When I got 10.6 I few weeks ago, it was from a disc that came with 10.6.3. I installed it.

Then I downloaded and installed the update to 10.6.8 using the Combo updater, but after I did, the screen looked all wrong. Noticeably different. It looked like there was a font problem -- the system font was all thin and jagged, which was annoying because everything in 10.6.3 worked great and looked great, the best computing experience I've ever had. I think this problem applied to all fonts, to everything onscreen, but I'm not sure. It seemed radically different.

I re-installed it 10.6.3 over 10.6.8 from the original disc and everything looked fine again.

Unfortunately, I can't use the App store unless I have 10.6.8, so I'm debating whether to try the upgrade again.

I have my drive cloned to an external Firewire drive using SuperDuper, but I'm not sure how to revert back if I get the same problems with 10.6.8. I figure last time was a fluke when I simply re-installed 10.6.3 from the disc "on top of" 10.6.8 that was running on my main hard drive. I didn't know if it would work or if was a good idea, so I risked it.

Any thoughts about these matters, esp. problems w/upgrading from 10.6.3. to 10.6.8?

I'm not having any font problems in 10.6.8. If you want to try it again and you want to revert to 10.6.3, boot from your SD (10.6.3) clone, erase the 10.6.8 drive, and clone back from 10.6.3 to the (former) 10.6.8 drive.

If you have the same issue after re-updating to 10.6.8, use Font Book to resolve duplicates and disable any questionable fonts. If you start up in Safe Mode, that will run a number of diagnostics, including clearing font caches.

I upgraded to 10.6.8 from 10.6.3. The fonts for system are jagged, esp. the menus at the top of the screen, not matter what program is running. Other fonts seem to be a bit off too.

I did all the troubleshooting I know, including various maintenance and cleaning with onyx, removing fonts with font book, verifying fonts, resolving duplicates; removing non-system fonts; repairing permissions with both onyx and disk utility; holding down option on restart; deleting font cache and other caches; booting into safe mode; zapping the pram (haven't done that in many years.)

This happened before when I tried to upgrade. I went back to 10.6.3 because I couldn't figure it out.

The fonts look better when the display is set to 1440x900 but I can't read it that small. I always use 1152x70.

I'm stumped and grumpy.

> I did all the troubleshooting I know...

But did you try re-running the 10.6.8 Combo Updater?

A re-run is the classic first step to take when dealing with update issues.

Edit: I've been running 10.6.8 for years with absolutely no issues, font or otherwise, and there's no inherent reason why you should be having trouble.

If Artie's suggestion doesn't work (and I should have thought of that myself), go to System Preferences>Appearance and play with the font settings at the bottom. My system looks fine and my settings are:

(Box checked) Use LCD font smoothing when available.
Turn off text smoothing for font sizes 8 and smaller.

I tried that.

I went back to 10.6.3. The hell with it. I'm tired of troubleshooting. I've done enough for one lifetime.

I'm embarrassed to say that I saw deniro's O.P. before you responded and didn't think of it.

Classic troubleshooting issues are so few and far between these days that what little I know is succumbing to disuse atrophy!

I realize that you're frustrated, but don't let it get to you; you just ran into an unlucky glitch in your update procedure.

And if you need motivation, remember that you've got to update to 10.6.8 to avail yourself of Safari 5's extensions functionality...well worth another shot (or two ) at the Combo, not to mention the fact that many apps that will run in 10.6.8 will not run in earlier versions of 10.6.

When I have had a problem that is just inexplicable and can't be resolved, I wipe the HD with a seven-pass secure erase, which gets rid of remnants of everything, it does not just erase the directory. That is under 'Options' in the Disk Utility 'Erase' tab. It is a good idea to run disk utility for VERIFY DISK, not check directory before this to make sure your HD structure is good. (You should export your browser bookmarks to a file to make it easier to reinstall them before wiping the drive.) It can take about 12 hours for the seven pass wipe to complete. Then I install the system with the disks, do the updates, there are more than just the combined update for 10.6.8, there are a slew of updates that only come up if you keep going back to 'Check for Updates' under the Apple menu. Next I install my programs from the installer disks, not dragging over, and I drag not the entire user folder but the individual user files, those residing in the Desktop folder, the Documents folder, etc and then re-import my bookmarks and run disk utility again to both verify the disk and fix permissions, you may have to run Disk Permission more than once and the first time, it will take a very long time to complete. Everything is clean now, including any hidden files that may have corrupted and you would never know about. The process takes an overnight wipe of the drive and half a day of reinstalling, but works.

