It’s the little things.
I recently posted about OS X’s typeface in Dictionary.app.1 In short, all text was displaying as the same bold font, creating no hierarchy to help the reader parse content visually.
Before writing the post, I did my homework and discovered I wasn’t alone. Other people were experiencing the same issue. Here’s a screenshot from Nathan Spainhour’s computer:
Also, a gentleman named Matt Stein commented on my post lamenting the same issue on his computer and proposing a possible hack-y solution:
Thankfully, he added an update to his comment with a link to a fix.2 It turns out that if you’re experiencing this issue, it’s likely that the Baskerville Regular typeface is disabled, as someone in the Apple Discussion forums pointed out.3
I checked computers of a few more people at the office and our anecdotal study suggestions that the problem happens for people who have 3rd-party font management software installed.
Dear Internet (and Matt Stein), thank you for being awesome.
1. You can read my original post about Dictionary.app’s typeface here.2. You can see Matt’s original comment, complete with a link to the solution, here.3. You can read the original discussion in the Apple forums on the Apple Support Communities site.
