I'm eager to test out Apple's upcoming MobileMe service, the .Mac replacement scheduled to launch in a few weeks. Unfortunately for many, my enthusiasm is matched by disdain for the MobileMe logo.
Gawker says "...it should be on a package of Japanese soap." Paul Thurrott notices a similarity between MobileMe and Microsoft WindowsME and Manhattan Offender asks flat-out: "Is 'MobileMe' the worst logo in the history of Mac?"
First of all, Manhattan Offender, Apple is the company that produced MobileMe and its graphic representation, not "Mac."
Remember, Apple is pushing this (get it?) as "Exchange for the rest of us." It's not a corporate product, but a consumer service with corporate-like features. We think the logo is airy and fun.
This is going to sound sad, but the one application that I have missed the most in upgrading to Leopard is CandyBar 2. I've always been something of a customization addict, and being able to take advantage of some of the beautiful icons that artists have made over the years to make OS X look its best is something I can easily spend hours doing, productivity be damned
Fortunately for me, Panic (the guys behind Transmit and Coda) have just released the Leopard-only CandyBar 3, meaning I can now resume wasting time making my desktop look its prettiest. CandyBar 3 adds more than just Leopard compatibility - it is a pretty substantial program overhaul. Not only can system icons be changed, the dock can be now be customized too (free Icon and Dock sets available from the geniuses at Iconfactory). Additionally, Panic and Iconfactory have merged the CandyBar and the Pixadex (kind of like iTunes for your icon sets) applications together, providing icon management and customization in one package, instead of two.
From the CandyBar 3 release notes:
Integrated CandyBar together with Pixadex with an entirely new interface
Added large (512 x 512) icon support
Leopard dock customization
Additional system icons
Quick Look integration
More reliable system icon restoration, and much more
The program can be downloaded for a 15-day/250-icon limit trial here. The program is $29 for new users. Owners of either CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 can upgrade for $24. Owners of both Pixadex and CandyBar 2 can upgrade for $19. Any user who bought CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 after October 1, 2007 qualifies for a free upgrade.
Now, if we can only get a Leopard-version of Shapeshifter out - I can totally optimize my interface!
This one is a little bit of inside (blogging) baseball, but I know a lot of our readers blog themselves and so might find this tip handy. Ankur Kothari (whose Quicksilver customizations we've mentionedbefore) has cooked up an excellent little Quicksilver plugin called IconGrabber that does exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to easily create an image of an application icon at an arbitrary resolution in one of several popular image formats. Using a few simple terminal commands to change the defaults you can select the default image size and format. So, for instance, here at TUAW we post lots of icons at 125px wide in the jpeg format. With IconGrabber I can now create those images in one step as you see above, where I'm saving the Time Machine icon to my TUAW pictures folder. If you're not a Quicksilver fiend, Ankur also has a stand-alone application to do the same thing. In any case, if you regularly need to extract icons as images, IconGrabber is a godsend.
Many folks commented on our recent post about adding those gorgeous drawer icons to your Stacks. As great as the originals are, however, a lot of you also wanted to know how to customize them. Fortunately, the original author was kind enough to make the blank drawer PNG available, so in this little tutorial I'll show you how to make your own customized drawer icons using nothing more than Preview. Obviously you can get much sophisticated results using a more serious image editing application, but Preview can do enough to get you the results you see above and since everyone has it, I thought it best to focus on using it despite its limitations.
There's not much more to say about this one-- you can probably guess what Refresh Finder does from its name, and while it is small and simple, it's also proof positive that even small and simple things can make life a lot easier. Keeping your Finder windows up to date isn't hard, but it's definitely helpful.
If you're at all like me, you didn't wait for too long after the last Stevenote to scour the Internet for that "blades of grass" Leopard wallpaper, just so you too could pretend it was October already and you were using 10.5.
Those of you out there (I have no idea how many of you there are-- we're all Mac nerds, right? ...right?) will have to join me in applauding reader Sebastiaan, who noticed that there was a new System Preferences icon in the latest Leopard build, and put it up for download. Spreading the actual icon (and the actual wallpaper, actually) is a no-no, but Sebastiaan's icon is only based on the same design, and not a copy of the icon itself.
And even if you aren't into deluding yourself about your version of OS X, it's still a good looking icon. Changing the icon yourself is possible, but using CandyBar is infinitely easier. You too can pretend, at least for a few months until Leopard actually releases, that you're a Leopard-using rockstar.
After my minor gripe that the iPhone's calendar app displays the proper date on its icon, even though Mac OS X's still doesn't, a few readers directed me towards iConiCal. Basically, all iConiCal does is start up up iCal to update its icon, then it quits both iCal and itself so you don't have extra apps eating up system resources, but you also gain an iCal Dock icon that keeps you up to date. iConiCal also gives you some icon customization options, offering two alternative colors for iCal's icon both in its dormant state and after it is updated. Of course, this app also has a 'start at login' option so your iCal icon can get set right when you log in or start up, so you won't have to think about it for the remainder of your session. For anyone clamoring to have an up-to-date iCal icon and those who aren't up for adding the date to their menubar by tweaking the Date & Time System Preferences pane, iConiCal sounds like a fine solution.
iConiCal is donationware available from BlockSoft.
