ITunes update screws text. Official solution: remove all your third-party fonts | Hacker News Reader

ITunes update screws text. Official solution: remove all your third-party fonts

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63 pointscesare32 comments

Maybe whomever created that page meant "temporary work around." this is definitely better than nothing, but is definitely laughable at best if it's not followed up with a patch.

(whoever*; 'whomever' would be used if it was on the receiving end of the action, e.g., 'I will vote for whomever they endorse')

Honestly, nobody cares about ‘whom’. It’s dead, along with ‘thou’ and a bunch of other archaic nonsense.

In the real world it’s just ‘who’.

It's not required, but if you know what it means, using it allows you to be more eloquent. Shakespeare never put his sub-clauses in any rigid order, but never used commas either—and he got away with it because all these little hinting words in Early Modern allowed him to rearrange the sentence parts without losing any meaning.

It's sort of like type hinting :)

Calling parts of the language you don't happen to use "dead" is dead.

Also, in the real world, the expression "the real world" is a great way to win an argument without saying anything insightful.

This probably isn't the right place to have the descriptivism vs prescriptivism debate, is it? But historically, English has been whatever people who write and speak English say it is. There ain't no Academie Francaise here...

This is crap. 'Thou' is part of a whole class of pronouns (2nd person informal) that are completely absent from all modern speech and writing. 'Whom' is the objective form of 'who'. I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them, who/whom. It's not used very often in speech, but it's used every day in formal writing and thus very much alive. There is no disagreement among educated speakers of the language as to which usage is correct and which is incorrect, only disagreement as to which is acceptable in context. Celebrating it's death is celebrating ignorance.

English, like every other language on earth, is defined by its users. It evolves over time.

Very true. In my life time I hope to see "they/their" as both singular and plural. It would save me a lot of time because I dislike having to write "he or her," "his or hers," or think of a creative way to write around the idea completely.

I also hope to see the alienation of the comma-quotation rules (always inside). -Maybe I ask for too much

Celebrating its death

Good to see Muphry's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_law) is still in full effect.

It's not Hacker News until someone corrects you with facts.

I guess your not wrong; that is how language evolves. However, I prefer precision. The worst offence is the incredible number of people who use "ignorant" as a moniker for "stupid", which is perhaps the most ironic of all mistakes.

I suppose "your" prone to these imprecisions as well? ;)

Also, 'moniker' != 'synonym'

At least this entire thread was devoted to the content of my message. </sarcasm>

That said, the original responder was right - I made a technical mistake. This I have learned from.

THAT said, I can't believe there are this many English sticklers on Hacker News. (I however view this as a good thing, as it contributes to more logical discourse and less lawlz, etc).

It is ironic that you point that out. I would not have corrected him had he misused 'who' (i.e., if he had used it for the objective case) -- that would have been a little 'less wrong' than using the supposedly dated 'whom' for the subjective case, as others have said.

That said, I didn't want to be rude or impolite. To lessen the impact of the statement, as to make it 'just a side note!', I enclosed it in parentheses. But that seems to have done little good, since it has ensued another discussion of its own! Oh well, I hope someone out there maybe learned something interesting. :)

Cheers!

Speak for yourself. I care about such things.

Ignorance is not really bliss.

Unofficial Solution: Remove iTunes.

There is plenty of good music playing software; furthermore, one may end up saving money by not paying the itunes store =]

I like this unofficial solution.

Um, you have to use the iTunes store? Why does everyone always assume that as soon as one uses iTunes, music is also bought that way? I used iTunes for a long time without ever buying anything there.

You're right, I shouldn't assume that; however, I bet that the majority of the users of itunes use the store because the itunes store has the most buyers of any music store (that fact was true when I read it, but it may have changed, but if it did change, itunes would still be one of the leaders)

Syncing to Apple devices not using iTunes works at best and is a nightmare at worst.

Depends how old your Apple device is. I've got 4 ipods of various vintages (mostly given to me after their owner upgraded or some part of them broke), and they all work fine to sync to Linux boxes using gtkpod.

(Newest one is a 3rd Gen 30Gb, so I don't know about newer ones, but I suspect it's not too terrible)

I got halfway through reading all the comments on this thread and forgot what the original story was about (hint: it's not about the proper use and history of the English language). Hopefully this comment will find its way to appear halfway down the comment thread (strategic up/downvoting please), so that it can perform its public service of reminding you, "You are currently reading the 'iTunes font removal solution' comment thread."

I'm not sure I understand how this could happen - it certainly can't be a bug since, I dunno, installing and running the software would show this behavior, and Apple must have some kind of rudimentary QA in place for one of their flagship products.

Maybe I'm not understanding Apple's attention to detail and design concept (as usual) in this case.

In order to take into account various computer configurations, e.g. the use of 3rd party fonts, they should conduct external beta tests before releasing it to the general public.

I actually tried this, because I have the problem, and it does not solve the problem on Windows 7. The text is still garbled.

And, the winner of the "most unintentionally ironic" disclaimer on a webpage is:

Important: Mention of third-party websites and products is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. Apple assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance or use of information or products found at third-party websites. Apple provides this only as a convenience to our users. Apple has not tested the information found on these sites and makes no representations regarding its accuracy or reliability. There are risks inherent in the use of any information or products found on the Internet, and Apple assumes no responsibility in this regard. Please understand that a third-party site is independent from Apple and that Apple has no control over the content on that website. Please contact the vendor for additional information.

Cure seems to be worse than the disease.

Well that is terrible, why would that be an official solution rather than reverting back to old font rendering system or removing a specific font that is causing issue.

This is like setting a banking website to use a non readable font using css and asking the user to remove that font or disable css to use online banking. (Though Itunes should be less important than banking it is the only example I could think of.. maybe email would be better).

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

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