Tablets and other mobile devices acting as unique, flexible control surfaces that can act with or without direct connection to their parent programs is an area that so far has only been lightly explored. Perhaps that’s because much of the focus so far has been on whether or not post-PC devices can truly operate independently of traditional computers. In our haste to prove they can, we may have overlooked the fact that sometimes, hardware codependence is a beautiful thing. Other software companies should take a close at what Adobe is doing here and see if something similar wouldn’t benefit their own products. Even Apple’s Final Cut video editing software cut definitely benefit from something similar.

Photoshop Touch will first be implemented in three official Adobe apps scheduled for May release, called Eazel, Color Lava and Nav. Each app essentially transforms your iPad into an additional control device or surface for your desktop-based installation of Adobe Photoshop. Adobe certainly isn’t the first to attempt this (there are apps that act as control surfaces for video and audio editing software, too, and even apps that work as game controllers), but it is probably the largest and most influential company to do so, and it has also gone a step further and made these tools available to third-party developers for use with its software.

The apps Adobe showed off work in a couple different ways. Nav allows you to create a custom tool palette, and also use a color picker and zoom controls. You can flip through open Photoshop files, and open files directly from your iPad in your desktop Photoshop installation. Nav is pure companion app, and doesn’t exist independently of Photoshop on the desktop.

Eazel and Color Lava, on the other hand, can work both with or without Photoshop itself being open. Eazel is an independent iPad painting app that very accurately simulates physical paint media (if the demos are any indication). It works independently, but allows you to transfer your paintings to Photoshop at any resolution, which means you can resize for print without any loss of quality. Color Lava, as its name suggests, is all about creating color palettes and swatches. These can later be synchronized with your desktop Photoshop, or it can be used in real-time with Photoshop open.

There’s also a video demo (see below) of one third-party Photoshop Touch app by Shawn Welch making the rounds (via MacRumors). It looks to act as a high-level management tool for all Photoshop installations on a given network. For example, you can open images simultaneously on all connected computers, and you also have very granular control over every individual running instance of Photoshop. Looks like a very handy tool for design studio art directors.

The apps previewed by Adobe show the company has been thinking carefully about how to extend interfaces to mobile devices in a way that makes sense. Each of the apps seems to work particularly well with a touch interface, and they do much more than treat the iPad as just another keyboard or mouse. These apps may leave some design professionals wishing the iPad had pressure-sensitive input (I know I was thinking wistfully of the Wacom-penabled Axiotron Modbook), but to dismiss them because of those kinds of hardware limitations is a mistake.

Adobe announced the Photoshop Touch apps and SDK alongside its CS5.5 paid mid-cycle upgrade, but according to the company’s official press materials, Touch apps will work with existing installations of Adobe Photoshop CS5 thanks to a free patch available May 3, 2011. I’m happy Adobe isn’t limiting the availability of these new features to CS5.5 customers, and I can’t wait to see how they work in an actual photo-editing workflow. Does anyone else think Adobe’s on the right track here?

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Vertical Buttons

I’ll start with the most obvious UI tweak: the close/minimize/maximize buttons. I understand why Apple made this change: it saves space. When you hit the maximize button in iTunes, you get the mini-player, which has vertical close/min/max buttons in order to save space. Apple used the same reasoning with the main iTunes window.

There is a way you can disable it. Fire up Terminal and enter the following code:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean YES

That will put the buttons back horizontally. You can change it back if you want to by changing the “YES” to a “NO”.

I don’t mind this change that much. I usually use the keyboard shortcuts to close or minimize iTunes anyway, and the vertical buttons do save space (if only a little).

Monochrome Sidebar

This one really irks me: Apple completely did away with color in the icons in the sidebar. To show you why this was such a dumb idea, I’m going to quote from Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines:

Making each toolbar icon distinct helps the user associate it with its purpose and locate it quickly. Variations in shape, color, and image all help to differentiate one toolbar icon from another.

