Older Eyes need to increased size of menu bar

[Richdmoore]

Hello, on my advice my dad (61) dumped his windows machine and got a Macbook Pro (17".) His new system works great, except that he does have trouble reading the menu bar on the top due to it's small size on the big high resolution screen. It's the most vexing problem he has with the Mac, and hopefully something Lion will change.

I hate to be "windows does it" kind of guy, but it's time for OS X to allow the menu bar to be made larger for those older computer users.

Anyone else agree/disagree?

 

[mrchinchilla]

Systemwide fonts should be customisable in terms of size, I'm not sure why Apple hasn't added this as part of the Universal Access preference pane. It's unlikely that Apple will add this any time soon, if at all, but not impossible – it seems they might change the default system font (Lucida Grande/Helvetica) to the font used in the new iLife '11 suite's context menus.

 

[Night Spring]

Totally agree. One of the reasons why I'm sticking with Windows instead of moving to OSX. And also why I'm sticking with IE instead of Firefox or Safari. Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for having better cusomization options for people with disabilities.

 

[kasakka]

Systemwide fonts should be customisable in terms of size, I'm not sure why Apple hasn't added this as part of the Universal Access preference pane. It's unlikely that Apple will add this any time soon, if at all, but not impossible – it seems they might change the default system font (Lucida Grande/Helvetica) to the font used in the new iLife '11 suite's context menus.

Because changing font sizes drastically would break most UI elements. The proper method is to have the whole interface, everything from text to images to little placeholder bits scaling in size. This is how it's done in Windows, albeit hidden and with a crappy user interface requiring a fair bit of trial and error.

You can activate this behavior in Snow Leopard via Terminal, but even Apple's own apps will have problems with blurry icons because they were not made at anything but the default resolution.

Hopefully Lion will finally fix that and have full support for resolution independent scaling. Then Apple can start fitting those 13" 1920x1080 displays into their laptops too.

OP, if your dad acquired the laptop very recently, he might like to get it exchanged for a 15" MBP, either the high res or the regular resolution. I feel that the 17" has way too high resolution for the display size but the 15" high res feels quite right for the size.

 

[mrchinchilla]

Because changing font sizes drastically would break most UI elements.

This is true.

To put it simply – Apple will introduce customisable font sizes with the introduction of resolution independence (which will never happen, or might... possibly happen with 10.7, although it's highly, highly HIGHLY unlikely, I can't see Apple having spent the last year on ANYTHING but iToys, which is why they're "bringing it back" – they have nothing new).

 

[dusk007]

One would think with switching the whole line of products to higher res screens they might see a reason to do something about this problem now.
First imac, MBP 15" now MBA.

Eyesight of the general population isn't getting better, they will have to do something eventually.

 

[Peter.Howard]

I've never used Mac OS x before, can I just ask, hoping to get a Mac Pro soon.

does this mean you cannot change the screen res as you can in windows 98, XP, Vista etc...?

 

[Mal]

I've never used Mac OS x before, can I just ask, hoping to get a Mac Pro soon.

does this mean you cannot change the screen res as you can in windows 98, XP, Vista etc...?

You can of course change the screen resolution. This discussion is about resizing elements of the UI without changing the overall screen resolution.

Of course, for the OP's problem, lowering the resolution would yield a less-than-perfect solution, but would be worth considering.

jW

 

[kasakka]

Of course, for the OP's problem, lowering the resolution would yield a less-than-perfect solution, but would be worth considering.

jW

I don't think it is worth doing. The blurryness of everything will be a much bigger strain on the eyes than trying to read smaller text.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

I don't think it is worth doing. The blurryness of everything will be a much bigger strain on the eyes than trying to read smaller text.

Tell that to my Dad who would do that all the time

 

[George Knighton]

Here's another vote for a Windows-like Large Fonts option of 125% or so.

And I agree that changing resolutions is a less than optimal solution.

It's time for large fonts.