Architect and Façade: Theming For Leopard
There’s good news for all you Mac OS X Leopard GUI Themer out there. While there’s Panic’s Candybar for icon customization in OS X there is no application to alter all the user interface elements of Leopard. In Tiger there was an application called ShapeShifter but since the whole GUI in Leopard changed it stopped working.
Architect and Façade to the rescue: SlightlyPretentious announced its “Theming made easy”-application Architect is coming as a public beta next sunday (is it 08/31 or 09/07?) on Wednesday, September 3rd. Icon Designer Laurent Baumann already posted a new sweet application icon for this app a while ago and we can expect a nice and good looking solution for theming and customization in Leopard.
Head over to the Screencast and see Architect and its UI in action.
While Architect will help you customizing Leopards UI and building themes out of your modifications, Façade (Laurent’s icon of it) will help you switch (and manage?) the themes. But currently there’s no word on the SlightlyPretentious website about this application.
Slightly Pretentious made Architect available as a public beta while claiming Façade will be coming in october. But Façade already has its own nice website.
Update 02/17/2009:
Still no sight of Façade anywhere except the note of a Lead Developer change at Slightly Pretentious.
But meanwhile another theme manager was released: Magnifique, available as a free download.
About Matthias
WTF??? It is December and these guys still haven’t released Facade?!
DAAAAAAMMMMMMIIIIIIT!!
Hi Steven G, I bet the delay is caused by more awesomeness added to the app
OMG it’s already 2009 (Happy new yeah all) and Façade still isn’t out…
not sure if they can add that much awesomness to justify this delay -.-
“…unfortunately it looks like Façade isn’t coming until mid-January.” from vanillasoap.com
Still not out……………
February 6th….
Seems like they’ve switched Developers in mid january rather than releasing something: Please Welcome Our New Developer
I’d recommend http://magnifiqueapp.com/
- It’s FREE and it themes many elements of Leopard.
Its almost July 2009 and we’re still stuck with this POS knockoff excuse for a GUI customization application “Magnifique”. Have you seen the themes offered by Magnifique? They totally suck.
Hurry up and figure out how to customize leopard or you’re going to lose the few Mac users you still have. And when Windows comes out with their new Operating System “7″ in October of this year, Macintosh is completely fucked and Apple will go back to selling nothing but ipods again.
You guys had a hell of a two year run before Bill Gates crushes you again in October. Good run indeed.
I guess.
Steven Sochowoski.
Customizing leopard has been around for ages,
many designers know how to do it, they just don’t have the time to do it. Secondly this in the long run wouldn’t affect apples reputation of computer, If People brought these computer just so they could theme, Apple Inc. would of probably already figured out by now and would of added a native theme able system.
But no, only a small majority of people actually Know that they could theme a computer in ways. Also, Windows 7 also has another osx to fight against being released sometime september, Snow Leopard.
So please, When you say something make sure you know what you are talking about.
Fair enough. I can appreciate your insight.
The problem with Facade/Architect is that the project is, quite simply, vaporware. It’s been well over a year since the developers first announced its release and those of us who followed the project closely, realized long ago they just didn’t have the time or resources to get the program off and running. But instead of admitting this was the case, they’ve been stringing their followers along with tantalizing updates and false promises they never intended to deliver on. Magnifique isn’t as good as previous GUI theming apps (highly unstable IMO) but it’s certainly better than having nothing to work with at all. Also check out MacThemes forum until a real alternative comes along.
SO EVERYTHING COMES TO A END LAST QUARTER OF 2009 FOR MAC 10.5 THEMING THANKS FOR NOTHING YOU MORONS AT FAQUADE FOR HAVING A LINK AVAILABLE STILL FOR A BETA THAT ENDED 3 YEARS AGO FRIGGING MUPPETS
WINDOWS 7 IS LEAPS & BOUND AHEAD IN THEMING BUILT INTO THE OS WHY IS APPLE STILL IN THE DARK AGES WHEN IT COMES TO THEMING OPTIONS WITHING OS ITS LIKE THEMING WAS AVAILABLE & JUST DRIED UP COS INTEL MACS CAME ALONG