Making all the sidebar icons monochrome makes it harder to identify them, especially since they’re all similar in size. Back in iTunes 9, you could easily tell where the iTunes Store was because its icon was green. In iTunes 10, you have to distinguish between the shapes, which is harder for us to do and takes more time.

There are currently a couple of hacks available to address this.

Show/Hide in the Sidebar

Another change made to the sidebar is getting rid of the triangle buttons on the left of list headings. These have been replaced by “Show/Hide” buttons that only appear when you’re hovering over a list name.

Album List View

Album list view is basically list view, but with albums on the side. A version of this existed in iTunes 9, but Apple tweaked the functionality of it as well as added a new toolbar button for it.

The New Icon

The new iTunes icon isn’t bad, it’s just not terribly interesting. I think Apple should have used a color other than blue, because, as Josh pointed out, there’s already a surplus of blue icons in OS X (Finder, Mail, Safari, iChat, QuickTime, etc). Purple would’ve worked nicely.

Apple chose to change the icon as the former “CD” icon has become less and less relevant in the age of digital downloads. But Apple could have taken it a step further. It could have changed the name as well, seeing as iTunes has long been for more than just music. My current favorite is “iMedia,” but that’s a little too broad; media can be images, as well. Also, “iMedia” doesn’t sound as good as “iTunes.” I think Apple will eventually change the name (and the icon to reflect that).

If you’d like tou can change the icon yourself:

1. Open your Applications folder in Finder and highlight iTunes.
2. Right click on it and select “Show Package Contents”.
3. Go to Content -> Resources and replace the iTunes.icns with a new one. There’s already some great replacement icons coming out, like this one from Mattias Ekstrom. Of course, you can also just use the old iTunes icon.

Conclusion

It seems to me like most of the changes in iTunes are changes for change’s sake; just to make it look newer. The only really new feature in iTunes is Ping, and that’s basically just a link in the sidebar.

Do you love or hate iTunes 10? What other new names might work for it? Tell us in the comments.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: With Ping, Apple Builds a Social Network Inside a Walled Garden

But when is touch too much? The latest rumors, coming from the Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper, as reported by DigiTimes, suggest that Apple will be launching a brand new addition to the iMac line in 2010 with a touch-enabled display. If the report is accurate, the new iMac would have a 22-inch screen, in between the current 21.5-inch and 27-inch models.

The report is based on a supplier called Quanta supposedly receiving the outsourcing contract to make the machines, with Sintek Photronic supplying the necessary touchscreen panels. The rumor is at least plausible, and even a likely next step coming from a manufacturer like Apple that has consistently done touch well and introduced it across much of its product line in some form or another. The question isn’t whether or not Apple will do it, it’s whether or not it should.

I get a tablet computer. I understand what that’s for, how people will use it, and how, thanks to mobility, touch controls make sense. I can’t say the same thing for touch-enabled desktops, except in special cases. For retail, sure, and for restaurants and other similar industry applications where touch has been used because it makes an exceeding amount of sense to do so, that I understand. But as I sit at my home office typing up this post, I wonder if I would derive any benefit by being able to control my iMac by touching the screen versus using my mouse.

In fact, I already sort of have touchscreen computing capability in my iMac, via a connected Wacom Cintiq monitor. Admittedly, you have to use a stylus, so it isn’t exactly the same, but I still finding myself abstaining from using it for anything but drawing and photo editing. Even the Sony Vaio L (check out the second “Con”) and other PCs already on the market with the tech built-in strike me as fairly silly. I’ve used them on display in Best Buy and the like, but that’s an entirely different thing from sitting at a desk and using it for many hours at a time.

Touch control will also be shoehorned into a number of different applications. Unlike the more expensive versions of Windows 7, Snow Leopard isn’t designed to work on a touch-enabled machine, and neither are any of the Mac apps you’d be using with your computer. I can see flick scrolling and image browsing being a bit of a boon, but not enough to merit the inclusion of the tech, especially when it would mean constantly having to switch from using the mouse to interacting with the screen in all likelihood.

