What you’ll need

All you need is any iOS device; this works with all versions of iOS, and only uses a website to set up the icons on the home screen. The only thing to keep in mind is to make sure you only add icons for settings your device actually has; for example, using the website, it’s possible to set up a shortcut to the Siri settings page, but only the iPhone 4S has that settings page, so the link will break on other devices.

Method

1. To get started, use your iOS device to open the IconSettings page, over on iPhoneZA. Scroll down and you’ll see a long list of links with the names of pages from the Settings app.
2. Tap one of the links to open a new page. A pop-up will appear asking if you want to open in Settings; tap cancel, because you still need to be in Safari for now.
3. Tap the Action icon in the toolbar, which looks like an arrow coming out of a box, then tap Add to Home Screen. A new sheet will slide in, allowing you to rename the shortcut if you wish. Wait a couple of seconds, and an icon will appear in the square to the left of the text field.
   
4. Tap Add at the top of the screen, and the icon will be added to your home screen. It can be moved and deleted in the same way as a regular app icon. Tap the icon, and you’ll be taken to the corresponding page in Settings. You can add as many of these to your home screen as you wish.
   

Things to consider

First of all, don’t worry about breaking any rules doing this; it’s all above-board, since these icons are simple links using Apple’s “prefs:” URL scheme. It’s the same as when a developer uses a custom URL scheme, so Apple is fine with people using it.

It’s also worth noting that although these shortcuts can make it easier to access buried settings pages with one touch, this isn’t quite the same as the popular jailbreak app, SBSettings, which actually toggles settings when you tap the icon, not just take you to the Settings app. However, short of jailbreaking, this is the best alternative.

Finally, you may notice that some of these don’t save much time over simply opening Settings. For example, Wi-Fi is right at the top of Settings, so it only takes a few seconds to open it manually. However, some of the other available icons are quite handy; for instance, Bluetooth is buried under General, and so takes a few taps to open. Using IconSettings makes accessing the Bluetooth settings a lot faster.

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Take a look at part of the home screen on my new iPhone 4. The icons look super sharp but Apple’s own Remote app still needs an update to take advantage of the higher-resolution display. In fact, it just looks plain gross compared to the rest of the icons.

Here’s a few more examples, this time of Apple’s own iDisk app. This particular app, which still lacks a native iPad version), really looks rough around the edges. (Click on these images to view a full size version.)

Consider the official new Apple Store app, which is being highly profiled and featured by the staff at local Apple Stores. The tab bar icons need a definite refresh. (Click on the image to view a full size version.)

Native iPhone UI elements, like segmented controls, text labels and navigation buttons are all automatically updated, however some of them still cause awkward interface goofs, like when receiving a message on Facebook.

The time it’ll take for developers to update their assets is indeterminate. Depending on how their interface assets were originally created (vector vs. rasterized files) could mean some developers have to re-design their interfaces from scratch.

Five months ago, developers were asked to update their apps to support a larger interface on the iPad. Though the iPad can automatically scale an iPhone app to twice its size, it’s generally agreed that such scaling does not look attractive at all.

If developers have been holding off delivering native iPad versions of their apps, now is a great time to polish their apps for the iPhone 4 because the increased resolution will automatically translate into a higher resolution on the iPad when iOS 4 ships for the iPad this fall. At least, until the next iPad revision sees a Retina Display-like update.

Has Apple put too much work on developers to keep their apps updated to take advantage of the latest and greatest? Apple could be feeling a bit of this weight itself, as some of its own apps, including MobileMe iDisk, Remote, Texas Hold’em, Keynote Remote and MobileMe Gallery are still not ready to shine on the iPhone 4. In fact, some of the more high-profile apps aren’t even designed to take advantage of the full canvas of the iPad, like the iDisk and Apple Store apps. Why not?

