Comments on: Myths about Helvetica and Mac OS X (since 10.5)

By: doofus

doofus — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:46:04 +0000

Yet another problem that Macs have that Windows computer don’t.

You guys could always install Swiss. No one will ever know the difference, hehehe

By: Kilian

Kilian — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:10:21 +0000

@grom and it’s Apples fault that Adobe’s software sucks? I could never understand why the font menu in all of Adobe’s Software stinks so badly like the 90s.

What’s wrong with using Apple’s font panel. Apple have been providing lots of standardised widgets and panels etc. puls APIs for that to developers. Adobe continuously chose to ignore that and act as if they knew better.

Screw Adobe. Their software is just thick as a brick.

By: grom

grom — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:23:30 +0000

“I find it so absurd that Apple (…) just had to compound it by adding Helvetica Neue with Leopard.” (Piper).

I entirely agree.
Things even get worse when using a soft like Illustrator CS4 on Snow Leopard, since you waste an astounding amount of time scrolling up and down through the font list in order to get the different versions of the Helvetica Neue.

Is there a stronger word than “absurd” in english, to describe such a filthy aberration? How comes that such a major company can legaly annoy people that way? That’s outrageous.

Whenever Steve Jobs might have been inspired by the past, now the fruit defintely smells rotten. Incoming worms…

By: Draz

Draz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:42:23 +0000

Just say NO to Helvetica!

Seriously though, regardless of my personal opinion on Helvetica, the problem is (relatively) easy to fix on one computer. The issue gets real ugly when you have to resolve conflicts across multiple computers. My designer doesn’t want to change his Mac because “it’s just right”, layout guys are freaking out ’cause different publications using different variants of Helvetica, some are fine, some not, than there is adverts that come from clients… It’s a mess.

It’s really just the name that causes the issue. fonts are the same… and it’s just Helvetica.

As it happens, we have a new design coming up and designer wants Helvetica soooo, I am looking for material to steer him away, that’s how I came across this article.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:34:12 +0000

I think I may have found an alternate way to deal with this. I work in an environment where we receive design files from many other sources. Often files will have a mix of PS Helvetica and Neue as well as DFont versions (yeah, I know). So the fact is we have to deal with them. Together. We don’t always have the option to sub one or the other and reconfigure.

But the good news is, someone accidentally combined the PS and DFont Neues in the same folder on our Suitcase Server. And they co-exist fine. We generate PDFs for press with both in the files as they came to us. If you take some care to note the differences in naming between the PS and DFont versions, you can easily design with both active, and avoid the DFonts if that is your need.

So, I am going to try and recreate this setup for the plain 4 weight Helveticas. I’m also going to try it on my test Mac at home but in this case, I’ll just add the PS versions to my System/Library and see how that goes. I’ll post back if I get it together…

By: Tom Paice (Photographer, Bristol)

Tom Paice (Photographer, Bristol) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:02:10 +0000

Interesting read. I found that if you disable the “Alert me if system fonts change” feature in Font Book, you can remove the Helvetica fonts being used by the system and activate your own versions without conflict.

By: Mario

Mario — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:25:45 +0000

So now what do we do if we want iPhoto 09? I installed iLife this morning and iPhoto simply will not work. I searched Apple support and turns out iPhoto will not run without the original that comes with the system.

By: Piper

Piper — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:44:28 +0000

I find it so absurd that Apple, not content with upsetting thousands of prepress shops and designers with the original Helvetica muddle, then just had to compound it by adding Helvetica Neue with Leopard. Was there really no other font that they could have used for system functions? That said, the current situation is here and real and I decided a while back not to mess with the dfonts and just live with the startup conflict message. In reality it hasn’t caused me any problems in applications.
I use Font Explorer X to manage fonts and once you learn to distinguish in the font list between Apple’s version and the Type 1 version, it’s irritating but liveable with.
Just in case this is any use to anyone, you see the following Helveticas in Quark 7.5, exactly like this:
Helvetica Neue Light (Apple’s)
45 Helvetica Light (Linotype Type 1)
Helvetica Neue (Apple’s)
55 Helvetica Roman (Linotype Type 1)
Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed (Apple’s)
HelveticaNeue BoldCond (Linotype Type 1)