Where touchscreen desktop computing has been introduced, it has faced questions about how truly useful and effective it is. Galen Gruman at TechWorld describes his disappointment with the Windows 7 implementation of touch in a piece that soberly addresses the tech’s current shortcomings. In this excerpt, he discusses some UI and feedback problems with the idea:

[O]n a touchscreen, your hand and arm obscure your view of where your fingertip actually is, making it hard to actually touch the intended radio button, close box, slider, or what-have-you. It doesn’t help that these elements are often small. And there’s no tactile feel to substitute for the lost visual feedback.

It’s far from his only strike against touchscreen desktop computing, but even on its own, it describes an issue so annoying as to set me against the concept of a touch sensitive iMac, at least until the next generation of OS X takes touchscreen computing as its focus instead of as an afterthought or add-on.

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Writing in the New York Times last week, Nick Bilton quoted two unnamed sources (so we really only have his word to go on) in a piece that definitely got Apple fans’ hearts racing and wallets twitching;

…the icing on the cake comes from a current senior employee inside Apple. When one of my colleagues here asked if the rumors of the Apple tablet were true, and when we could expect such a device, the response from his source was, “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”

When El Jobso is happy, Apple is happy. When Apple is happy, they release stuff – shiny, sexy new stuff. And when Apple releases new stuff, we all get a little poorer. Financially. Obviously the emotional and spiritual gains of owning a shiny new gadget with a glowing fruit on it far outweighs the usually crazy-high asking price set by the Cupertino mothership.

Bilton also added;

Yet another recently departed Apple employee tipped me: “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

So, aside from Steve’s happiness, what’s this ‘surprise’? MacRumors points to a patent application published on Christmas Eve that might provide a clue about what’s to come. I wouldn’t want to spoil any potential surprise, so if you don’t want to read about “Keystroke Tactility Arrangement on a Smooth Touch Surface” it’s best not to read-on.

Still here? Good. Patent #20090315830 is actually an extension of sorts, fleshing out an earlier patent filed in 2008, which described a method for a “Momentarily Enabled Electronic Device” (#20090315411 for those of you keeping a record). The short of it is that these patents together detail the major drawback of smooth-surface keyboards – they’re not user friendly. Apparently, users prefer actual physical keys to perfectly flat “virtual” keys.

But the problem with physical keys, as Señor Steve so eloquently explained at the iPhone announcement in 2007, is “…they get in the way.” The solution, then, would be some sort of temporary physical keyboard that comes to life when we need to type, but magically vanishes when we want to swipe. And when I say “vanishes” I really mean it goes away, completely, returning the full surface area to us for touchy-feely operations.

It sounds like science fiction, but these patents essentially describe methods for providing just that – a temporary, malleable physical keyboard that “pops up” through the normally-smooth touchscreen surface and slinks away again when it’s not needed.

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty awesome. It sounds a lot like a piezoelectric keyboard to me, a technology that’s been around for decades but not very successfully implemented in consumer electronic devices.

I’m not going to spend time speculating much on other potential interaction surprises; voice control, for instance, would be a natural extension of technology already found in iPods and iPhones (and, to a far more limited extent, Mac OS X itself) but voice control is almost always cumbersome and unrewarding despite occasional flurries of excitement around the concept. Eye tracking or gesture-tracking are possible, but even less likely (though they would certainly be surprising!)

No, at this point, we have reasonably compelling evidence for only one big surprise, and it’s buried in the patents linked above. And while piezoelectric keyboards (or however Apple achieves this technology) aren’t too new or surprising for geeks as long-in-the-tooth as me, you can bet your iMac it’ll leave the general public stunned.

Especially when Steve Jobs takes the stage and makes the announcement in inimitable Jobsian style. Just twenty nine days and counting…

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A nice feature is the streamlined description area, which has been “tamed” for the developers who tend to abuse the area, filling it with excessive information and keywords in an attempt to gain favor in the App Store search results. The new system truncates the description past a certain point, allowing the rest to be disclosed upon clicking a “more” link.