Time Machine will then run run a very long time because it will either do what is needed to compare the changes or start a new backup folder. There is a complete explanation of this that Ganbustein did to see why and how to access older backups if it did create a new folder or how to make more room on your Time Machine drive if it becomes full. I cannot locate the link right now but perhaps someone else can and copy and paste that explanation.

> ...I wipe the HD with a seven-pass secure erase, which gets rid of remnants of everything, it does not just erase the directory.

That's not quite correct.

"Don't Erase Data" does no more than erase your directory, but "Zero Out Data" (1-pass) and 7 (Department of Defense grade) and 35 (ultra-secure)-Pass Erases do more or less the same additional thing, which is not "get[s] rid of remnants of everything", but overwrite everything, with the more passes you run making its recovery more difficult.

Unless you either require comprehensive security or simply wish to kill time in a computer-free manner (The time any overwrite takes is dependent on your configuration.), "Zero Out Data" should suit your purposes.

And in closing, I'll suggest one additional step to add to your excellent procedure: Since an overwrite maps out bad blocks, I suggest running a preliminary surface scan to determine your HDD's status in that respect.

I moved a branch of posts to the Lounge: Back pain

Thought I'd give this one another try, but the jagged font problem remains. Googling left me discouraged. Others had the same problem. I'm not sure there is a solution. Tried everything again. Not necessarily in this order:

Installed 10.6.8 combo updater
Resolved duplicates and verified fonts w/Font Book
Ran all Onxy options
Safe boot to reset Font database and Font book
Zapped PRAM
Manually removed fonts per advice on http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html
Re-installed fonts from 10.6.3 retail disc using Pacifist
Re-installed 10.6.8 combo updater

Ran Software Update which gave me the following choices (I didn't download them):
Java for Mac OS X 10.6 update 17
Epson printer software update
Safari 5.1.10
Security Update 2013-004
Migration Asst update for snow leopard
Apple Software Installer update
itunes 11.4

Out of ideas. I'm not going to erase the hard drive.

I'm wondering if it's possible that your screen resolution got changed during your update to 10.6.8. Or, in other words, if you can get the fonts to display properly by changing your current screen resolution (regardless of whether that's your favorite one). Just curious.

Good thought. It looks better at 1440x90, not jagged, but I always use 1152x70.

Can you post screenshots?

How?

You asked that question a while back, and I linked you to a post that explained precisely how to do it. (I think it was in a thread you started.)

Edit: Found it.

Thanks for the reminder.

Sidebar screenshot

Firefox bookmark bar

I dunno; the fonts in your shots look no different than what I see on my screen in 10.6.8.

Can you post either a more extreme example or, for comparative purposes, a shot of what you saw in 10.6.3?

Edit: By way of example

To my eyes, your fonts look clearer.

Another page about Snow Leopard fonts

I've also been looking at this 10.6.8 updates

The only pertinent thing I see in your linked docs is


from the first one.

I've got the referenced box checked.

I tried to upload a 16k png but got the following message:

There's a Problem
User request limit exceeded .

That sounds like it's ISP related. Is your bandwidth limited?

16k? That is so small, it sounds like the file is corrupt.

As far as the fonts, the menu may have a drop down for font weight, reg, bold, etc. but many times the bold, italic, other versions are shown by interpreting the original font bitmap (screen display part of font suitcase) "on the fly." It's a shortcut used on a lot of system fonts. The actual outlines, the postscript vectors, are downloaded to the printer according to what you specify and that creates the file that actually gets printed.

When you purchase a font and install it to the system through Font Utility, that gives you a proper bitmap for each weight, not an estimate or interpretation. Buying fonts is pretty cheap these days and may be worth it for those you use a lot. What you see on the screen is a more accurate version of the font's actual appearance.