Do you develop apps? What do you think about how apps look on the Retina Display? Anxious for developers to update their apps to really look sharp? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Apparently this is only affecting a small portion of users running iPhone OS 3.0. It affects my iPod touch, but my iPhone isn’t showing symptoms of it, nor is my girlfriend’s. Apple hasn’t yet commented on or released an update to resolve the issues. For those who are having problems, here’s a simple fix, courtesy of the good folks at Truphone, whose app appears to be one of those affected by the bug.

Step 1 – Go to the Applications section of iTunes on your iPhone/iPod touch and uncheck the affected application.

Step 2 – Sync your iPhone iPod touch.

Step 3 – Go back into the Applications section of iTunes on your iPhone/iPod touch and recheck the relevant application.

Step 4 – Sync your iPhone/iPod touch again.

My own quick and non-scientific testing indicates that this is indeed an effective way of resolving these bizarre glitches, although I haven’t had a chance yet to do any kind of long-term test, so whether or not this is a permanent fix remains to be seen. Likely an official fix is coming in iPhone OS 3.1 anyway, and the apps affected continue to work (at least in my experience), so for now the Truphone solution is plenty good enough for me.

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Last week, we discussed the evolution, rhyme and reason behind some of Apple’s icons since the public release of OS X in 2001. This week, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the “Easter eggs” that are hidden in these icons.

Hidden Detail

An easy way to one up the competition when you release a new OS is to release your OS with bigger icons. Before Mac OS X, icons were limited to a paltry 32×32 pixels. It got the job done, but there wasn’t anything exactly spectacular about it. With newer versions of operating systems, Leopard brought about a new maximum size of 512×512 pixels and Windows Vista settled on a maximum size of 256×256 pixels. In the Windows world, that just meant your screen could be cluttered by large icons. But in the Mac world, larger icons meant they could take on a whole new meaning.

In a lot of these large icons, Apple has given extra detail, such as the flecks in folders, in an attempt to make them more photorealistic. (Cool tidbit: In Snow Leopard, a generic folder icon appears to open as you drag files into it.)

Here are a few examples where Apple has added Easter eggs to their icons.

The most recognized is the inclusion of Apple’s infamous Think Different poem on the TextEdit icon.

The Keynote icon from iWork ’09 references Q4 2009. Q4 stands for fourth quarter, the final quarter of a company’s fiscal year; results from both it and the full-year period are reported simultaneously. The writing depicted on the icon, quoted below, is actually lyrics from Spring Awakening. Thanks to Ken Drake for decoding it.

Hidden inside the Dictionary app icon is a reference to the Latin-esque placeholder text displaying “Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etiam.”

A closer inspection of the Disk Utility icon shows in tiny print, “Handle the hard drive carefully to avoid damaging the circuit board. Make sure you are properly grounded.”

Looking close at the iTunes icon, you can see “iTunes 7” and “Apple 2006” inscribed on the inside of the disc. (The file is a transparent PNG, so if you have issues seeing it, save it out to your computer and view it with a colored background).

The icon for Font Book features a book with an “F” and two type blocks for “A” and “K.” Was it intentional for them to read as “AFK,” or the abbreviation for internet slang “away from keyboard?”

The Mail icon is also “postmarked” with the phase “Hello from Cupertino, CA.”

Of course, even Apple’s own icon for Windows computers on a network takes on a very familiar sight.

Apple’s Dashcode icon features actual CSS code on the icon.

Interface Builder, Apple’s developer tool for creating user interfaces, also features extra detail, labeling its contents.

Jar Launcher, an application for loading Java JAR files, features code written on the napkin.

Apple’s icon for Aperture also features a familiar “Designed by Apple in California” line, seen on other Apple products. The other markings, 55mm and 1:1.4 indicate the lens has a large maximum aperture. Kinda fitting, don’t you think?

The Fun Goes On

Even other third party developers have been creative with messages hidden in their icons. For users of CSS Edit, look closely to find “ie sucks” on the icon. There are likely many other icons that feature these types of Easter eggs, so please use the comments below in case I might have missed some!