New App Store Look

Also highlighted along the left side is a more organized view of the specifics of the app (version, developer and rating) as well as a quick way to see the most popular apps also by the same developer.

Recommendations based on other user’s purchases are now along the bottom, augmented by the inclusion of the app’s icon, which is a nice addition.

New Visual Recommendations

At the moment, featured apps that have custom designed pages (like Twitterrific) still use the original look, but it’s likely that Apple will migrate them over to the new style soon.

For comparison, check out the screenshots below of the same app. What do you think of the new look? Does it highlight the app better? Do you find it more useful or usable?

iTunes 8 & Earlier App Store Interface

iTunes 8 & Earlier App Store Interface

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The one thing many people did not expect with a new version of iTunes was that Apple would use the opportunity to cause dissent among its fanbase by introducing another new user interface. Some classify the new styling as “needed” and “elegant and refined” while others have resorted to a variety of hacks to return to the UI of yesteryear.

We’ve gone through every corner of iTunes we could find and dug up all of the major changes in the interface. Here’s what we found.

Welcome to iTunes 9

The first thing many noticed is that iTunes 9 now launches with a Welcome to iTunes screen, offering quick links to videos showcasing some of iTunes features. Similar to apps like iPhoto and iWeb, users can disable this by ticking a checkbox.

iTunes Preferences

iTunes Preferences also featured a few notable changes, specifically adding support for grouping iTunes U content.

iTunes 9 General Preferences

iTunes 8 General Preferences

Parental Control also received a new icon (matching the icon in Snow Leopard) as well as some slight rewording.

iTunes 9 Parental Controls

iTunes 8 Parental Controls

Removed from iTunes 9 are references in the Store section to “adding to shopping cart” versus buying with Amazon’s licensed 1-Click technology. Added is an option to use the full window when browsing the iTunes Store.

iTunes 9 Store Preferences

iTunes 8 Store Preferences

Browsing Content

Browsing content within iTunes has also received a refresh. While browsing music in List Mode, the artists have been grouped along the left, making it easier to narrow down your selection rather quickly.

iTunes 9 Music List Mode

When browsing in Grid View, the first thing you will notice is that the dark black background is gone and now albums are scattered amongst an off white background. Badged content, such as Podcasts, TV Shows, iTunes U and Movies feature blue badges instead of the original red. Gone from this view are the tabs to sort content within an area (such as Music) by Albums, Artists, Genres and Composers. This can be re-enabled via the View menu.

ITunes 9 Podcasts

Cover Flow view is pretty much the same, with the refining of the “full screen” icon.

iTunes 9 CoverFlow

The iTunes 9 Equalizer also received a refresh, styling the control knobs with blue accents.

iTunes 9 Equalizer

iTunes 8 Equalizer

Icons & Buttons

Buttons and displays in iTunes 9 have been overhauled to give them a more glossy, shiny three dimensional look. The toolbar has also been realigned, removing the ‘View’ label and moving the ‘Search’ label instead the Search field. The information area has also been updated, providing more useful information during syncing and downloading of content from the iTunes Store (such as time remaining).

iTunes 9 also brings about many refreshed icons, including many of the icons in the sidebar. Specifically, playlist icons have gotten the most attention, while TVs, Movies, Audiobooks, and Applications have seen slight refreshes as well.

Syncing

Syncing is by far the area that received the most attention in this revision. Specifically, users now have the ability to sync content more selectively. When choosing a TV show, for instance, they can sync specific seasons or specific episodes. When syncing a podcast, they can choose to sync specific episodes. When syncing photos, users can take advantage of the iPhoto ’09 Faces and Places aspect to sync photos of particular people or a particular place. Many of these areas also provide a search field, making it easier to quickly narrow down and select the specific content you’re looking for.

Syncing TV Shows

Syncing Ringtones

Syncing iTunes U

Syncing Music

Syncing Photos

The biggest feature in the redesigned sync options is the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch apps directly within iTunes. Check the ones you wish to add, highlight to select them and drag them to whichever home screen you desire. Selecting multiple apps is a cinch and moving them between home screens is equally easy.