I'm not sure this adds anything to the conversation...

Note: Newer fonts are usually sold as 'TrueType.' These don't need both vector and bitmap files, just one file. I don't really understand how it works but I use them and they work, so it must be magic.

From what I've read, there appear to be problems with the Helvetica and Helvetica Neue fonts. 10.6.8 added Helvetica Light. There are also MM versions in there and that shouldn't be.

The Helvetica conflicts seem to be a constant problem, judging by the hostile comments I've read. Too bad. Apple used to be known for superior font handling.

I had trouble deleting Helvetica Heue. Must have been recreated because Font Book kept showing duplicates. How can I be sure that Font Book always disables the right font? I can't. And I never know which version to pick, the .dfont or .ttc font, an older numbered version or a newer one. See Kurt Lang's page. There's a Protected Fonts folder I decided not to mess with. I manually removed Helvetica Neue last night but I'm not sure that was a good idea.

I used TinkerTool to change all the system wide fonts, but even a different font displayed jagged.

I have two pics which demonstrate the problem, but FreeImageHosting won't let me upload them.

> I have two pics which demonstrate the problem, but FreeImageHosting won't let me upload them.

You didn't make it clear that your posted message was from Free Image Hosting.

Perhaps there's some sort of time frame that governs what they allow? (I've never run into one, so it may pay you to simply question FIH.)

I went back to 10.6.3

I still think this is a font problem.

Yesterday, the FinderPop menu showed the programs in Helvetica rather than the system font, which I think is Lucida Grande. I re-installed 10.6.3, among other troubleshooting (after I got a kernel panic), and everything seems okay, though the Finder is sluggish.

The Fonts folder in Users>myname>Library>Fonts contains only:
encodings.dir
fonts.dir
fonts.list
fonts.scale

Granted, I have Font Book set to "Computer" when it comes to installing fonts rather than "Users," so I wouldn't expect to see any fonts there. Also, I did a lot of messing around with fonts in a lot of folders the last couple weeks. Suffice it to say I may have deleted or moved something I shouldn't have.

But I don't recall ever seeing these four files. What are they?

The required 10.6 fonts and their respective libraries are found in Apple Knowledge base article 5154. I don't know for sure about 10.6.8 but in earlier versions moving or deleting one of the fonts in /System/Library/Fonts could make the system unbootable or it could have deleterious effects on readability. Since you have been moving fonts around you might want to verify the location of your system fonts with this list.

Just as a reminder the various Font folders and their use is described in Apple Knowledge Base article HT2435.

I know about that, thanks. I used it as a guide.

This just occurred to me... Since you've reverted to 10.6.3, would you please post some screenshots so we can compare them with the 10.6.8 screenshots you've already posted?

Thanks.

I will if Free Image Hosting lets me.

I thought I would give this one another shot.

Something happens on the upgrade from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8 to change how fonts render on the screen. It's easily noticeable to my eye. Jagged, odd.

I'm in Firefox now. This text looks fine. But the Finder menu, the Firefox window title, and the titles of folders on the bookmarks bar are all jagged.

I downloaded Font Explorer Pro to handle my fonts. Nice program. No corruption or duplicates. This OS by default installs both a Helvetica Neue .dfont and .ttf, and from what Font Explorer tells me both are always active. Both are necessary for the system. You can find more about that in the 10.6 section at http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html#requiredfonts

But I don't think it's a font problem. I think it's a font rendering problem. Now the question is what parts of the software or hardware are involved in rendering fonts? And what gets changed when 10.6.8 is installed?

It may be the font smoothing. There doesn't seem to be any in 10.6.8. I played around with the Apperances prefs but I can't detect any visual changes, whether I have smoothing checked or what size I use. Maybe the smoothing is broken.

I have 10.6.7 on a backup Firefire drive. With Beyond Compare, I can compare files on both drives to see what is different. Of course, it will take a while. I've done some tests, and there are so many files I'm not sure which ones are clues. And if I find which ones are different, what then?

I'm going to upload some screenshots when I'm satisfied with what I have.

