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| Review - Apple's Font Book | | Date Created: 24 Oct, 2004, 06:07 PM |
 There are those that will look at this review (of Apple's Font Book) as more of a hatchet job rather than a real review. And after reading some of my articles on font management as well as some of my "rants" about how Apple has handled fonts in OS X, I can certainly understand how some readers (and perhaps the folks at Apple as well) might think that. I'm not going to try to hide what I think about how Apple has handled fonts and font management. I am biased. And I think that my bias is well founded.
That being said, I will endeavor to keep this review on task and save my more unflattering remarks for my articles in the Rants & Ramblings section of Font Geek. |
 There is one thing that Extensis, Alsoft, Insider Software, and Apple agree on. OS X NEEDS a font management program. It has since it was first released. And to Apple's credit they decided to include a "built-in" font manager in their third generation of OS X (Panther - OS 10.3).
In most of my reviews, I use a method of showing what I like and dislike about a product. But I'm not going to do that in this review. If I did, I think that it would appear that I dislike Font Book more than I do. So I'm going to forgo that protocol and just talk to you about the program. |
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As far as font utilities goes, Font Book is not so bad. It does a good job in organizing "sets" and it is well integrated into the OS. So from that respect it has some value. The problem that I have with it is that it's not a font management program. It's an organizer -- sure. It's a way of looking at your fonts -- you bet. It's easy to use and understand -- of course. It's even a way to "install" fonts on your computer for use -- absolutely. But Font Book is not a "real" font manager.
A real font manager provides a method of having fonts available but not having to turn them all on (by way of auto-activation) all at once. Font Book's method of activating fonts is to essentially move them into one of the System's Fonts folders.
A real font manager should also provide some method of being able to "check" your fonts for corruption and/or duplication. I suppose that in a way, the OS does provide an indication of corruption by your fonts -- usually with OS and/or application instability or crashing. |
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In the absence of these two main features (as well as a few other small ones that I would like to see as well) I think it's a tough argument to make that Font Book is a font manager, let alone what Steve Jobs called a "professional" font manager.
These observations and criticisms are not without foundation. I can count on one finger the number of my design, prepress, and printing clients that are successfully (and I use the word successfully in the loosest possible way) using Font Book. That's not to say that many of them didn't try, much to their frustration, before purchasing a third party font management program. And despite what the official "party line" may be, I doubt very much if the professional graphics divisions of Apple would recommend Font Book over a third party professional font management application.
I think that if you are a consumer and you are using a few fonts then Font Book is just fine for you. It will allow you to organize and install fonts for your use.
If you have serious or professional font management needs, I'm not only NOT going to recommend this program but also recommend that you remove Font Book from your computer so that you don't accidentally activate it and have it mess up the font management done by another font management program.
Sidebar -- How to Remove Font Book from your Computer:
To remove the Font Book application you need to throw away the Font Book application located in the Applications folder on your hard drive (/Applications/Font Book.app) and the com.apple.Font Book.plist file located in your home Preferences folder on your hard drive (/Users//Library/Preferences/com.apple.Font Book.plist).
All in all I like that Apple has tried to do this, but I don't like that it didn't do a good job with Font Book. Panther is a great OS. And it's well worth the money you paid for it regardless of whether it has Font Book installed or not. If you continue on with that logic, you have to remember that Font Book is essentially a free program. And from that point of view, it's worth what you paid for it. |
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Software Developer........................................Apple
Current Version...............................................v1.0.2
License Type.....................................................Free / Built-in
Full Version Price............................................Part of Mac OS 10.3
Upgrade Version Price...................................NA
System Requirements.....................................Mac OS X 10.3
Type of Software.............................................font management
Font Geek Rating............................................2.5 out of 5 |
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Bottom Line Comparison: The most current version of Font Book is not a real choice for font management. It's a good font utility but not a font manager. MasterJuggler from Alsoft is a better choice than Font Book. Neither Font Book or MasterJuggler are as good as Font Reserve or Suitcase. (Font Reserve compares very closely to Suitcase which is also now made by Extensis.) Of these two, I think Font Reserve is probably a little better. But none of these programs work as well as the most current version of Insider Software's FontAgent Pro.
For a more in-depth comparison please see the article named "Font Management Shoot Out" in the Font Management section of Font Geek.
An Invitation To Apple
To the good folks at Apple... If you have a new release or a beta version of Font Book that you would like me to review (as well as any other literature) that addresses some of these problems, please contact me. I would be happy to try out any new release and post an updated review if warranted. |
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