marker-felt
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HelvetiNote for iPad long on looks, functionality
An app with a domain like DeathtoMarkerFelt.com has a clear objective. The app itself, HelvetiNote (US$2.99) is a note-taking application for the iPad meant for folks who dislike the aesthetics of Apple's own offering. Minimalist, attractive and useful, it's earned a spot on myiPad. Here's what I like (and don't) about the Notes alternative. I appreciate good design, but admit that I don't share the vehement opposition to Marker Felt that burns in the bellies of so many. It's cutsey, yes, and reminds me of a late-summer garage sale, but I can live with it. That said, Helvetinote looks beautiful. By default, it features black text (I'll let you suss out which font it uses) on a field of muted gray. There are two view options in both landscape and portrait orientations: with the toolbar or without. The toolbar includes a search field, an option to add a new note and a button to hide the toolbar. As you create more notes, they're also listed here chronologically. %Gallery-97340%
TUAW Tip: Say goodbye to Marker Felt notes
Many iPhone users have expressed negative feelings toward the default Marker Felt font used in the Notes application. Personally, I dislike it enough that I used a manual hack on my previously jailbroken phone to get some Helvetica relief, but since I haven't felt the need to jailbreak since the 2.0 upgrade, I've been living with Marker Felt for now. We got a tip today, though, that offers a quasi-solution for those willing to deal with a little extra hassle.A quick Google search reveals that we're not the first to discover this, but we thought it was worth sharing. If you're interested in trying it, go into the International keyboard settings in the General section of your iPhone or iPod touch Settings and select any of the Chinese keyboards in addition to your current keyboard. Now, go into an existing note or create a new one in the Notes application. Switch the keyboard to the Chinese keyboard using the globe icon to the left of the spacebar and enter a single character. Backspace it and switch back to your native keyboard. Presto, the note should be free of Marker Felt. Saving the note will reveal that the title in the list has also undergone the same font change, and future edits will maintain it.Adding new notes will require this little tweak every time, so it's not an all-around solution to the lack of font selection in Notes. If you're really, truly bothered by Marker Felt, however, it's a step in the right direction.Thanks David!
Gruber hacks iPhone Notes with Helvetica
Regular readers of Daring Fireball know John Gruber has an almost unhealthy fascination with the Helvetica font, but sometimes fanaticism pays positive results. Today he posted a hack to make the iPhone Notes application use Helvetica rather than the much despised Marker Felt font. The hack involves actually modifying the MobileNotes.app binary with a hex editor on your Mac and is thus probably not for the faint of heart. Needless to say you'll also need to have already hacked the iPhone enough to get access to the MobileNotes.app binary in the first place, but if you just can't stand Marker Felt here's a way to fix it. Gruber also warns, however, that there's no telling how long this hack will work, particularly with the forthcoming firmware update.