Beyond Compare also allows me to compare images. Nice program.

Many moons ago I requested that you upload comparative 10.6.3 and 10.6.8 screenshots so we can see what you're seeing; will you please do that now if it isn't what you've already got in mind?

You seem to be experiencing something that no-one else has run into, and we'd like to see what it is.

Yes, I'll try to get to it tonight. I want them to be precise.

The screenshots don't reveal much. I don't know why. The difference is obvious. I've shown it to people here and they agree. Anyone reading this will have to take my word.

Google directed me toward a lot of articles about people having font problems in 10.6, though interestingly I didn't find one of them who had problems only when they hit 10.6.8. Usually it was 10.6.7 or earlier, and their complaints had to do with blurry fonts. Mine aren't blurry, they seem too bright and jagged like there's no smoothing at all. The setting in System Prefences>Appearance doesn't change anything. Some articles suggested changing the smoothing and empty font caches through the Terminal, which I did and it didn't have any effect.

http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/08/clear-font-caches-databases-mac-os-x/
http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/18/change-font-smoothing-settings/
http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/09/mac-screen-blurry-optimize-troubleshoot-font-smoothing-os-x/

I even tried TinkerTool to change smoothing and system fonts but that didn't work.

Many people have had problems with Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, as well as OpenType fonts and Postscript fonts. Some even have problems with the latest OS. That's not very impressive. In Windows 8.1, on a Dell monitor, the fonts really look nice. Even on Ubuntu. What's the problem with Apple? Why can't they get the basics right? To me that's one of the most important things in an operating system. If fonts hurt my eyes, I can't use the OS.

Interesting that someone mentioned that the default setting for the monitor is supposed to be the highest one, which on my imac is 1440x900. That's too small for me. I always use 1152x720. I didn't follow that advice when I set up my parents Dell either. It took me a long time to find a suitable medium between too small and too large. I don't know whom these default settings are for.

I wonder if the graphics drivers in the ATI card is causing the problem, since that was causing kernel panics in Firefox. I doubt the graphics card is involved in rendering fonts.

I continue to use Beyond Compare, a fine program, to analyze which files have changed from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8. I'm worried that the culprit will be some obscure file which I shouldn't change, like Ruby or Pearl or some framework or something in the Core system files. Quartz maybe. I noticed some Thunderbolt files which I could probably delete since I don't have a Thunderbolt monitor. I know better than to start deleting just to experiment. There are too many deep files whose purpose is unknown to me.

ETA: Interesting that in recent OS Apple gave up on Helvetica altogether as a system font.

Screenshots are not a "photograph" of the screen contents, rather a screenshot captures the "code" that generates the screen image. In Apple's case that code is PDF. What image format are your screenshots in, PNG, PDF, TIFF, BMP, GIF, PSD, or what? If you don't know TinkerTool will tell you as well as easily switch screenshot formats. Try changing the screenshot format and see if the difference shows up. That is in fact a diagnostic that may help identify the source of your problem. By the way, as I recall I finally ended up deleting Helvetica Neue in either 10.5 or 10.6 because of various font issues which were cleared by deleting the font. Helvetica Neue was re-instlled in a subsequent OS X release and the problems in the font had been fixed.

Probably not directly, but they could be indirectly involved.


Unless you enjoy frequent reinstalling, stay out of the system files. You never know when one of those files is used by another part of the system or even an application. For example Perl and Ruby are powerful scripting languages that can be and are used in a wide variety of different applications.

FWIW although I have never moved any Font files out of /System/Library/Fonts I have used TinkerTool and other utilities to change the default system and application fonts since OS X 10.0 with no ill effect (unless I choose a font size that is too big to fit in the space allowed in some places).

I just looked in /System/Library/Fonts on my system running MacOS 10.11.6 Beta (15G24b) and found Helvetica.dfont created 8/22/15, HelveticaNeue.dfont created 8/22/15, and NelveticaNeueDeskinterface.ttc also dated 8/22/15. so although it might not be the default Helvetica is still around as a system font. HelveticaNeue is an extra thin version of Helvetica. Its thinness allows more characters in a given space which is why Apple has chosen it. It fits the displays on iOS devices better than either of its predecessors Helvetica and Lucida Grande. Personally I prefer Lucida Grande as just a bit more readable, but that may be a factor of elder eyes.

