Someone needs to fix Helvetica Neue!

As a designer, I spend a fair amount of time managing fonts. With OS X these days, about 90% of all my font problems are related to Helvetica Neue, which, as anybody who has been around the font block knows, is one of the required system fonts in OS X.

As I was struggling with a Helvetica Neue installation on a new Mac yesterday, it struck me that the solution is pretty simple: Apple just needs to change the name of the font they are using.

Think about it, if Apple would simply change the name of their version of Helvetica Neue and update OSX to look for the "new" font, we could use our own PS1 or OTF versions without any conflict. I know it sounds complicated, but I bet it could be done. I'm not holding my breath, but wouldn't it be great if Apple would recognize the trouble they've been causing designers for the past 10 years, and fix this problem once and for all.

Failing that, how about if Adobe and/or Linotype and/or any other studio were to release an exact copy of Helvetica Neue under a new name? You could call it something catchy like "Helvetica Newer".

My real point is that I want Apple (as the source of this problem) and Adobe (as a leading type foundry) to acknowledge this problem and work together to fix it.