CW: Nine Apps to Tweak the Look of Leopard

May 13th, 2008 at 3:00 PM - News by John Martellaro

Some of the interface changes in Leopard were controversial, so it didnit take long for developers to create apps that can tweak the Leopard look-and-feel, either back to Tiger or just something new, according to Computerworld on Wednesday.

While some changes have traditionally required command-line trickery that can cause concern for some users, a new breed of friendly, GUI-driven apps is making it easier to make those changes.

Applications that can change the Menu bar color like LeoColorbar and alter the glowing markers in the Dock, DockDelight, were surveyed.

"Leopardis starscape backdrop for the log-in window is pretty spectacular, but how about using a picture of the family dog or a favorite vacation memory? Visage ($9.95 from Sanity Software) makes it easy to change not just the background behind the log-in window, but also to customize the window itself," Ryan Faas wrote.

Itis human nature to want to customize the work environment. Appleis philosophy, however, has consistently been that too much choice leads to a bad customer experience. For those that donit mind tweaking their system, however, the nine apps mentioned in the article can be a lot of fun. Finally, the nice thing about Leopard is that Apple has introduced some nice under-the-hood mechanisms that help maintain the stability of OS X when the appearance is tweaked.