Intense nostalgia. I remember my updating my MacBook from Tiger to Leopard and being inthralled with the new OS welcome video. It was a powerful feeling like a genuine leap was made after rebooting and new powers unlocked. 10.3 used Rokysopp's Eple, and I still love that song and album.
Looking back at the 10.4-10.7 era, I really miss those app icons, they were so easy to tell apart from each other just from shape. The rest of the design language was also a marvel in usability, it was so clear what everything was and how to interact with it.
(admirable) these images did incredible psychic damage to kde designers
i used the catalina bg until late last year, when they started shipping the former appletv video backgrounds as the default, because it was just so good. seriously, after that on a 5k display, i thought i would never enjoy another desktop background
> (admirable) these images did incredible psychic damage to kde designers
made me chuckle :-)
But for real, there is something about a good wallpaper, at least for me, the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux install.
I fully believe that a solid default wallpaper can help with desktop manager adoption (i.e. kde, gnome, xfce4), at least for the bohemians types like me!
> the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux install
For me, that would be the last time I ever see it. I have so many windows open providing me quick access to whatever I need without flipping spaces or whatever, that I just never see the desktop.
It's just one of those things that over time of using computers, I just don't care about it any more. I don't begrudge anyone that does, but it is just one of those funny things one realizes how time changes one's outlook
> the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux install
That's something I also always do.
Even though I use i3 with 100% opaque windows (transparency is ugly and distracting IMO). I could only see wallpaper after startup and maybe 2-3 times during the day if I'm switching from my usual workflow.
But for some reason I always set the background. Perhaps an old habit from Windows XP days (Autumn is the best XP wallpaper, fight me).
Years ago in one of my previous jobs, we started to have issues with the internet connection multiple times a day. After a couple of days someone noticed that the issues happen whenever I go out for smoking.
When they first introduced those aerial videos for Apple tv, someone made a screensaver out of them for MacOS and I was using that. It turns out whenever I went to smoke, my screensaver would activate and choke the network with 4k (5k?) glory.
Everything up through 10.6 makes me feel indescribably warm and fuzzy.
I don't like Steve Jobs very much as a person, and I don't quite buy the myth that he was as much of a unique genius as some people believe, but...is it a coincidence that 10.7 marked the end of the (second) Jobs-era at Apple?
> Everything up through 10.6 makes me feel indescribably warm and fuzzy.
10.2/10.3/10.4 are the ones that do it for me. Spent way too much time on my Macs through those years, through which I frequently used the default desktop pictures because they were so smooth and nice to look at, and each OS X release was nicer to use than the last which made for positive associations with each.
10.5/10.6 were good too, but I found the default desktops on those too busy and usually used something else. I also typically used custom themes by way of Shapeshifter[0] because I found the gray metal look of those releases too dark and modded my dock with themes found on MacThemes. As a result the default 10.5/10.6 desktops aren’t emotionally evocative for me.
I do however miss the 10.5/10.6 implementation of virtual desktops, which gave you a 2D grid to place desktops on instead of just a line.
Even more fun was the fact the wallpaper widget had a little pixel editor built in that let you make your own tiling pattern. I seem to recall that it updated the desktop in realtime as you changed the pixels so you always knew exactly what your pattern looked like tiled.
Oh, memory unblocked! Didn't Windows 98 had something similar? It could be Win95 but I think it would be too much for that time, and for XP we already had background images in "good quality".
I don't think Windows ever included anything like it with the OS. Windows 95 switched to having a giant JPEG background for the wow factor. Certainly there could have been a third party program that implemented that functionality, but I don't think Microsoft ever shipped it with the OS. Maybe as one of those optional fun pack things they used to offer?
I was in a room of Apple TV engineers when the screensaver of I-110 in LA came on. Everyone agreed that it caused mild anxiety. I'm glad I don't see it in the rotation anymore.
It links off to `https://sylvan.apple.com/` which has a name mismatch cert error. If you follow the url in the console (and ignore the cert error) you can download it. Not super convenient but there you are.
They're beautiful, but a small tangent... the latest macOS has a bug that repeatedly reverts the wallpaper to the default whenever I unplug/plug my external monitor and it's driving me crazy.
Happens to me too. I use a display link'd dell dock from work, with 3 monitors. Every few times i plug it in, the wall papers revert, and the wallpapervideoextension process starts soaking up ram and cpu cycles (I dont use video wallpapers at all, just static images from my folder as wallpapers everywhere). I've made it a habit to check the activity manager everyday after I plug in the mac, and kill that process if its taking up too much resources.
