Sorry, I don't understand the comparison? How does Prelude have much to do with Apple's 'new' terminal font? And how does Microsoft play into this?

Apple has famous typographic literacy and graphic design taste.

But Microsoft, with a far worse reputation for taste, has employed famous typographers for each major release of its OS, contributing serious, important typefaces. Vista included Lucas de Groot's Calibri and Consolas, for instance.

Even Palm, a relatively minor company, has a real face commissioned for the Pre.

But Apple's new typeface is just a tweak of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Linux's open source monospace sans?

The major difference, as I see it, is that Apple includes fonts that are good for publishing, and Microsoft includes fonts that are good for reading on a screen. For example, Consolas is designed for a screen with sub-pixel rendering.

I think this difference is apparent in how fonts are rendered on OS X and Windows, i.e. Windows "snaps" fonts to pixel grids for readability.

What's the important print face Apple has released in the last decade? What have they done since Hoefler Text?

"Just a tweak" minimizes the work necessary to make typefaces (especially monospaced typefaces) produce good results. The hinting in Menlo seems to produce really good on-screen results on my Mac; preferable to Consolas, Liberation, BVSM, Pragmata, etc.

Not to disparage the people who worked hard on hinting Menlo, but I'm not sure that's work comparable to designing an entire major face family.

It's a different kind of work. I've purchased several typefaces with beautiful letterforms that are useless for coding on my mac because they are not hinted or hinted poorly. A couple more have really bad metrics that the "height"/"width" sliders can't really compensate for in the terminal.

In his Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs talks about taking typography and being fascinated by it in College.

Yes, I remember that. So you'd think they'd publish more typefaces.

Why? I think they would publish good typefaces, which is very different. And by and large they do.

Which would those be? The last font Apple seems to have commissioned was Skia (blech).

Zapfino is the most immediate counter that comes to mind. Monaco was for decades the best monospaced font going. My Mac has Futura on it (a fantastically influential and important font that I happen to dislike aesthetically a great deal), Gill Sans (probably the best sans serif body font), Hoefler Text (gorgeous), Optima and Palatino, for starters.

You don't need to commission new fonts if you have the good taste to buy the distribution rights for excellent existing fonts.

The only fonts in that list that Apple commissioned are Monaco and Hoefler Text, both from more than ten years ago.

I'm not complaining that Apple ships with a poor selection of fonts. I'm complaining that despite the heritage, they don't appear to be innovating with typography at all anymore. Microsoft is simply crushing them on this front.

You're confused. Microsoft isn't innovating here either. They're paying someone to innovate. That's why it's called "commission".

If Apple employed great type designers and was giving them nothing to do, that'd be a problem. But there's been no shortage of great font releases without Apple's patronage -- and all these releases can be installed on a Mac. So what's your real problem here?

I haven't seen Prelude in person, but it looks very nice in screen shots. How is the Pre rendering text?