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Many know the difference between a font and a typeface, especially those with design backgrounds, but for most, no. To the general public, a font is what actually a typeface is.

A typeface is the design of text characters, such as Times New Roman, Arial, and Sans Serif. A font is the weight, size, boldness, or italicization—the style.

So why is a typeface commonly referred to as a font, even for those who already know the difference?

Because of Steve.

Briefly, Apple in 1984 introduced the revolutionary Macintosh 128k. The PC came with applications that were really ahead of their time, such as its word processor MacWrite and MacPaint. These offered a variety of typefaces users could choose from. The proportional spacing of characters and graphical user interface (GUI) were initially developed by Xerox and first launched in their not-so-commercial $32,000 Xerox Alto in 1973, but these features were still not offered in most computers at the time.

Steve, however, used the word "font" in his Macintosh 128k instead of "typeface," and the word "style" instead of "font." With the Mac popularizing this new GUI technology, the misuse of the term "font" became the norm.

The Macintosh 128k also brought the human-computer interface technology developed by Ben Shneiderman, which allows users to use mouse pointers to drag and drop items—something unnoticeable today but pioneering at the time.

One of the earliest typefaces offered on the Macintosh was Chicago, developed by Susan Kare for Apple, which was later used for the iPod; I also used it here for the cover photo.