More middle-aged bitching

For a company that prides itself—rightly, for the most part—in making its product accessible, Apple is really screwing with its middle-aged and older users whose vision is deteriorating. I’ve complained before about the Mac’s incredible shrinking UI (due to increased pixel density) and the low-contrast day numbers in the new iCal. Today I found a new assault on my 51-year-old eyes.

Well, it’s not really new. It’s the same gray-text-on-white problem1 I have with iCal. I followed a link from Stephen Hackett (or maybe it was Justin Blanton—I can’t remember where I saw it first) that took me to Apple’s Mac App Store Preview site. Now, normally when I follow one of these links, I click to launch the MAS application right away, but today I decided to just stay in the browser and read the description of the app there.

Here’s an excerpt of what I saw:

Mac App Preview description

That’s 50% gray text (I checked it with the Color Picker in Acorn) on a white background for body copy. Jesus.

I have this vague memory of someone saying that design isn’t just what something looks like, it’s how it works. If only that person had some influence at Apple.


  1. I’m sure Apple calls it a style