1.) Change the "Bitmap Zoom" in the preferences to 1 if you want lower resolution bitmaps or your older computer is overwhelmed by the huge bitmaps.

2.) This would be a nice feature. The orientation cube code is completely modular, so you can update the simple cube project to develop this. You could either do this with texture wrapping or by drawing the text as triangles:
  https://github.com/neurolabusc/Metal-Demos/tree/master/cube
You can issue a pull request when you are ready to share your solution with the rest of the community.