I think what’s actually happening here is that spaces have separate desktop picture settings between displays.
I noticed this a few days ago when moving a space from one monitor to the other and seeing its desktop picture change. Moving the space back to the original monitor restored the desktop picture.
Not sure why it’s this way, kind of an odd choice.
Sonoma did change the way wallpaper (and screensavers) get integrated (preferences have moved in an unusual place/preferences format too) which may be the root cause of this (although I admit I never hit that precise bug). Are you using classic images or some of the built in videos ?
If you are willing to try something, I would suggest an image (of your solid black color) instead.
Because of how the new system work, I wouldn't be surprised the bug is limited to those solid color backgrounds (which are handled quite differently for historic reasons, and it could very well be why you get the error).
The new wallpaper system is a bit of a mess, and solid colors have always been treated weirdly in their preferences.
Even if you never use Apple Veblen Goods and have no idea how to use the funny keyboard, mouse and interface that defines Mac OSX, these desktop wallpapers are very familiar.
This is remarkable because Apple is supposed to be about individuality. Changing the wallpaper could be two clicks away yet most Apple users stay with the stock wallpaper. I think they are focused on work rather than tinkering, with everyone happy with the stock wallpaper.
Meanwhile, on Ubuntu, the first thing I change is the wallpaper. It goes. But then I have full screen apps and never see the wallpaper ever again.
Personally I want the desktop wallpaper to be a black and white terminal window with it showing console messages from syslog, representing the guts of the machine.
Tangentially related, my pal had a photo similar to the Andromeda in macOS 10.7 Lion licensed via 500px->Getty Images and it was used on Colbert last night:
I'm curious about this. Somebody pulls a bunch of images from Apple and hosts them on their site. Surely this runs afoul of something.
I have a small site that allows some user uploaded content, and I get random notices that threaten legal action unless I buy license (for users that have uploaded content from wherever). My response is just to take them down.
There is a link at the top for pre-OSX wallpapers. There was one in MacOS 7 or 8 that was called "platte pinda's" in Dutch meaning "flat(tened) peanuts)". That name mystified me at the time. Googling it now, there's only one result for that phrase, completely unrelated. Am I making this up?
I wish more OSes would work with independent photographers to compile a set of beautiful wallpapers. It used to feel easy to find good wallpaper online, but nowadays, especially with macOS's hiDPI settings and my personal desire for #000 true black wallpapers to hide notches and camera holes, it can feel very difficult. Search engines don't yield good results for 4k or 5k images, and a lot of the hi-res wallpaper subreddits have disappeared since their API debacle.
I source solid wallpapers from a couple of OSes for use in macOS:
> I wish more OSes would work with independent photographers to compile a set of beautiful wallpapers.
Why though? Why should someone be subjected to all of this extra cruft when you can just find the images from websites? As long as Google image search exists, people will find whatever images they want to use. If you're thinking an OS vendor would do proper licensing, that's a nice thought, but the vast majority of people using custom wallpapers don't care about it.
It's nice to use software, or anything really, where effort has been made to make it beautiful as well as functional. Also it's good to support and highlight good photography.
If you need to hide the dumb notch, I’d take my nice wallpaper, scale it down to the exact resolution, and just add a black bar as high as the menu bar is. This can be a bit ugly when the wallpaper appears without the menu bar, but it’s a fine solution nonetheless. (I had to do this in Big Sur, since the OS thought my wallpaper works best with a black text on the menu bar, which wasn’t actually too readable.)
Try searching at somewhere like wallhaven.cc[1], which aggregates wallpapers with good tagging, colour, size and ratio-based searches.
A lot of the wallpapers there come from other sources like Flickr, interfacelift, Reddit, 4chan (for better or for worse, /wg/ isn't too bad), or just direct uploads.
I wouldn't say credit is preserved particularly well at all times, which is a shame, but it is just a reverse image search away usually to find the original.
Another vote for wallhaven, have found several high quality 5k and 6k+ desktop pictures there, as well as some for odd aspect ratios (e.g. 5k portrait). Its predecessor Wallbase was also great.
One thing I appreciate is that its users do a decent job of tagging images so it’s easy to find all the work of a particular artist or location.
A lot of amateur wallpapers have this weird cliché aesthetic. It’s the same two-thirds framing, and (at least to me) some intangible form of unresolved tension or a general feeling of the photographer trying too hard (vs an impromptu shot).
It's infuriating finding an excellent wallpaper, only to find that it's 900 pixels wide or "4k" with so much compression it looks worse than uncompressed 720p. That and the grotesque photoshops that fill the results when looking for space wallpapers.
