Dienstag, 4. Dezember 2018

MacOS "Mojavody"

While I usually use my machine for work and communication (no game has ever been played on it), I do like some eye-candy. When I had my first Mac it was Snow Leopard - and, wow, that was an eye catcher. It was the same for all the big cats that followed.

Then came MacOS 10.10 "Yosemite" and with it came Apple's new design language, and that was all flat. I disliked it from the first day. So what was I to do? I loved my machine, had a productive working environment running on it, but hated to look at it? For Yosemite the solution was "Flavours2", a theming engine with a selection of fairly acceptable themes.

Safari on "Mojavody"
The next OSX to hit the ground was 10.11 "El Capitan" and with it came a new security mechanism conflicting with any system tweak making changes to system files. Looks good on paper. But my MacOS would be ugly again. I skipped that update and continued using Yosemite with Flavours2.
In May this year my MBP's graphic unit died, and I had to get a new machine. So it was one of those new thingies, all USB-c with the infamous "Butterfly" keyboard. I like that machine much less than my previous generation MBP (the first one that came with Retina display), but I wanted to keep my productive environment, you know the story.

Finder on "Mohjavody"
Now there's an incredibly talented guy from Denmark, Allan Nyholm, who wrote a post to the MacRumors forum about into theming the later MacOS versions using a tool "ThemeEngine" to patch the system files for the look-and-feel he created. Soon after there were some "Themes" (really: patched .car files) available. I tried them, they were awesome. The NotTiger Lick HS theme definitely was, it looked like the good old OSX Aqua GUIs and I used it all through the last months since May.

Last weekend I upgraded to 10.14 "Mojave" and had to pick a new theme - Allan had released two retro-style themes for Mojave, AquaLick and Klassisk which I both tried. I finally got stuck with "Klassisk" which gives you a bit of a "Rhapsody" look-and-feel. I am using an "inofficial" version containing those really 3d-ish tool buttons, although it was never finished (I love it nevertheless). So this is where I am now.

Pages on "Mohjavody"
Allan has told me he's given up theming since the only approach known to work (using ThemeEngine) is not exactly "productive" but rather time-consuming, which - having taken a look at the tool and what it can do - I totally understand. I nevertheless have some hope that someone else may take over or - even better - Apple makes another design turn back to the beauty MacOS once was.

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