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Coolest feature Ever!!!

U

uae

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2002
51
0
Los Angeles, CA
I recently read a tip on Arstechnica.com on how to run a screensaver (more importantley SereneScenes.com's Marine Aquairium Screen Saver) on the desktop and tried it out for myself.

IT ROCKS!!!

It is without a doubt a crowd pleaser. If they had this running on all the Macs in the Apple stores they would sell like hotcakes.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/macosx-10.2-10.html

MMmmmmm....joyous fish on desktop as I work....Mmmmm....

fish.jpg
 
look for an app called Xback or something like that. It does exactly THAT, but with a front end GUI to make it friendlier than typing out the command in terminal.
 
Yes. xBack is what I am using as well. It works great on my dual gig!

Might be a strain on the older CPUS. Quartz Extreme is required.
 
Is Quartz Extreme an application found in OSX or is it an after market product?

Very cool!

It remindes me of the Sundial ap that Alladan baught, and now dosn't offer. It was hearlded as the slowet media player avalible. It alowed a user to configure the background of their desktop to change at an intervle. It also came with stock media, ie 24 hours of a beach in Hawaii, 24 hours of a forest, etc... Very cool.
 
DVD to desktop

I seem to remember reading that you could set the desktop colour to a particular green and sort of chromakey the DVD players output to the desktop, anyone tried that or is it b******t?
 
i just ditched my marine aquarium (had it for a few months now, time for a change) and am switching between "fluid" and "plasmatunnel" which i think are even more cool. besides the aquarium one is available for peecees too so i've lost that feeling of exclusivity i had when i though it was just us mac owners.

i'm waiting for the real wood fireplace screensaver now. a random generation thing like the aquarium so i don't see a cycle of flames every few minutes. now ~that~ would keep me happy for days on end. :D
 
A better program to try for this is Backlight, it adds an NSStatusItem (menu item) that you can control the program through.
 
I've tried to run the it through the command prompt, but I get this:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/: Permission denied.


I am the only user and the "admin". I've also repaired my permissions, but have had no luck...

Any suggestions how to change this??

thanks,

Brian
 
actually it doesnt take up any cpu power at all. that is why quartz extreme is required. it just sends all processing power to the card. i like it a lot. now to sit back and watch the fishies.

iJon
 
i would *kill* for sundial to be rereleased. that program kicked ass... someone develop a replacement app, quick!

:)
pnw
 
back light is nice, though all this is very cpu intensive, even on my new ibook
 
Unfortunately, 22 bucks for some fish swimming in the background is a little pricey. Cool though. Are there any cheaper alternatives?
 
Originally posted by uae
Quartz Extreme comes with Jaguar. You need certain video cards to support it. I'm not sure which.
Click to expand...

The cards have to have at least 32MB VRAM for Quartz Extreme.

Apple claims that the cards also must be APG, however, there is a hack floating around for the old PCI Radeon cards with 32MB VRAM.
 
I mention the screen saver costs 22 bucks. Any good, cheap screen savers out there?
 
Originally posted by unc32
I mention the screen saver costs 22 bucks. Any good, cheap screen savers out there?
Click to expand...

Try looking for free OpenGL Screensavers on versiontracker. I found about 16 screensavers, my current favourite is "Lattice". It can produce nice images if you play around with the settings. It also looks great as desktop background.
 
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