Syncing Apps

Everything Else

Upon a user’s first visit to a section, such as creating a new Playlist, or visiting the Podcast area, they are greeted with a new UI that discusses how that particular concept works.

iTunes 9 New Playlist

While this overview is fairly exhaustive, there are likely many other features that users will continue to discover. If there’s one we’ve missed, please use the comments to let us know!

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Even though I will warn you, as I was warned, that these videos are almost certainly clever fakes, the Mac addict portion of your brain will likely still experience a pleasurable thrill when you see them. I first saw these over at Cult of Mac, but they’ve been making the rounds, with TechCrunch and Gizmodo also weighing in on the veracity of these movies purporting to show the upcoming Apple tablet device in action, running iPhone OS.

Note that this isn’t claiming to depict a production model of the tablet, but rather some kind of development hardware toolkit in action, which is supposedly why the volume controls and other buttons are located on that external hardware controller device and not on the tablet itself. Additional screenshots have been posted to the MacRumors forums, with some showing the “About” panel, mobile Safari in action, etc.

The problem is, if this is supposed to show something that’s actually made by Apple, then it’s very early days indeed. Apps mostly seem to run in their original resolution, so that you end up with what looks like a bunch of different iPhones running simultaneously on the same screen. Assuming the device was anywhere near complete enough to be in the hands of a few lucky developers, I’d also have to say that Apple would likely have done a little more work on its own basic software suite.

Despite the iPhone-emulator feel of the demo, it is undoubtedly cool, and whoever has invested the time and money to come up with this deserves massive kudos for doing so. At the very least, it appears to allow true app multi-tasking, which is something that actually makes the concept of a large-scale iPod touch-type device genuinely appealing. The dock-like app bar at the bottom of the screen is another great idea, since a home screen-style setup on a device this size would probably make for a rather cluttered UI.

There is a very small chance this could be real, and if it is, it raises a lot of questions about how Apple will deal with running iPhone apps on significantly different hardware (the keyboard, for instance, which can’t possibly stay relegated to a small, fixed space), and how third-party developers will deal with the same issues. Really, the whole thing makes me suspect that a straight-up port of iPhone OS for such a device really isn’t the best solution, and that instead a Snow Leopard install that takes some touchscreen cues from 3.0 makes much more sense.

Check out the videos below.

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If you ask any of the Apple “fanboys” why they are so devoted to Apple, at least one of the reasons you will hear is that Apple “sweats the small stuff,” which really proves its dedication to user experience and attention to detail.

Here’s a few of my favorites that demonstrate Apple’s attention, not just to its hardware and software, but to even the product packaging. See how many you may have noticed before, and feel free to add any that I might have missed in the comments below.

Serial Numbers

In the world of computers, serial numbers are important for a variety of reasons, including verifying warranty status and determining the correct specifications, to name a few. Many Apple products feature, in addition to their standard serial number, a barcode that makes reading this serial number much easier for Geniuses or other technicians.

Though some newer models have forgone barcodes, such as the 2009 model MacBook Pros and MacBook Air, barcodes can still be found on many other Apple products. In addition to serial numbers represented as barcodes, some Macs, like the Mac Pro, also include a barcode for the system’s MAC address. Though it changes from model to model, Apple has often put these barcodes and serial numbers in easily accessible places.

On the Power Mac G5, the serial number was located on the inside of the tower, behind the aluminum side panel. On iMac G4s and eMacs, the serial number was located on the inside of the optical drive cover. This really made it easy to quickly locate a serial number if you couldn’t access it through the OS.

Fiat Lux a la Mac

As many people leave their Macs running non-stop throughout the day, they have likely stumbled upon the infamous sleep light. Much like a heartbeat (or “snoring”), the little light pulses while your Mac sleeps. When the iMac G5 originally shipped, its sleep light indicator was bright! It didn’t bother people during the day, but for those who kept their iMac in an office or bedroom, it could light up the whole room at night. Apple issued a firmware update that reduced the sleep light’s brightness during evening hours, giving a much more relaxing pulse than before.