OS X also does sub-pixel-kerning. This is where the "format best for your display" comes into play. If you're using a sub-pixel display (with separate Red, Blue, and Green, instead of a single phosphor dot that could be any color) then they can provide improved kerning of black-and-white text. If you open a text document on an apple laptop, or attached directly to an apple display, and it is displaying a font with large diagonal lines, you will notice some color to it. If you type a "/" slash, and increase font size quite a bit so you can see it clearly and have a large white border to the left and right of it, you'll notice a distinct subtle color tint. One side of the slash will look a bit pink, and the other side will look a bit baby blue.

This is the effect of sub-pixel kerning at work. If you get out a magnifying glass you might be able to see it in action. Each square on an LCD display has three distinct parts to each square pixel. They're usually three vertical slices, one red, one green, and one blue. All three together make a square, so the sub-pixels are three times as tall as they are wide. If all three pixels are lit at once, they blend visually in your eye to form white, although you will still see the individual colors with a magnifying glass.

Green is almost always in the middle. If red is on the left, it's on the left for every pixel. So if you're going to draw a diagonal white line, you can either just light or dim all three RGB at once , OR you can "sub-pixel kern" by lighting only one or two of the sub-pixels in some rows. This makes the diagonal line a little smoother, and results in sharper looking text, especially at smaller point sizes. (this effect is much more pronounced with diagonal lines that are mostly vertical, making "W" one of the best text examples)

The color comes from the fact that if the left pixel is red, that means that in 2 of every 3 pixels on the left most side of the line, the red subpixel is OFF. (leaving either green or blue as the leftmost subpixel) On the right the opposite occurs, with blue being off 66% of the time. So the left side develops a green/blue tint, and the right side develops a green/red tint. These usually look baby blue on one side, and pink on the other side. The effect is very washed out and subtle, but can usually be noticed if you're looking for it. (and sorry, NOW you will probably not be able to avoid noticing it!)

Of course if the OS is unable to do it because it doesn't know the arrangement of the sub-pixels, or is unWILLING to support a monitor, you'll just get regular full-pixel kerning, and things will be a little more blocky looking. They can't just guess at this. I tried it - when decoding images, if you get the "endianness" wrong, this exact thing happens to the rendered image, but it's at the pixel level (usually in groups of 4 or 8 pixels), and it produces a very pronounced graphics issue. Seeing this, I played around with artificially creating this effect, and it produces seriously blurry text when the SPK is done backwards. (I was emulating a macintosh interface on a windows app, and was bothered by the much rougher looking text, and tried to fix it)

So yes, If your SPK kerning isn't working, it'll look less sharp. And again you won't be able to see this effect if you are using a non-Apple display even if you're using a macintosh computer. It has nothing to do with the monitor being able to do it, the OS just isn't bothering to try.

I tried different combinations of deactivating and deleting Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, but the problem still hasn't been solved. I'm almost out of ideas and ready to reinstall 10.6.7. Too bad because I've noticed some improvements with 10.6.8.

According to Kurt Lang, H and H Neue are required by the system, but I followed his advice on how to delete them without the system recreating them. Quite elaborate. Nothing helped.

I said before the font problem affects the system display and not display in applications. I'm not sure about that anymore. I am sure that the font smoothing option under Apperance doesn't do anything.

Well, I've just about had it with this one. You know, I had this monitor replaced by some local guys when it had a bad pixel. Maybe they did something to it.

The tinkering came to an end. Somehow I managed to fiddle enough to keep my Mac from starting up, so I reinstalled 10.6.3 from the CD.

The problem will remain a mystery...

Around here we say that "I fixed it and fixed it until it broke."

Might be irrelevant now, but you're not the only one who's reported seeing a font difference in updating to 10.6.8. Apparently, some folks have found you can get the older font appearance back by opening a Terminal window and using the command

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

I remember doing some Terminal commands similar to that, not sure if it was identical to the one you mentioned.