On the plus side, Tineye can be quite helpful for finding things in their original size.
My favorite source for all space-related pictures are the Apollo flight journal photography archives[1].
I’m not sure if there’s a better resource, as-is you have to click through to see a higher resolution version to check if the picture is even in focus, but honestly that adds to the fun of it :)
> That and the grotesque photoshops that fill the results when looking for space wallpapers
Use the HST and JWST pages for space wallpaper sources[1][2]. Make sure to check only the 'observation' checkbox; this filters out all the infographics, 'artist's impressions', simulations, etc.
I suggest downloading the TIFF, opening this in some photo post-processing program (Lightroom, Darktable, RawTherapee, etc), and applying mild tone and colour adjustments, and then cropping to the exact resolution of your display.
FWIW my windows 11 laptop I use has a new high quality wallpaper every day. I don't know where it gets the images from, but many are pretty cool even if they are a bit "too HDRy" at times.
One thing I found annoying about the MBP mini LED screen is that macOS will not make the menu bar truly black, no matter how hard I've tried.
Even using a #000000 picture as background, with 'Digital Color Meter' claiming that the screen is showing 000 everywhere, in dark environments it's obvious that the menu bar is a different color from the rest of the background.
The Catalina wallpaper threw me off guard when I first saw it. It looks exactly like a Bryce landscape I made in the late 90s. I spent some time trying to find it in my data archives but alas it is likely lost.
Louie Mantia has colored, re-rendered versions of the 10.0 Cheetah Wallpaper that include Dark Mode versions. They are great:
https://lmnt.me/blog/wallpapers/
I agree. Black and white often pop up against certain types of content (e.g. white spreadsheets on black background, dark mode terminals on white), but gray's a good compromise.
I worked at Best Buy circa 2005 and we had a single Mac Mini on the floor that had the fish wallpaper and it always drew me in. I had no interest in Macs at the time, but there was something alluring behind that wallpaper.
181 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadi used the catalina bg until late last year, when they started shipping the former appletv video backgrounds as the default, because it was just so good. seriously, after that on a 5k display, i thought i would never enjoy another desktop background
made me chuckle :-)
But for real, there is something about a good wallpaper, at least for me, the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux install.
I fully believe that a solid default wallpaper can help with desktop manager adoption (i.e. kde, gnome, xfce4), at least for the bohemians types like me!
For me, that would be the last time I ever see it. I have so many windows open providing me quick access to whatever I need without flipping spaces or whatever, that I just never see the desktop.
It's just one of those things that over time of using computers, I just don't care about it any more. I don't begrudge anyone that does, but it is just one of those funny things one realizes how time changes one's outlook
With the photography it’s one of the things Apple get so right about UX.
That's something I also always do. Even though I use i3 with 100% opaque windows (transparency is ugly and distracting IMO). I could only see wallpaper after startup and maybe 2-3 times during the day if I'm switching from my usual workflow. But for some reason I always set the background. Perhaps an old habit from Windows XP days (Autumn is the best XP wallpaper, fight me).
https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest
When they first introduced those aerial videos for Apple tv, someone made a screensaver out of them for MacOS and I was using that. It turns out whenever I went to smoke, my screensaver would activate and choke the network with 4k (5k?) glory.
I don't like Steve Jobs very much as a person, and I don't quite buy the myth that he was as much of a unique genius as some people believe, but...is it a coincidence that 10.7 marked the end of the (second) Jobs-era at Apple?
...or maybe it's just nostalgia.
10.2/10.3/10.4 are the ones that do it for me. Spent way too much time on my Macs through those years, through which I frequently used the default desktop pictures because they were so smooth and nice to look at, and each OS X release was nicer to use than the last which made for positive associations with each.
10.5/10.6 were good too, but I found the default desktops on those too busy and usually used something else. I also typically used custom themes by way of Shapeshifter[0] because I found the gray metal look of those releases too dark and modded my dock with themes found on MacThemes. As a result the default 10.5/10.6 desktops aren’t emotionally evocative for me.
I do however miss the 10.5/10.6 implementation of virtual desktops, which gave you a 2D grid to place desktops on instead of just a line.
[0]: https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/ShapeShifter
https://osxdaily.com/2018/01/01/classic-mac-os-tiling-wallpa...
[0] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=766810966790684 (This seems to be the only place to find it online).
Was this filmed with a drone or helicopter? Is it possible the right "permits" weren't obtained before flying over the rush hour traffic?
https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D011_C010_PSNK_DENOI...
https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D008_C010_PSNK_v21_S...
https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D002_C003_PSNK_v04_S...
https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D001_C001_PSNK_v06_S...
https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D001_C005_COMP_PSNK_...
