Apple is celebrating 30 years of the Mac. As part of their website to mark the event, Apple has made available a rather special TrueType Font.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to download and use the special Apple font that contains the different Mac models from the last 30 years.
It’s History
The original Mac was launched 30 years ago, on 24th January 1984. Apple has put together an impressive commemorative website which really is worth exploring.
Not only do I remember my first Mac, I remember seeing the first Mac. I was in my early teens and there was a demonstration of this revolutionary new computer, one evening in early 1984.
A local computer business brought the machine into a school classroom, after school hours, and demonstrated the Macintosh to the assembled business people… and two thirteen year old boys: myself and a friend.
The Mac Character Set
Apple has created a special font containing icons of a number of Mac models from over the last 30 years.
Downloading
The font can be downloaded from Apple’s website, though it is not known whether this will be permanently available.
Installation
- Download the font using one of the links above, and locate the downloaded file.
- If you download the .zip file from our link, uncompress it.
- Double-click the .ttf file to install it into Font Book.
- Click the button marked Install Font.
How to Use It
The font uses a special private area for the characters. This means that you can’t just type the icons from the keyboard.
Once you’ve installed the Mac character set in Font Book, you can copy and paste individual icons from Font Book into another application.
It’s not quite as convenient as typing characters into a given application, but it is easy enough to copy from Font Book to paste the character into another application.
Conclusion
In this tutorial I have shown you where to find and how to download and install Apple's font of Mac models.
