New iPads Arrive: Typekit Fonts Now a Blogging Necessity

Today was a busy and glorious day. Our new iPads arrived three days early from China and we enjoyed setting them up via iCloud and experiencing our first, if limited, tastes of LTE on Verizon. In Jersey City, LTE comes and goes in our apartment. Sometimes it flickers to life. Other times, we’re stuck on 3G with no way to understand the why or wherefore of being pressed off the LTE network. Here’s a quickie screenshot I was able to grab of my iPad on LTE with two service bars active. 5.67 Mbps down and 0.19 Mbps up.

Those are not great numbers compared to my Comcast WiFi network: 24.04 Mbps down and 9.46 Mbps up, but Verizon LTE does beat Verizon 3G by a speed factor of two. So far, LTE is a big “Meh” moment. Perhaps a visit to Bryant Park in Manhattan tomorrow will prove better LTE connectivity results.

One thing I immediately noticed about my new iPad is that the retina display is a pretty cruel friend. Websites and images that looked really outstanding on the iPad 2 now sorta suck when viewed with a retina display that’s bigger than an iPhone 4S.

Here’s what the Boles Blues blog looked like on my new iPad. This screenshot is much more forgiving than the retina display. The body font was hard to read unless you pinched it bigger to make the fonts easier on the eyes.

I decided there was only one thing to do for all 14 blogs in the Boles Blogs Network: I had to go back to Typekit and install some funky fonts that would look better on retina displays the world over!

And so I did…

Here’s what Boles Blues looks like now with the new fonts — and on a retina display, the whole blog reads 100% cleaner and clearer:

Here’s what the Panopticonic blog looks like now with some new Typekit fonts styling:

It took me most of the afternoon to bring all the fine Typekit fonts to all our blogs again, but the effort was worth it because we now have memorable headline fonts and super-readable body fonts for all our published articles. I love my new iPad, but just a few hours after unwrapping, it’s starting to already cost me more money in my real online life.