The retina display and the subtleties of Helvetica Neue
From John Gruber’s iPhone 4 review:
It’s a subtle change, but Apple has changed the system font for the iPhone 4, from Helvetica to Helvetica Neue. The change is specific to the iPhone 4 hardware (or more specifically, the Retina Display), not iOS 4. On older iPhone hardware, iOS 4 still uses Helvetica as the system font.
I’ve had a hard time aliasing this typeface at small sizes with any real quality. While it looks great in large sizes or in print, both on my Macbook Pro and 3G iPhone, the type is fuzzy at 14 point or smaller. (I suspect this is due to font hinting) Not surprisingly, it renders very cleanly on the retina display.
This kind of attention to detail is just one example of what separates Apple from the other manufacturers who clearly couldn’t care less about this stuff.
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