#Mac osx windows 10 skin mac os x
(via WinCustomize) Why Mac OS X was the perfect target for interface customizers Mac osXP, an early Mac-styled theme dating to 2001. These tools, and others like them-it should be said, still available today-spoke to folks who wanted more customization capabilities than Windows was designed to offer on its own.īut they also allowed for something else: the ability for Apple’s design sensibility to elaborately infiltrate the machines being used by the 96.5 percent of computer owners who didn’t own a Mac in 2002. It was a only a small part of what Object Desktop could do, but it was the perfect level of customization for the average user, and as a result, it quickly became a hit among Windows users, and even earned a public seal of approval from Microsoft in 2001. It effectively made every app a little more like WinAmp, allowing for a snazzy, skinnable approach. This desire for customization found its greatest success story in a product called WindowBlinds, which had the magic-seeming ability to change the frames around applications so that they were a little less boring. Our goal at Stardock as we move forward is to provide this flexibility in terms of personalization and in letting users deal with information in a more organized and easy to understand way. Why should the person who mainly just surfs the web have the exact interface as someone who primarily enters in data into a database? That's what we have now by default. In a 2002 interview with OSNews, Wardell described the appeal of the software:Įach user uses their computer for very different reasons. Windows users, it turned out, didn’t want their GUIs to be forced into a Microsoft-shaped hole-they wanted some control over the interface, too.
#Mac osx windows 10 skin skin
The company, founded by Brad Wardell in 1993, had uprooted from its initial focus on OS/2 in the late ‘90s, and slowly began to put its focus on Windows, despite having enough of a distaste for Microsoft that the company had made a game simulation called Entrepreneur that was directly inspired by the Redmond-based giant.įortunately for them, the basic ideas behind Object Desktop, which did more than simply skin the Windows interface, transferred over pretty easily. There was room for more of this kind of thinking in the Windows market, and the Michigan firm Stardock was in just the place to allow for that. It was also highly skinnable, and part of the appeal of the player was putting a skin of your choice on the player-a great way for the 16-year-olds of the world to put their own personalities into the family computer.
#Mac osx windows 10 skin software
One key splash of color to the drabness of Windows during this era was a piece of software called WinAmp, the Wesley Willis-inspired MP3 player that stood out because of its interface, which seemed designed to be not an app, but an ever-persistent piece of furniture. (Windows 8 aside, of course.) Certainly, earlier versions of the software, like Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, did the trick, but by the end of the ’90s, the interface had grown a bit stale.Įven the Bush-era updates to Windows XP, with its iconic desktop image, weren’t enough for some folks who wanted something a little more out of their desktops. Say what you will about Windows, but its interface was never the flashiest in town. (via the Stardock website) How Windows gained an under-the-radar legacy of alternative interfaces The customization app WindowBlinds was at one point such a big deal that the producers of Terminator 3 created a WindowBlinds theme to promote the movie.
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