Microsoft is moving on from Calibri as the default Office font
xda-developers.com
xda-developers.com
The most obvious difference would be the shapes of 'a', 'l', 'g'. Then there are finer details, like whether the circles in the letters are fully round (see Tenorite), a bit oval-lish, or consist of vertical lines capped by upper and lower curves (Grandview is the more extreme example of this). Also how a circle are attached to a line, in case of 'b', 'p', 'q' etc. whether it joins with the short end (Seaford's 'b' and 'q' looks joined) or left hanging.
And then of course, there's kerning i.e. how the letters are spaced. Some try to make the spacing consistent, others aim for balance when stringed together as a word.
Personally I'd have chosen Bierstadt for its choice of a/l/g, although I don't like its kerning between c and k.
I think skeeva is the most unobtrusive of the bunch if that’s what we’re going for, and grandview would be my choice for its no nonsense legibility. I know I’ll be looking at this font for many years so let’s pick something that is easiest on the reader while still being professional. I actually think calibri was a step back from Arial despite some of the improvements because it lost a professional look. Tenorite looks like it has that same casual look.
The thing that is also silly about the AA-dependency to shape the glyphs, is that the higher the resolution your display is, the less you need any AA at all.
Although, to be honest, Calibri and other common Windows/Office fonts don't look too bad on a pixel grid. It's way worse on many Linux distros.
Or is it just designers being designers?
the font change is happening because the entire ui of office is continually evolving, and at some point the default document font no longer agrees with the application font or whatever other choices the UX people have made, so they pick a more suitable font. that's literally all it is.
people are choosing office subscriptions increasingly often. Microsoft doesn't need to dangle generic-looking fonts in front of people in order to get them to switch to a subscription...