P.S. All of these icons were pulled from the original applications. If you’d like to explore and dig out your own, right click on an application and pick “Show Package Contents.” Inside the Resources folder you will find lots of glyphs and other images as well as a .icns file which contains the 512×512 version of the icon.

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Icon Garden

Any discussion of Apple’s icon design should begin with a discussion of some of Apple’s most infamous 8-bit icons from its original GUI. Apple used to feature large versions of these in its icon garden at 1 Infinite Loop, however at some point around 1998, Apple removed the icons. Featured amongst the garden were classic icons, such as the eraser, hand, stopwatch, and even Clarus the Dogcow. (Moof!)

Check out how the paint bucket is "filling" the grass with green and the paint brush and pencil have just finished "creating" the flowers.

Whoa! The eraser is erasing the flowers!

Similar Colors

Depending on how cluttered your Dock is, you may or may not have noticed that the most prominent colors chosen by Apple for its icons is from the blue family. This trend was originally favored in Apple’s hardware (the original Bondi blue iMac, for instance). Associated with the sky or the ocean (a la OS X’s original UI codename Aqua), the blue also evokes a sense of stability, trust and calmness. (It really does make the infamous Blue Screen of Death a lot less harsh than if it were red.) It wasn’t until the release of Leopard that Apple shipped with a default desktop background that wasn’t blue.

Evolution of Icons

Some icons in OS X have evolved over time. Occasionally there may be some rhyme and reason to changing icons, such as the inclusion of the video camera for when iChat AV was originally launched, or the major redesign of iMovie between iMovie HD and iMovie ’08.

Other times, icons are seemingly changed sporadically, like the evolution of the iTunes icons. Originally every new version came with a new icon, but even that trend has wavered.

Other applications have also seen different icons with new versions, such as Backup, iDVD, iPhoto and Keynote. Though the Keynote icon has not seen a drastic change since Keynote ’08, the version that ships with iWork ’09 updates the date of the fourth-quarter report on the icon to Q4 2009.

Alternative Uses

Some icons depict their contents, such as the icon for a photo or a typeface. Other icons present users with dynamically updating information, such as the iCal icon which changes to reflect the current date. Other icons “change” by badges that indicate various information (unread emails, download speeds, etc.).

Another example are icons for exported vCards. If you have set them up in Address Book, they will export with their photo in the icon.

With the introduction of Snow Leopard this fall, users will once again begin to find new uses for icons, as the operating system allows users to preview media directly on the icon itself.

Bonus iPhone Icon

If you haven’t had a chance yet to take your iPhone or iPod touch into Starbucks, when you do, you’ll notice a new icon in your iTunes Store app. Specifically the Starbucks icon, and it is the only navbar icon on the device that exists in full color and not the usual masked blue color as typically seen.

Have you noticed any other unique or interesting icon changes or features?

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While they may not reveal revolutionary changes, some graphic elements found deep in the iPhone SDK beta 5 do add to the mounting pile of evidence indicating Apple is indeed planning an iPhone hardware update in the near future. The images in question are icons associated with “iPhone2,1″, which is internal Apple code for the next significant revision of the device.

The icons in question show three-quarter views of the new hardware, though if you compare them with the icons for the existing iPhone 3G, it becomes immediately apparent that little to no difference exists between the two. This could mean one of two things: Either the new iPhone will be the same, superficially, as its predecessor, or Apple is merely using placeholder icons in order to mislead inquisitive souls or just hasn’t had the graphics department create new icons yet.

Since Apple is fond of design refreshes, I’m betting these icons are just placeholders and not accurate representations of what the next-generation device will look like. If rumors prove to be true, the upcoming iPhone will have a rubberized backing and lose the mirrored frame for the faceplate, which would call for quite a different icon indeed.

