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30 Apple-Themed Desktop Wallpapers

Andrew Bednarz — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:00:55 +0000

Is your desktop background getting boring? Perhaps something new is just what the doctor ordered. And what better way to show your love for Apple that an Apple-themed (Hey, this is TheAppleBlog remember. If you don’t love Apple, why are you here?) wallpaper! I scoured the Internet and found a whole heap of nice shiny wallpapers. Here’s a collection of my favorites.

Celebrate the Apple Logo

The Apple logo is an icon that’s instantly recognized around the world, and will no doubt long be writ down in the annals of history.

Download here

Celebrate Apple Devices

Of course sometimes you can sick and tired of staring a piece of fruit with a bite taken out of it. Apple’s hardware designs have always been sleek and smooth and provide a nice alternative to the iconic fruit.

Download here

Celebrate Misc Apple-themed

Variations on existing apple wallpapers and icons, instantly recognizable (by us Apple fans anyway), but with a slight twist.

Download here

Can’t Decide?

Don’t forget, you don’t need to be stuck with one wallpaper. In the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preference pane you can tick “Change Picture” and select options such as “Every Hour” or “When waking from sleep.” Select a specific directory where you keep desktop folders as the source and keep adding pics to it for a look that never gets old.

Post us more!

This is only a sample of the offerings available from ever-creative Apple fans around the world. What are your favourite Apple-themed desktop wallpapers? Post links to them in the comments.

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iPhone Developer Too Cheap to Buy Icons [UPDATED]

Olly Farshi — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:10:57 +0000

It may be the season of good-will, but one naughty iPhone-developer has decided to play the role of Scrooge in the iTunes App Store.

Movies, created by French developer, Olivier Bernal, went live at the App Store on December 19. The app, retailing at $2.99, allows users to grab essential information on the latest box-office releases.

The icon for Movies clearly features a watermark from iStockphoto, a royalty free image library, implying that rather than purchase the master image, Bernal has pilfered the preview sample.

This particular iStockphoto license (including the ‘Electronic Items for Resale’ addendum) is available for 115 credits. At 95 cents per iStockphoto credit, this would be a one-off cost of $109.25. Bernal would therefore need to generate only 37 sales of Movies to cover the cost of the image license.

Achieving just 37 sales is hardly a difficult objective when you also consider that, in order to maximize the potential customer-base for his app, Bernal has created several iterations using the same icon, including Cinema and Cinema UK.

It seems that this may not be the first time Bernal has pilfered from iStockphoto. There are two more highly suspect app icons – TV Shows and Week Number of the Year. The TV Shows icon features a white diagonal line, quite possibly from an iStock Photo watermark. The latter of the pair, clearly uses an iStock Photo sample, titled Calendar – icon idea.

It’s not as immediately obvious as our prime suspect, but enlarging the app icon and then comparing it to the iStockphoto sample image, the original watermark is easily visible.

Sites such as iStockphoto provide a valuable service to organizations with limited design resources, allowing independent creatives to distribute royalty-free visual assets at reasonable rates. It’s therefore somewhat disappointing to see independent developers effectively stealing — surely they should understand the value of content generated by fellow independents?

Furthermore, setting aside development time and cost, distributing via the App Store is hardly prohibitive in terms of initial outlay: Apple charges a one-off fee to developers of $99. It seems that either saving a few bucks or just downright laziness on Bernal’s part led him to grab the sample imagery from iStockphoto.

The question is, now that Bernal has been called out on his immoral icon antics, what will his next move be? It’ll be most interesting to see how he handles the designers whose creations he has illicitly profited from; ideally, after a hasty apology, Bernal will be compensating them for their contribution to his App Store products.

Note that we’ve tried to reach Bernal for comment on the story but have yet to hear back. We assume he was too busy shoveling a mountain of coal from his stocking, stealing bonbons from children and kicking puppies.

UPDATE: We heard back from Mr. Bernal:

For [your] information, I bought the right to use the pictures this morning. You were right, at the beginning I first started with nothing and can’t afford to pay for the pictures, it’s perfectly normal to pay if I intend to continue to use it.

He says the updated, non-watermarked icons will be implemented with the next updates to the applications sometime in January.

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Logo Wars Continue Over Apple’s Forbidden Fruit

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:00:50 +0000

After targeting New York City’s GreenNYC campaign earlier this year, Apple is now threatening The Victoria School of Business and Technology for infringing on the Apple logo.

The school, located in British Columbia, Canada, contends the claim of infringement:

We strongly disagree and say so in our reply letter. Whether you agree with Apple, or say no you don’t agree we invite you to vote, and/or post your comments. We don’t have their deep pockets for a legal fight so we thought we would let the public bear witness and see if Apple might learn to play nice … not that we are naive, but hey, they may surprise us :-)

Posted along with the comment is an informal poll asking visitors whether they believe the school’s logo can, in fact, be confused with Apple’s corporate trademark. At the time of this writing, the vast majority of respondents (72% of nearly 5,000 responses) agree with the school’s opinion that the logos cannot be easily confused.

In this case, the claims are not totally out of left field (like they seemed to be with GreenNYC) since the VSBT is a tech school. Are they taking advantage of the Apple association to attract more students and therefore more tuition dollars? Or has Apple tightened, rather than loosened, their legal reigns?

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Want to feel creative? Checkout the Apple Logo

Jethro Jones — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:25:44 +0000

Wallpaper from WallpaperStock

Finally, we have something to do with the Apple stickers that come in all the Apple products we buy.

According to a recent report by Duke and Waterloo Universities, people respond to quick views of logos in a way that reflects the company’s values. They tested 341 university students using what is called a visual acuity test, which is where they flash the image in front of a person for such a short amount of time that the respondents could not identify their logo with a $100 on the line.

After the logo was flashed, participants were asked to identify a use for a brick. “Those who had seen the Apple logo came up with more unusual and creative uses for the brick than those who’d seen IBM.” So, if you are in a creative slump, try flashing that Apple logo on your screen at random times to help you get back in the groove. A follow-up study was done using E! and Disney logos and people who viewed the Disney logo acted more honestly.

Want some other ways to improve your creativity? Suite 101.com suggests ten more ways to get the creative juices flowing, which includes doing something new in a new place, being radical, chat with others about your projects, take a break, and give yourself a blank slate. Just make sure that you take your trusty Apple sticker with you.

Via Gear Log

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