Tom Warren at The Verge, writing about some half-finished themes found in this week’s XP source code dump:
One is labeled “Candy” and includes a design that closely resembles Apple’s Aqua interface that was first introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2000. Although the theme is incomplete, the Windows XP Start button and various buttons and UI elements are clearly themed to match Apple’s Aqua.
iOS 14 and apps like Widgetsmith have unlocked a new world of iPhone home screen customization. Many of us on the nerdier side of things have been a bit surprised when seeing images like this, from 9to5Mac:
However surprised those in our community may have been, it’s clear that this is a big deal. How-to guides have not just shown up on tech blogs looking for some of that sweet SEO, but users are uploading videos and screenshots across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
I never dabbled in this, but I am impressed at this collection by Jordan Eldredge
Yours truly, writing for Six Colors members:
Any time there is a big set of UI changes in macOS, I like to see what Apple has done to the System Preferences app.
I wasn’t surprised to find that there is currently only one Emoji that includes a visible medical face mask. However, I was sad to see that the expression on the faces of every version of this Emoji looked rather gloomy.
No doubt when this emoji was first introduced, face masks in Western society were primarily worn by professionals or those under medical care. However, we have since joined our brothers and sisters in places where medical face masks are worn by everyone and as some people have pointed out, this makes communicating emotions through facial expressions really tough.
I love the design of these pieces.
The original NASA insignia is one of the most powerful symbols in the world. A bold, patriotic red chevron wing piercing a blue sphere, representing a planet, with white stars, and an orbiting spacecraft. Today, we know it as “the meatball.” However, with 1970’s technology, it was a difficult icon to reproduce, print, and many people considered it a complicated metaphor in what was considered, then, a modern aerospace era.
Last week, I linked to this blanket that features designs by Susan Kare. I ended up ordering one and have opened it over on Instagram. I’m going to work out a way to hang it in my studio.
I’m thinking this would look good as a tapestry in my studio:
The original emoji, Cairo was a typeface designed by Susan Kare in 1984 for the first Macintosh operating system. Taking its name from the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, each symbol was drawn by hand using the bitmap grid. A few notable symbols lived on into later operating systems including the cursor and watch.
Kare designed this woven blanket for the Jacquard loom, an early example of computer-controlled machinery, operated with punched cards and invented by Joseph Jacquard in 1801.
At Macworld 2000, Steve Jobs unveiled the user interface for Mac OS X. It was called Aqua.
Aqua, as seen in the Mac OS X Public Beta
I love how Jobs introduced it:
When you design a new user interface, you have to start off humbly. You have to start off saying “What are the simplest elements in it? What does a button look like? And you spend months working on a button.”
From their video, I like the look of the new material a lot more than I thought I would. Looking forward to seeing these in stores on Friday.
Andrew Levitt has published a pretty cool video about the macOS wallpapers:
My friends and I visited and recreated every default Apple wallpaper on a one week road trip. Starting with MacOS Mojave in Death Valley National Park, we traveled to each of Apple’s California Locations to try and make an identical photo to their wallpapers that come installed with every new Mac computer.
We visited Mojave, Sierra, High Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks. Now we just have to go visit Catalina for the MacOS Catalina launch!