[dreyfus]

Another great tool to change default font sizes of OS X elements (not document content) is the Fonts panel included in "Tinker Tool"(http://www.bresink.c...TinkerTool.html). It can also reset them to default in case one messes it up.

I increased most defaults by one or two points on my 15" Retina MBP running at HD resolution. Works quite well.

[lhaboush]

Try the App called "Zoom It" by a developer named Appatit. You can find it on the Apple App Store. It provides a great Zoom feature that will address a lot of the needs listed above.

[garry3001]

I do love my Macintosh and it has made me generally more productive since I switched, but it is ridiculous and indefensible that Apple don't implement a DPI setting as Windows does. It would massively improve the experience for many users. The zoom feature is NOT a valid alternative as it greatly reduces productivity and is only for the most seriously visually impaired people.

[MacLoyal]

Dreyfus, thanks for the reminder about Tinker Tool. What I don't understand when in TT is understanding the given categories to know which sidebar or table or whatever each of the options controls. I've also run into problems picking a font that sits low and thereby cuts off all the tails and some of the bottoms of the letters. Then there's the problem of making the font large enough to actually see only to find out that it mashes the list together so the words overlay each other. I wish there was a preview for each function.

Pardon my clumsy descriptions. I'm not in publishing so I don't know the correct terms.

I resent that I'm working on a 27" monitor and I have more desk real estate than I've ever had but I can't increase the font in the menu bar except by turning down my resolution. Why do I want that big beautiful display? The fabulous resolution. Come on Apple! I know a lot of your staff is aging too. Give our eyes a break. Let us have more control of the wonderful personalization of our computers.

And what's with the tiny, tiny font in the App Store. Why can't we double tap and make that reading pane bigger like we can in Safari? This is not too much to ask!

[MacLoyal]

Oh, yeah, Kirk -- Thanks you for a useful and helpful article. This is an issue which is going to negatively affect every Mac user if they stay on the planet long enough to reckon with the adjustments of aging eyes.

[Jophan]

Many good points already made here.

I emphatically second MacLoyal's complaint about the App Store. Why we can't zoom it baffles me.

It's clear that Apple should be providing finer user control of interface elements like type size. For a long time the superiority of the Mac GUI was their crown jewel. They seem to have forgotten that.

My personal peeve is the type size in HTML mail. You can manually enlarge it with Command-+ but there's no way to make a persistent change.

[Moselakatse]

A couple months back, the font used by Reader suddenly changed from 18 point Perpetua to 20 point Perpetua on my machine. This may have been part of a Safari update, but I neither needed nor wanted that change and there seems to be no way of resetting Reader back to the previous default.

I hoped you may have covered this aspect in this article, but perhaps there is no way of doing it easily without involving some arcane command line fiddling around?

[dseher]

I customize the toolbar to include the "Zoom" button in Safari and the "Smaller/Bigger" button in Mail. Unfortunately, not all apps include this feature.

[dseher]

"When you’re on the other side of 50, as I am" -- Is that why you are the SENIOR Editor?! :-o

[macsrwe]

Quote

A couple months back, the font used by Reader suddenly changed from 18 point Perpetua to 20 point Perpetua on my machine. This may have been part of a Safari update, but I neither needed nor wanted that change and there seems to be no way of resetting Reader back to the previous default. I hoped you may have covered this aspect in this article, but perhaps there is no way of doing it easily without involving some arcane command line fiddling around?

Command-minus and command-plus work in Reader, at least in 10.6.

[JDW]

I originally came across this article in the May 2013 issue (iOS Newstand version) of Macworld magazine. And although I certainly appreciate the advice for use in OS X, I couldn't help but see some irony in it as well, seeing I now view Macworld on my iPad3 rather than on paper.

Consider well that you can follow the article's advice and improve your viewing experience on the Mac, but the article says nothing about how to do the same on the iOS version of Macworld — the very magazine in which this article resides! Certainly, that is not the fault of the author. But authors and Macworld editors are not utterly oblivious to how their written content is viewed, and certainly they do care about their readership as evidenced by the helpfulness of the article in question. And yet, the Newsstand version of Macworld magazine (not the Zinio version) does not allow the standard "pinch to zoom" feature that would allow aging eyes some viewing relief. It's not like the Newsstand edition of Macworld came out yesterday either. It should be slowing improving. But it isn't.

So on the one hand, we have an article in Macworld magazine that proclaims, "Stop Squinting at the Screen," and on the other hand, Macworld magazine for iOS is structured so that people have no choice but to squint!

Lastly, as an avid reader of Macworld for decades and now an iOS reader, I would like to suggest that you good folks at Macworld please make it easy for us to add comments quickly and easily from a single tap on our iPads. Add a link at the top or bottom of the article for us to accomplish that. Why make us jump through hoops to do so? I had to get on my iMac just to type this comment. I did that because it's actually faster and easier than manually doing that on my iPad. But the fact is, it should be easier to do on my iPad.

Thanks for listening.