San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite

I might not be in the majority, but I actually like the new system font Helvetica Neue. I am a huge fan of it and on a Retina Display it makes so much sense. Understandably those who do not have the luxury of a Retina Display, I can understand the frustration, but having said that, I think the whole system font change thing has been blown out of proportion.<p>Even though I like Helvetica Neue, I really dig the new San Francisco font, it is a pretty nice alternative that seems to work pretty well for those who are using a non-Retina Display. If you want to bring back Lucida Grande, this Github repository has a handy script that will do that for you (some work colleagues of mine, designers mainly did it to bring back the old font): <a href="https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;schreiberstein&#x2F;lucidagrandeyosemite</a>

For Apple aficionados of a certain vintage, <i>San Francisco</i> will always be the &#x27;ransom font&#x27; of the original Mac:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%28typeface%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;San_Francisco_%28typeface%29</a>

Typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones&#x27; opinion about Helvetica in Yosemite: <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031432/why-apples-new-font-wont-work-on-your-desktop" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcodesign.com&#x2F;3031432&#x2F;why-apples-new-font-wont...</a><p>It echoes Erik Spiekermann&#x27;s view as well: Helvetica wasn&#x27;t designed for small sizes on screen.<p><a href="http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-sucks/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spiekermann.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;helvetica-sucks&#x2F;</a>

Isn&#x27;t this against the license for the font? I thought that it was explicitly for the use of designing apple watch ui.

I was actually saddened when I saw people starting with their patches forcing Lucida back in OS X 10.10.<p>Helvetica was one of the things that made the iPhone so great.<p>Helvetica is neutral, timeless and easy to read. It&#x27;s the perfect user interface font, especially the UI-optimized version OS X 10.10 is using.<p>As always, people just hate change.<p>That said, San Fransisco is a cool font, it just looks horrible as a computer font: too much space, and it&#x27;s almost like all the characters look the same. But for a small device like a watch it&#x27;s perfect.

Looks like a straight up knockoff of Google&#x27;s Roboto font: <a href="https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jm_denis&#x2F;status&#x2F;534802341770186752</a><p>Only big difference I can see is the &#x27;Q&#x27;.

Eventually, I think it&#x27;s quite likely that Apple will adopt San Francisco across all its operating systems, but that will only happen after a lot more behind-the-scenes typographic tweaking. It may look good enough as a drop-in replacement right now, but everything from stroke widths and hinting for non-retina displays to kerning tables and metrics within the interface will get some attention before anything other than the watch ships with these fonts.

Does anyone know the licensing status of the TTFs?

I don&#x27;t hate it, but I&#x27;d love to just have Lucida back.

In chrome 38 it messes up tabs text (they are set too low)

Noticing a few issues like so:<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl4to142icjw2ay/Screenshot%202014-11-18%2017.20.20.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;cl4to142icjw2ay&#x2F;Screenshot%202014-...</a>

Does anyone here have a &quot;low res&quot; (like 1440x900) MacBook? I do - it&#x27;s from 2012 and was the last to have a CD drive so that I could write CDs for bandmates, plus it has a dedicated Ethernet port instead of a mass of external adapters (useful for AVB testing).<p>Anyway, since Yosemite the font for the menu bar has been a bit &quot;bitty&quot; and not smooth which contrasts sharply with the rest of the shininess seen everywhere - does this resolve this? I thought I&#x27;d ask before taking the plunge.

The font looks really fresh but it only has Latin glyphs, hopefully they will add Cyrillic and Asian range this winter.

Am I the only one that thinks Segoe fonts from MS (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segoe" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Segoe</a>) would look <i>much</i> better than this for the original use (Apple Watch)?

I don&#x27;t know what some designers today have with these ultra thin fonts. One can use thin font variants but only together with big font-sizes.<p>Form follows function =&gt; Font Function = legibility =&gt; don&#x27;t use too thin fonts in smaller sizes.

&gt; You must be a registered Apple Developer to use these fonts. Do not download if you don&#x27;t have a paid Apple Developer Program account.<p>I presume that this is against github&#x27;s TOS.

Good god, I&#x27;ve installed it and what a mistake! The weight of the font seems to be very variable and the spacing between letters i s m a s s i v e.<p>Uninstall sadly :-(

Almost nice, but the digit glyphs are destroyed: they&#x27;re not equally wide any more. Sorry, but can&#x27;t use a font like that.

This looks really good. Sleek and friendly at the same time.<p>I just wish there was a way to bring the old dock back, then I might upgrade.

After looking over the Yosemite change logs, as a non-iPhone user, it looks like a new font was all I had to look forward to. Every other update seems to concern sharing content between the desktop and iOS devices.<p>And now I&#x27;m finding out this new font- my only real reason for a 5GB update- is so unpopular that a hack to replace it is front page on HN.

So, Apple dedicate a cohort of designers to revitalize UI and what people do in return? They ruin all this by replacing system font with one from a goddamn 40mm watch.<p>Disgraceful.<p>As much as I don&#x27;t like Yosemite (they really broke Spotlight), its UI is much better than that of previous versions.