If you've ever wanted to edit or customize an Application icon in Photoshop, creativebits has a nice tutorial that shows how easy it is to import your icons into Photoshop as a PSD file. Basically, the trick is to open the application's icon in Preview (as was pointed out in the comments, you can most easily do this just by copying it in the Finder and selecting "New from Clipboard" in Preview's file menu), then save it in Photoshop (PSD) format. Now you can open it in Photoshop and get access to the image for editing, including the alpha channel. Once you get that far you may want to check out the nice Photoshop icon tutorial we mentioned back in February.
Eagle-eyed TUAW reader Scott Reeves tipped us off to the newly updated Safari 3 icon. The icon, which appears here on the left, seems to have lost its degree notches that are quite prominent along the bottom right of the Safari 2 icon. In addition, the background map is far clearer with improved contrast, while the shininess of the "glass" has been played down a bit. The circles around each letter also appear larger. What other changes can you notice? Let us know in the comments.
We've found easy methods for hiding the icons of running apps in the Dock, but you typically have to get your hands dirty with editing files inside the app package itself. For users who prefer a more simple drag and drop operation, there's always Dock Dodger. From the same FoggyNoggin Software that brought usDesktopple Pro, Dock Dodger handles the dirty work of ensuring your app never shows its icon on your Dock; simply quit the app if it's running, drop it on Dock Dodger and restart it for the ultimate in 'what am I going to do with all this open space in my Dock?' experiences. While Dock Dodger performs the same editing of app files that you can do yourself, we'll still echo their recommendation of duplicating the original app first so you have a backup just in case.
The über-Mac geeks over at mac geekery answer a reader question I have often wondered about myself: is it possible to hide an application's icon so it does not appear in your Dock, even though the application is running? And the answer is yes, if you're up for a little bit of relatively easy hacking. Apparently all you have to do is drill down into the Application package (right-click on the application icon and choose "show package contents") and add one key to its Info.plist file. JC warns that this may have some unintended consequences, as the "Dock controls almost all aspects of application switching," so if you do this you may "lose" the application and have no way to interact with it. In addition some applications "interact with their Dock icon programmatically" (e.g. the way Mail.app shows the number of unread messages in its Dock icon), so this is not a good idea for those programs. However, if you have something that must run all the time, but with which you don't interact much, and whose Dock icon you want out of there (e.g. the DynDNS Updater client), this is a handy tip. One word of warning, be sure to duplicate any application you decide to try this on first, so that you can go back if necessary. A second word of warning, this affects the menubar as well as the Dock.
[Update: several commenters have mentioned Dockless, as a more user-friendly way of doing this. I originally misunderstood what Dockless did, but after a little more research it turns out that Dockless basically just automates the very same process this tip describes (i.e. changing the value of the LSUIElement key in the info.plist file).]
Regardless of what one might think about Disco as a functioning application, it's hard to deny that the latest app from the Madebysofa crew certainly has a unique look to it, and it is spiffy to boot. For the Disco application icon, designers Jasper Hauser and Hugo van Heuven collaborated to create something that I think deserves almost as much praise and attention as the application itself. Jasper has been kind enough to recount for us on his blog how the icon came to be, and the thought processes behind it.
Now that iTunes has had a full version update, and the commercial side of iTunes is officially called "The iTunes Store," one would expect to see a new application icon. I sure was surprised to see the blue 8th notes over a CD...haven't we seen this before? Oh yeah, it was essentially the icon for iTunes 2.0. Odd.
I was wondering if Apple would abandon the musical notes all together and come up with something completely new, but they went the retro route instead. I guess I like it.
mimiFoto is simple, yet brilliant. Do you tire of the stock iPhoto icon with that silly default picture? miniFoto lets you customize iPhoto's icon with any photo you like. And when you're sick of the TUAW logo peeking up from the Dock you simply 'Get Info' on iPhoto and cut the icon, which reveals the default icon that never went away.
Neato! Now, keep in mind this is a .1 release, so things might go a little wonky.
Are you getting tired of other good icons? Hawk Wings, obsessed with all things Mail.app, has tracked down a Photoshop template for creating your own Mail.app icon. Courtesy of John Godfrey, this Photoshop template contains instructions for inserting your own images into a Mail.app icon, and Tim Gaden also recommends rotating your inserted image to 11.2 degrees counter-clockwise, as well as using an 85 x 90 size to get just the right fit.
But, "how do I turn an image into a Mail.app icon?" you ask. Hawk Wings has a solution for that step too: img2icns is a Universal Binary freeware app that can convert JPEGs, PNGs, TIFs and GIFs to the ICNS format, ripe for using a previous (and simple) TUAW Tip for replacing Mail.app's icon with your much more exciting new creation.
I'm eager to test out Apple's upcoming MobileMe service, the .Mac replacement scheduled to launch in a few weeks. Unfortunately for many, my enthusiasm is matched by disdain for the MobileMe logo.
This is going to sound sad, but the one application that I have missed the most in upgrading to Leopard is CandyBar 2. I've always been something of a customization addict, and being able to take advantage of some of the beautiful icons that artists have made over the years to make OS X look its best is something I can easily spend hours doing, productivity be damned 
If you're at all like me, you didn't wait for too long after the last Stevenote to scour the Internet for that "blades of grass" 
After my minor gripe that the iPhone's calendar app displays the proper date on its icon, even though 
If you've ever wanted to edit or customize an Application icon in Photoshop, creativebits has a nice 
The über-Mac geeks over at 
Regardless of what one might think about 
Now that 