Beyond sleep lights, other indicators on newer Macs are typically hidden until needed. Take for instance the iSight indicator light, built into displays, which is seemingly non-existent until the camera is activated. Similar to the sleep light on the unibody MacBook Pros, the power light on the new aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard blends in seamlessly until its activated. The thin aluminum that has been perforated with tiny holes for the light to shine through, but when there is no light, the keyboard looks seamless.

Indicator lights on power adapters are also worthy of mention. With once quick glance, you can easily see what is going on. If the light is amber, the battery is charging. If the light is green, the battery is fully charged and ready to go.

Another interesting use of light is the Apple logo on the rear of the portables. The light that illuminates this logo is simply excess ambient light from your display. Go ahead and take a look. Lower the brightness on your display and watch the apple dim.

Product Shots

The next time you see a promotional shot for an Apple product, take notice of the time. For many years, whenever a Mac has been shown displaying the OS X desktop, the clock indicates the system version that the Mac ships pre-installed. This trend even carries forth to Apple’s retail stores, where display signage and wall banners that showcase Leopard prominently feature the system clock at 10:50. Due to only having 60 minutes in an hour, showing a clock at 10:60 for Snow Leopard would not make much sense. Pre-release screenshots from Apple still display 10:50, so this trend will likely end soon.

In the iPhone arena, all of the promotional images of the iPhone and iPod touch all display 9:42 (except one preliminary image,which displayed 9:41). What’s the significance of this? Some think it may relate to the time the iPhone was originally introduced; others see it as a somewhat disjointed homage to Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.” Most of my research seems to confirm that 9:42 was the actual time of the iPhone announcement during Steve’s keynote in 2007.

Hidden OS X Easter Eggs

Apple’s attention to detail moves beyond the hardware and into its software as well. Take for example the Clock widget in the Dashboard. Look closely at the second hand and notice how it vibrates much like a real clock does.

For those that use Mail, as you drag the divider between the date column to expand or make the column smaller, the formatting of the date dynamically adjusts to fit. If there’s room to display the time, it shows up. As you make the column smaller, the formatting reduces to fit. Most email applications would just truncate whatever did not fit in the column.

This is just a small list of a huge number of little details found on a lot of Apple products that really make them a joy to use. The tipping point, so to speak, is that Apple doesn’t market any of these as “features,” it’s just the fact that they took the time to integrate them subtly into the Apple experience that makes it all worthwhile.

If you’ve found other examples of Apple’s attention to detail, let us know in the comments!

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Immediately, you get the cool vibe when using it. As a geek, I must say it’s just as slick as the video presentations we’ve seen. Though probably much better suited for the multi-touch interface it was designed for, at face value the features seem pretty useful. (Or at least a good alternative to the native Desktop.) But is BumpTop going to be worthy of daily use in place of the vanilla desktop we’re all used to? Right now I think its focus is a little too narrow for that. Here’s why.

BumpTop is first and foremost an application that runs in place of your computer operating system’s desktop interface. It’s neat, but it’s the Desktop, which is usually covered-up by the applications you’re actually using 90 plus percent of the time. In many cases, one of the applications being used quite regularly is probably a file browser, like Finder. This is the space into which I think BumpTop could become a great fit because honestly, who keeps the majority of their files right on the desktop?

Personally, I just don’t focus on my desktop all that much. Some of the craftier among us have begun making their desktops pretty interactive (by using widgets and GeekTool, for instance — see Lifehacker for some of the cool stuff I’m talking about), so they may have room to disagree. For now though, they’re in the minority. But I submit that many of us spend more time in the likes of Finder, looking for files to work with. If BumpTop can come up with a more file-browser-centric strategy, I think it will gain more longevity. Otherwise, I think its cool factor will wear off after a short honeymoon period and fall by the wayside for many users.

You can sign up to get updates on the availability of the Mac version by entering your email address at BumpTop’s web site. If you have a Windows machine, that version is currently available to the public, so you can download and enjoy it for yourself.

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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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