Looks like they're hosted on a domain with invalid certificate, so your browser might take a bit of convincing to load them.
I have a couple of friends that used to work for Apple, and neither one has any idea why.
https://bzamayo.com/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-scre...
I noticed this a few days ago when moving a space from one monitor to the other and seeing its desktop picture change. Moving the space back to the original monitor restored the desktop picture.
Not sure why it’s this way, kind of an odd choice.
Because of how the new system work, I wouldn't be surprised the bug is limited to those solid color backgrounds (which are handled quite differently for historic reasons, and it could very well be why you get the error).
The new wallpaper system is a bit of a mess, and solid colors have always been treated weirdly in their preferences.
https://petapixel.com/2019/09/16/this-photographer-trio-recr...
They also created one for Monterey since it didn’t ship with exclusive landscape photography:
https://www.techradar.com/news/photographers-make-their-own-...
This is remarkable because Apple is supposed to be about individuality. Changing the wallpaper could be two clicks away yet most Apple users stay with the stock wallpaper. I think they are focused on work rather than tinkering, with everyone happy with the stock wallpaper.
Meanwhile, on Ubuntu, the first thing I change is the wallpaper. It goes. But then I have full screen apps and never see the wallpaper ever again.
Personally I want the desktop wallpaper to be a black and white terminal window with it showing console messages from syslog, representing the guts of the machine.
https://i.imgur.com/wtnLpt8.jpeg
An elegant design language, for a more civilized age.
I have a small site that allows some user uploaded content, and I get random notices that threaten legal action unless I buy license (for users that have uploaded content from wherever). My response is just to take them down.
The last three releases as somehow vaginal canals.
I source solid wallpapers from a couple of OSes for use in macOS:
* https://stories.gregannandale.com/raspberry-pi-desktop-image...
* Ubuntu has some default hits (and misses): https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/every-ubuntu-default-wallpaper
* Ubuntu hosts a wallpaper competition (most years) for photographers all over the world: https://ubuntu.com/blog/winners-of-the-21-10-wallpaper-compe...
* and here's a somewhat-outdated repo of wallpapers from a bunch of Linux distros: https://github.com/LinuxKits/Distro-wallpapers -- I'm especially fond of the Elementary OS images.
Why though? Why should someone be subjected to all of this extra cruft when you can just find the images from websites? As long as Google image search exists, people will find whatever images they want to use. If you're thinking an OS vendor would do proper licensing, that's a nice thought, but the vast majority of people using custom wallpapers don't care about it.
A lot of the wallpapers there come from other sources like Flickr, interfacelift, Reddit, 4chan (for better or for worse, /wg/ isn't too bad), or just direct uploads.
I wouldn't say credit is preserved particularly well at all times, which is a shame, but it is just a reverse image search away usually to find the original.
[1] https://wallhaven.cc/
One thing I appreciate is that its users do a decent job of tagging images so it’s easy to find all the work of a particular artist or location.
On the plus side, Tineye can be quite helpful for finding things in their original size.
And I only use 1080p!
My favorite source for all space-related pictures are the Apollo flight journal photography archives[1].
I’m not sure if there’s a better resource, as-is you have to click through to see a higher resolution version to check if the picture is even in focus, but honestly that adds to the fun of it :)
[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap08fj/a08-photoindex.html
Use the HST and JWST pages for space wallpaper sources[1][2]. Make sure to check only the 'observation' checkbox; this filters out all the infographics, 'artist's impressions', simulations, etc.
I suggest downloading the TIFF, opening this in some photo post-processing program (Lightroom, Darktable, RawTherapee, etc), and applying mild tone and colour adjustments, and then cropping to the exact resolution of your display.
I get much better results this way.
[1]: https://esahubble.org/images/search/
[2]: https://esawebb.org/images/search/
[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper
https://wallpapertag.com/img/eyJpdiI6ImlFY2hqYStNSno4Z0dBcGY...
https://wallpapertag.com/img/eyJpdiI6IlZ2N1R4bVpXYm9DVTRPS3l...
I remember seeing it on the Leopard keynote. It was glorious with the translucent menubar that ditched the rounded corners.
You could even argue that, if you see your wallpaper close to “all the time”, your monitors are larger than you need most of the time.
Sometimes I'll keep an empty workspace up just to declutter and focus on something on the other monitor.
It's not necessary, I could as well set black wallpaper and no gaps, but I like it so it's good enough excuse ;)