As well as the plain old Apple “Helvetica” which is always present, occasionally a “Helvetica CY” will appear.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:56:31 +0000

I’ve been looking over this topic and find it interesting but I’m a bit puzzled. I have Leopard installed on my Mac, and am using Font Explorer to manage my fonts. I really haven’t had most of the problems I’m reading about here. My only problem has been that when I launch my computer in the morning, after Font Explorer loads it cautions me that there is a conflict with Helvetica Neue – but I counter that by telling Font Explorer to only activate the Fonts that are not active – so it leaves the system version of Helvetica Neue running for the system, and activates all the other Helvetica Fonts in my complete set, so I wind up with all the HelveNeue fonts active anyway, and they all work fine. The only time I have difficulties is with a few websites which seem to substitute an outline font for Helvetica Neue, which can be annoying. It also on occasion causes my browser to slow down a bit as it decides which font it really wants.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:39:59 +0000

The helvetica neue conflict is a crippling problem for designers.

The workaround for the Helvetica Neue conflict (at least as described in detail by the folks at Extensis in their best practices guide) will eventually allow you to use your font versions in your documents, however:

1. It is a incredibly long, sketchy patch job for a company the prides itself on software that “just works”.

2. It causes NUMEROUS application issues. Since the “fix” I’ve experienced font display issues with the System, Dreamweaver, Outlook, Calender, and Safari as well as application instability with InDesign.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that someone at Apple glances away from the i-whatever they’re focused on at the moment and notices the deluge of comments like mine all over the web.

By: ralfherrmann

ralfherrmann — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:52:35 +0000

Zoltan,
that’s what the article is about. Follow the description of Myth 3 to get rid of your Helvetica problem.

By: Zoltan

Zoltan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:46:51 +0000

Okay – I must have missed something. My problem is that my Helvetica Neue conflicts with the built in Neue. I need all the 43 light, 45 light extended etc. When I open my neue I get conflicts. that’s what I’d really like to see an article about.

By: Karl

Karl — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:16:10 +0000

I think it was a tremendous blunder for Apple to make and incomplete family Helvetica Neue part of the system. Like others have stated, they should either include the entire family or name it differently. What they’ve done is created a big headache for the market segment which is arguably their base. Thanks, Ralf, for the workaround. Since I don’t use iCal I guess it the fact that I have T1 rather than OpenType HelveticaNeue won’t matter so much (I hope!).

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:09:20 +0000

Helvetica madness… have resorted to re-installing the HelveticaNeue.dfont that came with Leopard for system font usage – as the iCAL font issue was looking ugly. Back to square one really with 2 versions of HelveticaNeue – deactivating the correspondingly / conflicting named fonts of my own HelveticaNeue set…

By: cus

cus — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:49:26 +0000

I dispute some of the “myths” in this article or the comments section, or even on other forums dealing with this topic.
Myth 1: It doesn’t matter if you use a TrueType or Postscript font!
Try telling that to real world production environments. In Australia the majority of publishers refuse to accept advertisements supplied in PDF format if they have TrueType fonts embedded in them. This information is published in the mechanical specifications of the publishers and goes as far as to only allow Postscript fonts – no mention of OpenType being acceptable for the RIPs.
Myth 2: Apple don’t sell Macs to graphic professionals!
As already noted by others’ here, on what planet was this observation made? Let’s face it, there is a good argument to be made that Apple may not even exist today if not for the support of graphic and design professionals in the late 80s/early 90s. At one stage in those “dark ages”, Apple had 10-12% market share of all personal computers, largely driven by sales to the design industry. Design-based applications drove advances in those early year’s – the likes of Adobe, Macromedia, Aldus Corporation, etcetera, and even some games designers such as Bungie (a Mac-only games pioneer).
If not for that support back then Apple could well have folded long before it had the chance to be popular with the masses.
Myth 3: Just buy the new OpenType set of Helvetica Neue fonts and stick those into Leopard to make it work as it has been designed!
Great, so in order to make my $150 upgrade of the Apple operating system OS X Leopard work as it has been designed and still allow graphics professionals to have unhindered use of their Helvetica font family, I will need to spend $1,500 buying the complete OpenType Helvetica Neue font family to replace the Postscript font family I already have paid for and own. Doesn’t seem to make sound financial sense.
Actually sounds more like a Microsoft Windows kind of solution!