Font of Wisdom

Of all the many contributions for which to thank Apple founder Steve Jobs—user-friendly PCs (easy drag and drops, visual trashcans for old files, just one disk drive), iPods and iTunes (though record stores and CD jewel case factories may disagree), and the iPhone—we would be remiss if we didn’t mention fonts. Back in early September, Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Shortly after he dropped out of college, Mr. Jobs found that he had the freedom to attend classes on subjects that pleased him rather than bored him. At one of these he discovered the joys of calligraphy and typefaces. He found the experience “beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture,” as he once said.
And so when the Mac was born a decade later, Mr. Jobs gave its users something novel, a choice of fonts—everything from Times New Roman to the original Chicago and Venice—a revolutionary act that loosened our dependence on the professional designer. (Whether your nice new printer could cope with them was another matter.)

On a side note, the one annoying thing about growing up with Macs (our family had the Apple IIe) was the lack of popular games. It was like waiting for Star Wars on HBO. It took years for Doom to arrive. But at least we had Bard’s Tale.