June 12th, 2000

[8:00 AM] Kaleidoscope Creator Talks About The Future, OS X, And Aqua by Kyle D'Addario As the release of OS X draws ever closer, the grumblings regarding the Aqua interface have lessened. Perhaps people are growing used to Aqua? Or perhaps people are actually waiting to get their hands on the product before trying to pass judgment. Despite the initial media roar dying down to occasional forum postings, the future of the Mac interface is still at the forefront of many OS X discussions. Many had believed that somebody would come to the rescue, like Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose did with Kaleidoscope in previous versions of the Mac OS. However, the Kaleidoscope developers have been rather quiet about the future of their interface customization utility. The Mac Observer contacted Greg Landweber, and found out why. When asked if a Kaleidoscope-like program was possible under OS X, he responded, "Technically possible, yes. Easy, no." This lies in sharp contrast to some who had believed that the Aqua interface would be "un-tweakable." We asked Mr. Landweber why it would not be easy. "The issue is that it will take a whole new sort of hacking to pull this off. Over the last five years I've figured out how to patch almost anything in the Mac OS, but now I have to start from scratch with what is effectively a new operating system." Those that have followed the history of Kaleidoscope can understand what Mr. Landweber means. The first version of the program allowed for some icons to be tweaked, the windows to take on a somewhat different appearance, and desktops to be altered. However, the most recent incarnation of the program offers "scheme" creators almost total control of the OS appearance. "Schemes" are sets of instructions for Kaleidoscope regarding the appearance of windows, icons, desktops, cursors, menu bars, and nearly every other facet of the Mac interface that one can think of. The latest version of Kaleidoscope, version 2.2.3 which was officially released today, allows windows to appear as floating castles, a grungy boiler plate, and even take the appearance of other operating systems like Windows or even the Palm OS. The flexibility and beauty of the program has developed with each new version, and that type of complexity has taken years to master. "While Apple can provide some continuity for application developers through their Mac OS 9 compatibility layer, this sort of thing does not apply to extensions or hacks like Kaleidoscope," stated Mr. Landweber. Does this mean that OS X users are going to be stuck with OS X, and the large following of Kaleidoscope lovers are going to have to abandon their favorite OS add-on? "I'm reluctant to say anything specific until I at least have some sort of "proof of concept". While Mr. Landweber is being justifiably cautious about the future of Kaleidoscope, it is apparent that it has at least been given some thought. Hopefully the extended beta period Apple announced for their next generation OS will provide this amazing product to be ported to OS X. The Mac Observer Spin: Conversation, and disagreement, regarding Aqua have dominated the talk about OS X since the new interface was introduced in January. Many users have held back opinions hoping that the magic worked by Mr. Landweber in the form of Kaleidoscope would find its way to OS X. While the future of this marvelous product is up in the air, we can only hope the technical obstacles faced in doing such a product can be overcome. A number of Mac Observer staff members use Kaleidoscope, and would not dream of going back to Apple's Platinum interface. Hopefully OS X users will have the same options regarding Aqua. We wish Mr. Landweber and his partners the best of luck in making Kaleidoscope work under OS X. Kaleidoscope