Ah, my old nemesis. Again we do battle.

Someone advised me to do a clean install, or whatever they call it now, so I did. I had never used Migration Assistant before. It is quite a clever, helpful tool. Otherwise, I would have spent hours re-installing.

I was curious about what got moved. I know the obvious files, my programs and their preferences, my itunes library, but since the problem of the jaggy text remains, I wonder whether something was migrated from my backup that caused the problem.

Here's how I did it. I booted from the CD retail verion of 10.6.3, ran Disk Utility on my iMac, zeroed the data, erased the disk, used migration assistant to transfer files from my backup drive to my iMac.

Then I installed the Combo Update 10.6.8. And that's when I got the old problem. System fonts render incorrectly: jagged, fuzzy, thinner. Yet the text inside programs is, I think, normal or closer to normal. In Firefox, the text actually looks better or at least different. It's certainly different. Web pager text looks anti-aliased and it didn't before, though I doubt this how it is supposed to be. Something changed without my changing it.

Navigation text, the program's text rather than web page's, has the same problem as the system fonts. The tool bar text, bookmark text, and menu bar at the top ("FireFox" "File" Edit" "View") all have the same jaggy problem and looked bad compared to web page text.

I would like to have a list of files that were migrated and a list of files that were changed or installed. System info gives me some of them, tells me what has been modified. I have the program Beyond Compare, which might be able to do that if I can figure out how.

Something changes from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8., and really it's more likely 10.6.8 is the culprit because I was running 10.6.7 before I tried this latest experiment. Fonts look normal on 10.6.7. So it's something in the 10.6.8 update that's causing the problem. Maybe I can find a list of files that get changed or created from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8.

I downloaded Font Doctor, and it found no corrupt fonts. I tried that a long time ago with Font Explorer, and got the same result.

Migration Assistant migrates an item called "Your Other Files and Folders" (or some-such), and a coupl'a years ago when I posted asking if anybody knew precisely what they were, the best answer I got was to look for a log.

Well, it turned out that there is a log, the name of which I've forgotten (but it was readily identifiable), and I'm not sure how persistent it is, but if you go through your Console sidebar your may find it.

When I looked through mine I found it pretty much unintelligible, but you may be able to glean something from it.

Y'know, I'm beginning to wonder if your problem is that your iMac is so old that the optimization included in OS X 10.6.8 just plain optimized it to death? (How old was it when 10.6.8 was released in July 2011?)

Thanks.

Yesterday I erased the hard drive again, but I used Migration Assistant only for my networking preferences. I'm slowly reinstalling everything else one piece at a time.

I didn't use the 10.6.8 combo updater. I installed the 10.6.4 update, then 10.6.5, etc., and stopped at 10.6.7. I haven't yet checked to see if the font problem will return in 10.6.8.

Here was my thinking. When I bought this iMac in 2006, it came with 10.4.7. installed. Considering all the installing I did over the years, including systems, including multiple system installs and reinstalls, there was plenty of opportunity to accrue crud. I did so much tinkering. You get the point. Lots of files were on the computer whose purpose eluded me, and the opposite, who knows what got deleted over the years deep into the system. There's a lot to be said for starting from scratch, with original factory equipment.

For example, these files in Sys>Library>Fonts were not original equipment: encodings.dir, fonts.dir, fonts.list, fonts.scale. I don't know what they do. I recall deleting them in the past and keeping them, trying both, but I still don't know. Possibly they are from a third party program.

Second example: Software Update told me to download ProKit Update, which I had never seen before. It claimed "improved support for Font smoothing", among other things, so of course it got my attention. "This update is intended for users of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iPhoto, Aperture, Final Cut Express, Logic Pro, MainStage, Logic Express and iAd Producer." That's not me, but I installed the update anyway to see what would happen. I didn't notice any change.

If I am repeating things you have already tried, my apologies, but FWIW….

You often accumulate fonts without knowing about it because they get installed by third party applications without notification. Your reinstall should have cleaned up the system Font Library (/System/Library/Fonts) and as a system owned folder it is not supposed to be modified by Migration Assistant. However just to be sure, you will find a list of the standard Snow Leopard fonts and what folder they should be in here. There should be nothing in /System/Library/Fonts (the system font library) other than the listed system fonts.

