In the excitement about Apple’s beta version of iWork.com – the web-based document sharing/collaborating feature of their iWork suite – people have been asking about fonts. Specifically, what happens when you use a font that that isn’t available on the receiving end of the shared document?

I thought immediately of the news that the nightly builds of Webkit support downloadable fonts. All it takes is a couple lines of CSS and, as Jobs would say, “Boom.” Webkit is cross-platform (Apple even ships Safari for Windows), open source, and arguably one of the most popular mobile browsers. No longer will Mac users have the excuse that they can’t work with anyone else, were they to use iWork. Apple benefits from the increased usage of Webkit and Safari and they get to show off how great their iWork documents look to users unfamiliar to Apple’s software aesthetic.

Why wouldn’t they do it that way? Digital Rights Management (or rather, the lack thereof).

Font foundries typically have strictly defined licences for their fonts, though there isn’t anything technical standing in the way of breaking those licenses¹. As DRM is slowly losing ground (if Apple’s “One Last Thing” from the Macworld Expo Keynote was any indication), will Apple drag the typography industry into the 21st century, into a landscape currently limited to a tiny handful of fonts? One can only hope.

Addendum:

In section 5 of the iWork.com Terms of Service, Apple says:

Changes to Content You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.

(emphasis mine)