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Festivitas Lets You Add Holiday Lights to Your Mac Desktop

lots of snow screensaver still work in sequoia on m4 btw

it just only plays in the bottom quarter of the screen!

seems like something that could be fixed, and it would need to ask for screen reading permissions

I don't have the skill for that
 
drtaru said:
I get it, but this should be a pay what you want with a free oprion, I don't have $4 to drop on a 30-days-of-the-year novelty
Click to expand...

well then it's not for you?

I'm all for pay what you can if it's important, including good art

but you'll be fine with out this, trust me I bought it ;)

and if someone wants to take the time to make it they can charge as much as they want!

I would not have paid $10, some would pay $100

money is so weird these days you never know
 
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vertsix said:
I'm in a festive and Christmas mood, but not this much!
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If it will also do just solid colors, it could be used year round for a nostalgic gloomy NOC or college dorm room feeling.
Especially if paired with dark themes. Are there modern programs for MacOS to retheme the window widgets? Some of the comments above reminded me of being able to go to striped title bars, or turn the window size buttons into gumdrop-colored bubbles like old OS versions, and all kinds of other stuff.
 
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Sowelu said:
Holiday Lights is still alive and well. Not as many features as the original, but it has been updated to work on modern macOS. It's now 'MacLampsX'. I am rocking it as we speak (see screen shot).

I like the lights to just be on top with a calming twinkle and a steady flow of light snow, of course. And these are incandescent-looking classic lights, not the cold and ugly LEDs that we are mostly subjected to today in both real life and apps. I reached out to the developer years ago wondering whatever happened to this app and he said he was thinking about resurrecting it, and he did!

I miss the good old days when a bit of whimsy was built into most apps and operating systems with theme and icon packs and novelty software such as this. Anyone remember Stick Software? Eyeballs still work on modern macOS! There were so many fun and goofy apps. Catz? Dogz?

The 90's and early 2000's will always be my favorite internet (wild wild west) and Mac era (even vintage PCs). What I would give for someone to update the entire After Dark Screensavers collection and re-release it. Berkley Systems was acquired and folded into a Sierra division after After Dark 4 was released, and their parent company killed most of their titles (including most of Sierra eventually). It was never even updated for WindowsXP and it never worked in OS X. There are a few modules out there that will run on modern versions of macOS, but it's just not the same, of course.

Nowadays GUIs are so cold, boring and stoic. Apple, the pioneers of beautiful icons completely destroyed them and now we are living with ugly tile icons, many are just glyphs slapped onto tiles, and to add insult to injury, we cannot change most of them. Remember Candy Bar? Why can't we have nice things anymore?

Anyway, I like that you can add lights onto the dock, so I will of course give Festivitas a go.
Click to expand...
I miss the era of CandyBar...
 
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matsan said:
Oh Flying Toasters... where ar' thy now?
Click to expand...
For a quick nostalgia fix, you can check them out here.

This and a few other AfterDark modules were ported by 'infinisys', but they are a bit unstable under Sequoia. I am hoping they update them (I've emailed the developer). They do run, but system processes run a bit high and the music gets stuck playing.
 
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ErikGrim said:
Fantastic! Even has snow. Wish it piled up though
Click to expand...
'iSnow' is the closest thing to the classic Snow app of yore. It may even be an updated version of the original. It has lots of options, including snow buildup on both windows and the desktop. The only issue is that it doesn't play well with Stage Manager. It's currently available in the Mac AppStore.
 

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Sowelu said:
Holiday Lights is still alive and well. Not as many features as the original, but it has been updated to work on modern macOS. It's now 'MacLampsX'. I am rocking it as we speak (see screen shot).

I like the lights to just be on top with a calming twinkle and a steady flow of light snow, of course. And these are incandescent-looking classic lights, not the cold and ugly LEDs that we are mostly subjected to today in both real life and apps. I reached out to the developer years ago wondering whatever happened to this app and he said he was thinking about resurrecting it, and he did!

I miss the good old days when a bit of whimsy was built into most apps and operating systems with theme and icon packs and novelty software such as this. Anyone remember Stick Software? Eyeballs still work on modern macOS! There were so many fun and goofy apps. Catz? Dogz?

The 90's and early 2000's will always be my favorite internet (wild wild west) and Mac era (even vintage PCs). What I would give for someone to update the entire After Dark Screensavers collection and re-release it. Berkley Systems was acquired and folded into a Sierra division after After Dark 4 was released, and their parent company killed most of their titles (including most of Sierra eventually). It was never even updated for WindowsXP and it never worked in OS X. There are a few modules out there that will run on modern versions of macOS, but it's just not the same, of course.

Nowadays GUIs are so cold, boring and stoic. Apple, the pioneers of beautiful icons completely destroyed them and now we are living with ugly tile icons, many are just glyphs slapped onto tiles, and to add insult to injury, we cannot change most of them. Remember Candy Bar? Why can't we have nice things anymore?

Anyway, I like that you can add lights onto the dock, so I will of course give Festivitas a go.
Click to expand...
Completely agree with you.

For me, it was these extra, whimsical apps slowed down the computer too much. But, now, when we have more graphical overhead, these apps aren't available. Yes, I would love to have an updated AfterDark screensaver! I remember the aquarium. With all of the horsepower under the engine, imagine how much better something like that could be these days. Business opportunity for someone....
 
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Sowelu said:
The 90's and early 2000's will always be my favorite internet (wild wild west) and Mac era (even vintage PCs). What I would give for someone to update the entire After Dark Screensavers collection and re-release it. Berkley Systems was acquired and folded into a Sierra division after After Dark 4 was released, and their parent company killed most of their titles (including most of Sierra eventually). It was never even updated for WindowsXP and it never worked in OS X. There are a few modules out there that will run on modern versions of macOS, but it's just not the same, of course.
Click to expand...
Agree 100% with your post. Found this though: https://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/afterdarkclassicset/index.shtml So you can have flying toasters and some of the Stick Software modules for a modern Mac!
 
Marbles1 said:
It makes me wonder what’s changed culturally with computing that these gimmick apps, which adults used, are not so common - I remember neko the cat following the mouse around on the PC, or people changing the mouse cursor… these things don’t happen / aren’t a thing now…. Why?
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The Talking Moose!

What changed.. In the days you speak of computers were a novelty in itself. These days they're a mundane object used in everyday life, like a non-flying toaster. Gimmicks wear off too. We've seen it all. And, we simply don't have the time any more to spend on whimsical programming. Making a living is enough stress already, usually. Not to mention the effort to create fun utilities has increased a lot, as systems have bloated. I still have my Inside Macintosh telephone book. Everything in one book. If you'd want to print today's Mac developer documentation there would not be a tree left on the planet.
 
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