Themes in Os X...

[tjwett]

Anyone here using appearence themes to get rid of the blinding and distracting whiteness of Aqua and it's horizontal lines? I just downloaded Duality and a few themes and they are much easier on the eyes than Aqua. Do these have any affect, good or bad, on the functionality of the machine, OS, or applications?

 

[mnkeybsness]

why would you do such a horrid thing to such a great operating system?

 

[tjwett]

Originally posted by mnkeybsness
why would you do such a horrid thing to such a great operating system?

The white really annoys me but besides that, I've just done a little research and it seems that you can actually get better performance by replacing the Aqua interface. There is an app called 1kWindowsBloom which opens and closes 1000 finder windows and times how long it takes to perform the task. There is a theme called Sosumi(so, sue me. lol)that you install with the Unix Terminal and this seems to give the best results but I've done a few simple quick tests with Duality(I'm not sure if I want to mess around in the terminal yet)and a simple theme called "Pez". To make a long story short, I'm running identical stereo audio tracks with effects in Ableton Live with and without the original aqua interface. I'm getting a higher DSP rating(worse performance)with OSX's original aqua interface. Even bigger difference with a similar test in Reason 2.0. I chose these apps because they are the only ones I have that will read my DSP/CPU load in OS X(besides the CPU Monitor app ofcourse). With the 1kWindowsBloom, it was able to open and close 1000 windows about 25 seconds faster with the "Pez" theme running in Duality. After turning on Silk and Shadow Killer the results were even a bit better. I'm looking for an even simpler one than "Pez" that has "no moving parts" and flat gray interface. I've also turned off all options in the Dock and shrunk it and hid it and apps are launching on one bounce as opposed to the usual 7 to 10. The only downside in Carbon apps still have the aqua appearence in them but the Cocoa stuff looks great! you can find a bunch of themes here:
http://www.resexcellence.com

 

[Sherman]

You guys didn't use Kalidescope, did you.

<brilliance>
Well I'm here to correct some things. Resexcellence is a horrible place to download themes. go to Interface Studio to get some useful themes. Click on the Snapperhead link in my sig to see a bit of DSX Beta, and I'll tell you how I got my clock, battery, and airport to turn white so I can see them on the black menubar.

</brilliance>

 

[tjwett]

Re: You guys didn't use Kalidescope, did you.

Originally posted by Sherman
<brilliance>
Well I'm here to correct some things. Resexcellence is a horrible place to download themes. go to Interface Studio to get some useful themes. Click on the Snapperhead link in my sig to see a bit of DSX Beta, and I'll tell you how I got my clock, battery, and airport to turn white so I can see them on the black menubar.

</brilliance>

thanks for the link, and the advice. no link in your sig though.