft or Apple gave half a room of people one (let's say old?) design and the other half new and compared the time it took a task to be completed.

Perhaps I did not make myself sufficiently clear.

I did NOT say that I thought that the changes in the icons and dock items were merely a matter of differences of opinion as to style - artistic debate.

I said "they are being dismissed as just differences of opinion as to style - artistic debate."

I don't agree with this reasoning, but if you look all over the internet on forums, etc. you will see that this is what the people who "love" the changes are saying - they are dismissing all arguments which refer to icons and dock items BECAUSE it has not been driven home to them that this is a productivity issue and it is too EASY for them to dismiss our criticism of icons and dock items. You are right about the connection to productivity and I have been saying so too. But when we complain about icons and dock items, we are making it too easy for them to see it as only artistic differences.

On the other hand, when we use fonts and backgrounds as examples of what has gone wrong, we deprive the lovers of Yosemite of their basis for dismissal. They can't dismiss our examples as mere artistic differences of opinion.

I hope I have made myself clearer now.

Best wishes, Nate 😀

Hello, I have just tried to work this out and have succeeded. A friend of mine is having problems with her sight so I thought - mmmmm- lets have a go !!! very simple. Just go into display on your settings and chose the bottom ratio in SCALE. Cant wait to tell her. It magnifies amazingly. GOOD LUCK !!

I found a very good Safari extension a number of years ago and now use it on Yosemite, its called "AllPagesZooming Safari"

You can run your monitor in its best resolution in my case 1920 x 1200 and keep all the definition setting

You can find it Here http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/35756/allpageszoom-safari-extension

Or just Google it, also on the Safari Extensions link, theres an extension Called "ResizeMe" not tried it.