Wednesday, 14 Could 2025
Following up on my gripe relating to the choice a glyph utilized in Apple Notes, right here’s Kevin Fox, tweeting on Threads:
Whereas we’re waxing nostalgic on the Unique Mac, a Daring
Fireball put up immediately (under) jogged my memory of one other piece of Mac
128k trivia.Till shortly earlier than the official launch, the ‘a’ in Geneva was a
single story ‘a’ such as you see at the moment (and to some,
infuriatingly) within the Notes app.The screenshots within the unique Mac 128k consumer handbook present the OS
utilizing the pre-release single-story ‘a’ earlier than it was modified.
I double-checked utilizing the (superb) traditional Mac emulators at Infinite Mac, and it seems, Apple truly shipped System 1.0 with a model of Geneva with a single-story a glyph — however solely within the 9-point model of Geneva. At 12 factors (and bigger), Geneva’s a was double-story. Listed here are screenshots of the Finder exhibiting Geneva 9 in System 1.0 (with single-story a):
And System 2.0 (with double-story a):
And a screenshot of MacWrite operating on System 1.0 exhibiting Geneva 9 and 12:
Geneva 9 — the eventual model, with a double-story a — is so intimately acquainted to me that taking a look at these screenshots from System 1.0 makes me really feel bizarre. It’s so clearly unsuitable. (What it looks like, to me, is the unique Palm OS, from the one-bit Palm Pilot / Handspring Visor days. Palm’s small sans serif font was very Geneva-9-ish, however their single-story a was distinctive.)
Fox additionally posted a hyperlink to Classic Apple’s high-res scan of the superb unique Mac consumer handbook, which, as a result of it needed to go to press earlier than the 1.0 software program was completed, incorporates screenshots of some icons that modified by the point the unique Mac was in prospects’ arms. What a remarkably good consumer handbook that is — every thing from the typography, to the readability and tone of its writing, to its comprehensiveness is exemplary.
Right here’s the place it actually will get nutty although. Marcin Wichary — whom you could recall from his latest exceptional deep dive on the Gorton typeface (“The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan”), or from Shift Occurs, his encyclopedic guide on the historical past of keyboards — chimed in on Bluesky after observing that a couple of of the screenshots in that System 1.0 consumer handbook present an early model of Chicago 12 with a single-story a. Seeing a single-story a in Chicago feels extra blasphemous than that AI-generated picture Trump tweeted of himself as the brand new pope.
One final notice: I after all am not against single-story a’s. Futura’s a is single-story, and Futura, relying on my temper, may be my reply if requested to call my favourite typeface of all time. I simply don’t notably look after the alternate single-story a in San Francisco (Apple’s fashionable San Francisco, not the one from 1984), and to me it simply offers an ever-so-slightly unsuitable — a little bit foolish or unserious — vibe within the Notes app.
