14 DAY TRIAL // These days there is a strong movement towards inter operability and open standards and we can see it everywhere from audio and video standards to web technologies and even operating systems. But there are also other little things, such as fonts that need to be compatible across platforms and devices to guarantee a common computing experience.
At the TypeCon2007, Apple and Microsoft took some time to announce that they have renewed their font licensing agreement. According to this agreement, Apple can continue to offer its users the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts. This agreement lets both Apple and Microsoft provide a seamless Internet and software experience across their two very different platforms for their users. Microsoft fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana will look the same when viewed on either platform in any application.
While this may not seem like that big of a deal, it is essential in the fields of web design and desktop publishing where things need to look the same on the computer of the person looking at the content as they did on the computer of the person designing the content. Without such an agreement, substitute fonts would have to be used, which could potentially make the design look bad or even break altogether.
Recently, font rendering differences between Apple and Microsoft caught the public's attention when Apple released Safari for Windows. Because the browser used Apple's method, it looked significantly different than Microsoft's rendering method. While both companies continue to use different rendering methods that really stand out especially at the lower font sizes, this agreement ensures that they are at least rendering the same font in two different ways. Without it, there would be two different font rendering techniques and two fonts, making for much confusion and drastically different looking end results.