Alternatively, the new icons could also accurately reflect changes that are upcoming, since they are very small, and subtle detail changes are hard to identify. As MacRumors rightly points out, the iPhone 3G’s icon was outed prior to the device’s release in a similar manner last year. I guess we’ll just have to squint really hard between now and June 8 and try to attach significance to minor differences in the icon images, as is standard among Apple-watchers.

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Now, Cagan has clarified that the red circle was indeed placed by Apple, so it would seem that Apple is claiming to own a trademark on the wireframe globe. Commenters on Cagan’s own blog, speculating that he’d placed the circle himself, suggested that maybe the “Connect” logo was the actual culprit, since it so closely resembles the logo Apple uses for their new iTunes Genius service.

In either case, the graphics in question are not taken from any Apple source, hence Cagan’s confusion. In fact, if you’re a regular user of Adobe Photoshop, you may recognize them. Both are included by default as part of Adobe’s Custom Shapes set. In which case, it would mean that if Cagan were in violation of Apple’s trademark, then Adobe would be, as well, and to a far more serious degree, since they include the graphic in their industry leading, very successful photo editing program.

A quick search found out why Apple was arguing the icon’s use in the first place. They use a very similar (though not the same) graphic in the Clock app to represent “World Time.” Notice the differences in the screenshot below. Apple’s top and bottom horizontal lines inside the globe curl up at the ends while the one used in Kagan’s screen does not. Actually, that shouldn’t even matter, because upon closer inspection, both varieties are included in Adobe’s Custom Shapes.

Since his first priority is getting his App in the App Store, Cagan decided to just switch out the icon. But really, Apple should be challenged on things like this, lest we find ourselves unable to use any generic icons for fear of reprisals.

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Apple’s user interface is heralded as a sleek, modern experience. A great deal of attention is paid to the design of icons, and a guide is published to help ensure that developers also create icons which meet the standards of OS X.

If you’d like to use custom icons in OS X — whether for applications, files or folders — there are a couple of different ways to achieve your goal.

• On an individual basis — i.e. selecting individual files or applications and just changing that one icon
• On a system-wide basis — applying an ‘icon set’ to change the look and feel of all the OS X icons system wide

The Simple Method

The easiest method of changing individual icons requires no software, and is very straight forward. It essentially involves copying the icon from one file/folder/volume to another.

1. Select the item whose icon you want to stamp onto another.
2. Perform a ‘Get Info’ action, and select the icon towards the upper left of the window.
3. Press Command-C to copy the icon to the clipboard
4. Select the item you’d like to change the icon of, perform ‘Get Info’, then click the icon in the top left
5. Press Command-V to replace the icon with the one copied previously.

This is great for changing a limited number of icons. If, however, you want to change the appearance of the whole operating system, there is a need for a more powerful tool.

Using CandyBar

CandyBar is an application designed by Panic, which makes organizing and applying icons (and icon sets) remarkably straight forward. It costs $29, but there is a free trial available so you can decide whether it is worth your hard earned money.

CandyBar allows you to customize individual icons easily, including those which can be difficult to alter with the simple method (such as the Recycle Bin icon). It also provides the ability to apply a system icon set to your whole computer. This is useful if you’d like to change the style of folders system-wide, or alter the toolbar icons in the finder. The user interface for storing and applying icons is very straight forward.

Finding Icons and Resources

So you’re not starting from scratch, here are a few fantastic icon sets which will go a long way towards improving your Mac experience.

• Somatic – A thoroughly unique and ‘cartoony’ icon set, which can completely change the style of your Mac
• Agua – Alternatives to the default Aqua icons for OS X. Keeping a similar style, but with arguably a more simplified, professional style.
• Agua Folders – A set of Leopard-style folders, which make it easy to illustrate the content of your folders
• Litho System – A bright and well-worn system replacement icon set. Colorful and unique.
• Amora – Futuristic system and app icons, includes robots and mechanical devices in a black and white color scheme.

