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OS 9 Theme/Skin-How do I get rid of it?

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,391
6,565
Kentucky
I've been playing with my single 1.25MDD in OS 9 a lot lately. Of course, these require a special OS 9 install. I have the restore disks and am tempted to dump the install and start fresh, but haven't yet.

In any case, I have things mostly set up to my liking except for the icons. I'm assuming they're some sort of 3rd party add on or extension, but I can't seem to track down where it is.

I don't mind the look, but they have a significant functional impact. Specifically, they are not amenable to being "dragged" and I can't do things like drag a disk into the trash to unmount it, or drag anything else off the desktop. I have to do a control-click and then "put away" to unmount or "send to trash" to delete something.

Has anyone seen this before, and if you have do you know how to get rid of it?
Picture 4.png
 
Okay, thanks-I'll try when I get home.

I never use Launcher, so I guess that's why I've not seen it before.

Funny enough, when I was new to Macs I started on 10.7 and used Launchpad because it seemed "comfortable" to me coming from iOS. After using Leopard, OS 9, and others, I just navigate to the applications folder and launch apps that way. It's a lot more intuitive to me across systems. And, of course, if I know that something is buried sort of deep, I'll use Spotlight to launch it, which really is probably the easiest way overall.
 
bunnspecial said:
Okay, thanks-I'll try when I get home.

I never use Launcher, so I guess that's why I've not seen it before.

Funny enough, when I was new to Macs I started on 10.7 and used Launchpad because it seemed "comfortable" to me coming from iOS. After using Leopard, OS 9, and others, I just navigate to the applications folder and launch apps that way. It's a lot more intuitive to me across systems. And, of course, if I know that something is buried sort of deep, I'll use Spotlight to launch it, which really is probably the easiest way overall.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the idea behind Launcher was a UI thing. If it looks like a giant button you'll probably realize that by clicking it it will do something. Back in the day when double-clicking on something to open a folder or launch an app was not a learned activity for the average person.

I use Quicksilver. CTRL+Spacebar and just type in the first few letters, press return and you're off. Similar to Spotlight in that way but the UI happens right in the center of the screen not up in the corner. Quicksilver also makes it easy to do a few other things. I can call up an app using that keyboard command and then drop a file directly on the app icon and the app will both launch and open the file. Used to hate launchers but QS won me over.
 
Quicksilver on the Quicksilver :)

I'll have to give it a try.

Of course, OS 9 had Sherlock, although I've not really used it much(and most of the functions don't work anymore).

I think it's interesting that Yosemite has put Spotlight in the center of the screen, just like Sherlock does.

One thing I will say about Launcher is that it seems to make the UI really "snappy", although admittedly that could also be a product of the hardware(everything else is amazingly fast in OS 9 on this computer). Stuff like the spring loaded folders just pops open when you mouse over them, although I expect there's a setting for that which I've never played with.
 
I used to use Sherlock all the time when I worked in Palm Springs. Trying to find anything on the net using Yahoo (the dominant web search engine then) was just impossible and Sherlock also searched the drives of computers you were connected to as well.

I can't speak to Spotlight/Yosemite because I've had that shortcut shut off a long time ago and QS was already installed when I upgraded from Mavericks.

I think though it depends on your preferences. Some people prefer Spotlight over other launchers.

For me though, this is just easier…

Firefox.jpg
 
^^^This. Totally forgot about that option. I really stopped using OS9 for anything other than a have to when Jaguar hit.
 
And indeed that worked!

I'm happy to have my familiar OS 9 desktop back!

BTW, did I mention how fast this computer is under OS 9?

I'd think that my dual 1.8 would be faster, but in all honesty it doesn't feel like it. I suspect even though the clock speed is higher on the 1.8, I'm seeing the advantage of the L3 cache and the faster memory bus on the single 1.25.
 
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