As an appellate lawyer, I spend a lot of time typing in Microsoft Word. And I’ve been using Microsoft Word for a very long time—starting in the 1980s, where I used it on a Mac long before Word for Windows even existed. If you have also been using Word for a long time, then you remember a long period of time when Times New Roman was the default font. In 2007, Microsoft changed the default font to Calibri. Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is ready to change the default font again, and Microsoft has picked the sans-serif font Aptos (formerly known as Bierstadt) to replace Calibri as the default font in apps like Microsoft Word. According to that article, the developer of Aptos says that the font is similar to Helvetica but with a bit of a human touch. I still use Times New Roman in most of legal briefs because it is required by many courts, and that’s why the iPhone J.D. banner uses the Times New Roman font. When I have a choice of font to use in a brief, lately I’ve been a fan of Cambria, a font commissioned by Microsoft and designed in 2004. If you have a favorite font for when you write documents, feel free to leave a comment to this post and let me know what you like to use. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Of all of the new features coming to the iPhone this Fall with iOS 17—and there are so many of them—it appears that one of the most beloved new features is StandBy mode. John Voorhees of MacStories wrote a great in-depth review about how the StandBy feature works. Equally valuable, at the end of the article, both John and Federico Viticci recommend charging stands that work with StandBy mode. I suspect that lots of folks will be purchasing these items for a desk, a nightstand, a kitchen, etc.
- Tim Hardwick of MacRumors also discusses the new StandBy mode.
- To try out StandBy mode now, you need to install beta software on your iPhone. Should you do so? Jason Snell of Six Colors encourages people to try out the public betas. He has some interesting arguments, although stability and battery life are too important to me to do so.
- Last year, I wrote about a simple stand for the HomePod mini that I purchased for my Living Room called the balolo Real Wood TriPod for HomePod Mini. I’m still happy with that purchase. This week, Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels takes a look at some more unusual stands for the HomePod mini.
- Final Cut Pro for the iPad received an update this week to add new keyboard shortcuts and more, as noted by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac.
- According to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac, if you are thinking of buying an AirPods Max, you should instead look at the Beats Studio Pro.
- Wesley Hilliard of Apple Insider reports that you can buy some Apple equipment without paying state sales taxes during the next few weeks in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
- Howard Sneider of The Gadgeteer reviews the Eve Flare, a battery-powered ambient lighting sphere ($99 on Amazon) that you can control using your iPhone.
- Kelsey Vlamis of Insider tells the tale of Danny Orleans, a magician who flew to Newark to perform a magic show in New York only to be told that his bag with all of his sound equipment didn’t make the flight. And yet, thanks to an AirTag, he could tell that his bag was just sitting on the tarmac, and he was finally able to convince someone with United to help him to recover his bag. If you travel frequently and you don’t use an AirTag for your checked luggage … you should.
- And finally, Apple released another video from The Underdogs this week. I linked to the first of these funny videos in 2019, and the pandemic version released in 2020 was also very cute. It’s been three years since the last one, and the third video in the series is now out and is very funny—even if it does the one thing that folks should probably never do when in this situation:
Courier.
Ha ha ha – just couldn’t resist – my first mentor insisted on using Courier all they way up to Windows XP. In reality, I prefer Times New Roman because it “looks better” to me in justified format documents.
Way back in the 1980s before I used a Mac, I used a Commodore 64 computer for my word processing. But I had a daisy wheel printer made by Smith Corona that was essentially a typewriter (with normal Courier font) that was connected to the computer. I’m pretty sure that it was this one, the Smith Corona TP-I:
https://bytecellar.com/2012/03/29/my-first-printer-what-was-yours/
When this printer “printed” it was incredibly loud because it was essentially just typing the document. But because it was essentially a typewriter, the documents that it created looked like a perfectly typed documents, with no mistakes or need to use White-Out. Compared to the other papers that my peers in college and high school were turning in, my papers looked incredibly professional. Once we all switched to laser printers I stopped using Courier as a font, but the font will always hold a special place in my heart because I think back to the old Smith Corona printer.
-Jeff
Commercial litigator(and long-time Mac user) here. I use Century Schoolbook or, if I have a page limit problem, Garamond.
Time New Roman is…adequate.
In Typography for Lawyers, Matthew Butterick said, “Did you make your business cards and letterhead at your local copy shop? No, you didn’t, because you didn’t want them to look shoddy and cheap. If you cared enough to avoid the copy shop, then you care enough to avoid Times New Roman. Times New Roman connotes apathy. You are not apathetic.”
Although not requiring its use, a few years ago the Indiana appellate courts began using Calisto MT Std because of its readability both on paper and onscreen. It is best in left justified. The state court rules do not specify or require a font and I have not seen many other attorneys shift to this as their font, but I find it easily read, particularly at 1.15 line spacing (although Ind Appellate Rule requires filings be double spaced). Calisto at 1.15, with 10, 11, or 12 point is great for letters.
Tax Free Weekend in South Carolina will be August 4-6 for 2023. It includes Computers, Tablets, and e-Readers but not cell phones. Here is the Url, https://dor.sc.gov/taxfreeweekend