A great community and forum dedicated to Mac icons and themes is MacThemes, where you’ll find regular new releases and the latest news surrounding icon applications. Other communities and resources include:

• The Iconfactory – This is undoubtedly one of the largest Mac icon archives. It’s also the home of the CandyBar software.
• Pixelgirl Presents – Housing hundreds of Mac OS X icon sets that cover the full range from simple, professional icons, to funky and cartoon-style. If you’re looking for something unique, check out their designs.
• InterfaceLIFT – This site offers over 775 icon sets in a wide range of subjects. Some are better than others, but it’s an excellent resource.

If you come across any particularly good icon sets, please do let me know in the comments. In future articles I’ll be explaining how to customize the style of the OS X Dock, showcasing some interesting wallpaper applications, and highlighting how you can apply a different theme to your windows and applications.

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1. Does the application have a good icon? I mean some of the developers are great programmers, but they desperately need a graphic artist to design them some justice. I don’t hide my dock, so if I have to look at it I want it to be pretty.
2. Do I get convenient options or controls from the Dock’s contextual menu? Take for example, Mail lives in my dock for many useful reasons. One of these is the options I get from right-clicking on Mail’s Dock icon.

   With this I can immediately check my mail as well as create a new message or note. Did you also know that if you drag an item on the Mail icon it will attach the item to a new message? I do this frequently all day and its become part of my workflow.

3. Is the application used daily? I love being able to come to work in the morning and have immediate access to the things I need to do in my Dock. I used to fill it up with Applications, but with this little hack you can enable the Recent Applications menu in the Dock. I’ve found I really only use about 10 applications a day anyway.
4. Files and folders have to have many of these criteria as well. Most of the folders I put in my dock are current project folders, network volumes (they automatically connect if you put them in the Dock), and Downloads.

There you have it, very basic criteria for getting into the Dock. Its prime real estate for developers and more importantly Mac users.

What criteria do you have for your Dock?

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No sooner do I write about how I miss CandyBar then lo and behold it appears! CandyBar 3 was released today, available at Panic. It’s $29 for a license, and there’s a free 14 day trial if you want to take it for a spin first. A discount is available to registered users of either Pixadex 2 or CandyBar 2. Leopard only.

The new version is slick. Along with the usual icon swapping capabilities, there are two new features in CandyBar 3 – the ability to customize the dock, and direct integration of Pixadex. There are a number of new icon sets released at the IconFactory at the same time, all including dock mods. The dock to the right is from the icon set that comes preloaded, Float. It’s a fairly clean set, although I’m personally really liking the look of the dock in Amora. The understated black and red there is quite nice.

As a useful touch, the icons and the dock can be changed independently. CandyBar 3 also allows you to change system icons that it previously couldn’t, a nice feature given the number of strangely-bland system icons in Leopard.

Another nice feature is what seems to be the integration of QuickLook – a menu accessible by control-clicking on the icon thumbnails shows the ‘IconLook’ view, a comparison of the different sizes from 16×16 to 512×512 in a very QuickLook-like transparent black window. A nicely visible blue halo indicates icons that have changed from the default in the set.

The biggest benefit, though, is the combination of Pixadex and CandyBar, especially for people (like me) who tend to pick and choose single icons on top of a theme – this integration makes picking an icon as easy as choosing a song in iTunes. One click imports icons loose on your hard drive, although the trial version can only manage 250 loose icons. You can view, change, and use icons from this library as easily as those from iContainers. As before, you can also save your various choices as an iContainer for use later or on other machines.

Previously, I’d not been a particular fan of CandyBar, preferring the freeware LiteIcon (also recently updated for Leopard, but without dock-mod capabilities) and the not-free ShapeShifter. Still, Panic seems to have used the time before this release to make CandyBar 3 much more than just a compatibility update, with the new features making it an improvement over the solutions I’d tried in the past.

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