The freeware app TinkerTool will show you what system fonts (typeface and size) are in use and will allow you to either change them to suit your personal preference, or set them back to the default. You might see if you can "fix" your problem by changing fonts. By-the-way although you do not want to add or delete fonts in /System/Library/Fonts you can assign fonts not in that folder to system tasks. For Example I use Lucida Bright for applications, and Lucida Sans as the system fixed pitch font.

MIgration Assistant may have modified the contents of /Library/Fonts and definitely would have modified ~/Library/Fonts in your user home folder. The encodings.dir, fonts.dir, fonts.list, fonts.scale are expected in the /Library/Fonts which contain the fonts available to any user. You may also have some font files in ~/Library/Fonts in your user home folder but you should not have duplicated fonts between the three different font libraries. There is a Font Book option to search for duplicate activated fonts. (Font Book > Edit > Look for enabled duplicates…).

The ProKit update you installed does effect font smoothing so it was certainly well worth installing. Speaking of font smoothing, you may have already mentioned it, but have you tried adjusting the font smoothing settings in System Preferences > General?

I'm really embarrassed for not having thought of this months ago, but I suspect that you're going about this project butt backwards by assuming that you should NOT have a problem and trying to scope out why you do rather than trying to find out if you maybe SHOULD have a problem, so to that end I suggest that on your next run you do NOTHING after installing 10.6.3 but select your network during setup and go directly to a pure vanilla 10.6.8 using the incremental Combo updater. (There's no body of evidence that suggests that updating incrementally is better than running the Combo, particularly in your circumstances, and, in fact, each incremental installation introduces new opportunities for errors, while running the Combo is a frequently recommended troubleshooting step following a troublesome incremental update.)

If your problem doesn't recur in the vanilla 10.6.8 you should probably begin by running Software Update incrementally followed by incremental migration to see at what point it breaks, but you may very well find out that 10.6.8 has, in fact, optimized your iMac (which was on the verge of vintage status when it was released) to death...that the only way around your problem is a new Mac.

Good luck!

It's a shame that so much rides on 10.6.8's shoulders.

artie, that's what I did. The second time. I used Migration Assistant only to transfer network prefs. This is the long road, but I've enjoyed starting with a clean slate.

So there have been some interesting and subtle changes. Some programs act slightly different. Possible changes in Java or Javascript. Clip Menu has been acting erratic and FinderPop at first. My screen color is better. Whiter. For years it was a shade of blue, even after recalibrating. Fonts look different. I'm trying to decide if it's better, but I'm not sure. They look darker and maybe fuzzier. Note that I still haven't tried to upgrade to 10.6.8.

I'm still working on getting back to where I was. Struggles with registration numbers and preferences. I'm learning about the importing/exporting functions of some programs, like Mail, iCal, Address Book, Reunion, iTunes.

Some data has gotten lost. I'm working on it. Address Book imported OK but I'm not sure iCal got everything. Firefox failed to import all my bookmarks, though it got most of them.

A fresh look at system profiler. I have one of those imacs that is "64-bit but not really". In the profiler sofware section overview, 64 bit kernel and extensions are labeled "no" but many of my programs are marked 64 bit (capable).

I still find the App store a waste of time.

That's not even within hailing distance of what I suggested, deniro.

1. Erase your HD.
2. Run your 10.6.3 installer.
3. DO NOT MIGRATE ANYTHING!
4. Select your network during the "Welcome"/setup procedure.
5. Run the 10.6.8 Combo.

That will give you a spotlessly vanilla installation of 10.6.8 in which you can see if your font problem is self-induced or a fact of life.

If your new 10.6.8 meets your approval, you can THEN begin updating via Software Update and importing your other stuff to see at what point it breaks.

On the other hand, though, your vanilla installation may display the same font irregularity that you're troubleshooting, and that'll indicate that it's beyond your control.

You're operating on the assumption that something in your OS X installation is breaking 10.6.8, but you've never established that whatever's wrong with it isn't inherent in it.

More: This project sounds like it's been beneficial, so it's in your best interest to complete it, BUT when you finish with 10.6.7, clone it...not just an incremental update to an existing clone, but a fresh one. That way, if you're still unhappy with 10.6.8 when you finally get there you can wipe your HD one final time and import your 10.6.7 clone, and you'll be set until you're ready for a new Mac.

Once, more, good luck!

Forgot to mention that I'm no fan of the App Store either; the best thing about 10.6.8 is Safari 10 and extensions.

It's within hailing distance. The difference from what I did, versus what you suggest, is that I haven't installed 10.6.8 yet. I did migrate my network prefs, and nothing else, w/Migration Asst. I've been using my installers to reinstall my third-party software. I could have held off on that. It is possible that some some third-party program is causing the problem.

I think it's more likely that I screwed up by deleting something I shouldn't have during years of tinkering. Another possibility that's occurred to me is that there is something about the factory installed software (and hardware, I guess) that it is particular to this model Mac. Messing with that would therefore lead to problems. I can't help thinking that, particularly under the latest regime, Apple has no intention of letting people hold on to their computers for ten years like I have, and thefore has no intention of allowing people to upgrade system after system on their hard drives.

I could clone my drive right now, then install 10.6.8 to see if the problem returns. But I have only one backup drive and I'm using it now. I'm considering buy a second hard drive anyway.

I got an email from Kurt Lang, whose great site about fonts I spent a lot of time with. He wrote, "Whatever’s going on, it’s not the fonts. Fonts are vector shapes and cannot themselves be jaggy. Something is causing them to be drawn badly by the system. But I don’t know what that would be."

Is the ATI Radeon involved in drawing fonts?

I was able to reproduce another problem I had of kernel panics when webgl and hardware acceleration were enabled in Firefox. Certain web sites would take down my Mac. That started happening about three years ago.

An updated ATI driver would be interesting to try, but obviously that's not going happen.

The lesson there is that I need to pay close attention to the graphics card the next time I buy a computer, which very likely won't be a Mac, so it probably won't be a problem anyway.

During the past year, I've been debating what do to next in my computer setup, and I've almost concluded that I'm done with Apple after thirty years as their customer. But that's a different thread. I can discuss that in the Lounge, or wherever appropriate, if anyone wants.

Thanks to everyone who has responded.

It most assuredly is not within hailing distance! It is, in fact, in diametric opposition.


You've installed EVERYTHING before installing 10.6.8, whereas I suggested installing NOTHING ("holding off" ), until after installing it, the goal being - for the third time - to find out if your problem is inherent in OS X, itself.


I made my suggestion to either lend credibility to or disenfranchise that possibility.


Hmmm... I thiiink you can split your backup drive into two partitions without erasing it, but I wouldn't advise your trying without confirmation from someone more on top of it than I am. (Of course, if you're only using it as a backup and not for data storage it won't matter.)

Your best bet is to clone 10.6.7 so you can update to 10.6.8 and have the clone to fall back on if your problem follows you; you've put in too much effort into getting it to lose it.

Since OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Apple's Disk Utility has had the ability to partition or re-partition a drive non-destructively, but only the unused portion of the drive can be in the new partition. So it is a good idea (almost imperative) to defragment the files and volume prior to repartitioning. You can find instructions here. Prior to Leopard TechTool Pro offered the same ability and would defragment the drive as well. Prudence dictates you should always backup a drive before attempting to repartition it as accidents can happen.

I haven't defragmented files on my hard drive for years. I can't even remember how many. I recall having a copy of Tech Tool Pro. But the new version was $100 and it seemed like a waste of money.

I followed artie's procedure and the problem returned, so I'm done trying to solve this one. It shall remain a mystery.

Well, at least you now know that it's beyond your control, apparently inherent in 10.6.8, and in the bargain, it sounds like your clean install benefitted you.

I wish I had the CD that came with this computer. I don't remember why I threw it out. That was a long time ago. This Mac was my introduction to OS X. There was a lot to learn. I didn't foresee frequent upgrades, installations, and reinstallations. Or insoluble problems.

To what end?