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Every default macOS wallpaper, in glorious 5k resolution
- mattl 7y agoNo love for Mac OS X Server 1.0? I have my phone using the same background as Rhapsody DR2.
- steviedotboston 7y agoyou must be stepwise
- mattl 7y agoHa, I am. I feel like OPENSTEP and Rhapsody are ignored these days, much in the same way people think every GeoCities website was in Comic Sans.
- apearson 7y ago10.0 to 10.4 wallpapers have always looked the best IMO. Even more so today in 5k.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWhy is "Mac OS X" crossed out with "macOS" written in place of it? Is the former wrong somehow?
- devbat8712 7y agoOfficially it's macOS now.
- mehrdadn 7y agoOh interesting, I didn't realize. Thanks!
- sdegutis 7y agoMac OS, then Mac OS X, then OS X, and now macOS. Probably Mac OS again some time soon to go full circle.
- verify_sirrah 7y agomacOS matches watchOS, tvOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Unless Apple decides to rename all their products, I don't see macOS changing.
- waterhouse 7y agoI personally just say Mac OS. If there were some device called the Blarg, with an operating system built to run just on the Blarg, then that operating system would be most naturally called Blarg OS; I suspect the vast majority of people would call it that if no name were supplied.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoAlso, since OS X's full name was always still "Mac OS X", "Mac OS" correctly refers to every iteration of the operating system.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
- yardie 7y agoOne of the things I hated about clean installing OSX was the previous wallpapers and user avatars weren't kept in the installer. If you were lucky enough to upgrade the OS without errors through each major release you got to hang onto some very important bits of the OS, like Quicktime 7, iPhoto, iMovie. Once you upgraded the hardware, if you didn't have the foresight to backup the application and the app support library folder, you were in for a letdown.
- fossuser 7y agoIt's the same with iOS too - I've kept the milky way over a snowy mountain top since whatever version it was released because if you change it you lose it (well you have to search around and get it back from the internet).
- machello13 7y agoSame! That's such a great iPad wallpaper. I've found copies of it online but they all seem to be lower quality than the one included with the OS.
- saagarjha 7y agoIf you really want it, you can pull it from the IPSW…
- dwighttk 7y agoI just noticed quicktime 7 was deprecated in Catalina
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIt's been deprecated for much longer, it just stopped working in Catalina.
- dwighttk 7y agogood point
- ramenmeal 7y agoI miss snow leopard & spaces. Never really figured out how to be productive w/ Mission Control and full screen apps.
- dmix 7y ago> Never really figured out how to be productive w/ Mission Control and full screen apps Has anyone? I'd love to see the stats on this. One of those things that looks prettier than it is useful.
- SwiftyBug 7y agoTo me the full screen feature is really useful. I work with my notebook in a stand right by the side of an external display. On the notebook I keep everything in full screen mode except for the VS Code windows, which stay in the other monitor. When I need to switch from browser to Slack, Spark (email client) or Spotify, I just have to swipe with two fingers on my Magic Mouse or with four fingers in MacBook's Magic Trackapd.
- gbear605 7y agoIt works wonderfully for me at least, for one counter anecdata. It only works well because I can swipe back and forth between screens with the touchpad. I don’t know how I would use a mac without one.
- m463 7y agoyou can still do spaces. You have to enable mission control and enter it with the bar across the top. Then hit (+) to get a bunch of desktops. Then go into keyboard shortcuts and you can assign keyboard keys to each space. In mission control settings you have to turn off rearrange. (backed out of latest os's not certain if it's in still in catalina)
- wlonkly 7y agoTotalSpaces 2 gives you a 2-d desktop grid again! Unfortunately it also requires disabling (parts of) System Integrity Protection because of the way it interacts with the Dock.
- harrylepotter 7y agowhat about the tiles for OS8 and OS9?
- duskwuff 7y agoThere's a pretty decent collection of pre-OS X wallpapers here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6c8veze05y4dou8/AAABpBWhiGAtqKzOcvZozA9Ea?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6c8veze05y4dou8/AAABpBWhiGAtqKzOc...
- maxfromua 7y agoThanks! Blue kittens (#139 in your Dropbox) is the best wallpaper I ever had :)
- tobr 7y agoOh, these are great. I just wish they would have included Quantum Foam, which was very similar to the Cheetah and Puma one, but in graphite gray and with more contrast in the highlights. I think it was the default in Mac OS 9. It’s been very hard to find in decent resolution and quality. I’ve tried to use various upscaling tools, I’ve tried to do it manually (reconstructing it with vectors), but I’ve never been quite happy with the result.
- handedness 7y agoAgreed. Sage Foam is another all-time favorite.
- BossingAround 7y agoIt's kind of a shame that the thumbnails are 1400x1050. I mean, it's a thumbnail, ~500p would be absolutely fine (probably even less), and the load times would have been much better.
- whalesalad 7y agoThe entire purpose of this page is to disseminate high res wallpapers. I think in this case the small asset size ship has sailed.
- d2wa 7y agoWhatever happen to copyright … .
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoAs someone who is probably more supportive of intellectual property rights and copyright in particular than the median HN user, "how dare someone nostalgically resize and make available a handful of background wallpapers that were distributed with obsolete versions of an operating system" strikes me as one of the tiniest, most pedantic hills to die on I can imagine.
- grecy 7y agoI take it you've never paid for food and rent from the income from your photographs. I don't know the copyright story of the photos included with the macOS releases, but I don't think it's wrong for the parent comment to at least ask the question.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoI appreciate you getting huffy at me in the ostensible defense of photographers and art creators (seriously, I do), but the only way these creators could possibly be losing potential income from this site is if retained the rights to sell these images digitally. I can't swear under oath that they didn't, but under this particular circumstance, that would be awfully unusual. (It would be almost unheard of these works to have been licensed to Apple on a per-unit royalty basis rather than a flat fee, but in either case the creator would have made all the money they ever would have from Apple by now anyway. And, it's quite likely these were done either under a work-for-hire contract, in which Apple retained all the rights, or -- like "Bliss," the iconic green hill/blue sky image in Windows 95 -- they bought all the rights to the image for a flat fee.)
- rconti 7y agoIt's also worth noting that OS X has been free as in beer since at least 10.9, and it looks like 10.1 was also free if you had 10.0. For all intents and purposes, these wallpapers are free to the end user. Additionally, resold versions of the OS also have a cost approaching 0. Finally, the marketplace for resold wallpapers that were effectively free to the end user is nonexistent. Though there may still be interesting legal questions here, as you point out, the creators of the wallpapers almost certainly retain no rights anyway.
- mobilio 7y ago10.6 is best IMHO
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI don't think the wallpaper by itself is anything special, but I absolutely love how it makes the window control traffic lights pop. Here's a Finder window on my computer. I'm running Mavericks, but with some UI hacks to bring it closer to Snow Leopard. And of course, the Snow Leopard desktop picture in the background. https://i.ibb.co/S6hCkhQ/Screen-Shot-2020-03-24-at-8-07-28-PM.png https://i.ibb.co/S6hCkhQ/Screen-Shot-2020-03-24-at-8-07-28-P...
- aquova 7y agoOS X 10.7 is still my favorite default wallpaper. I was surprised to see the author didn't care for it. Given the minimal descriptions for 10.10+, I take it they care more for the abstract blue backgrounds of the earlier releases than for mountains as well.
- wintorez 7y agoIs there a similar site for all the iPhone/iOS wallpapers?
- tekknolagi 7y agoAre there similar libraries for the non-default but also-included wallpapers? I think I liked some of the alternative El Capitan wallpapers more than the default.
- lonelappde 7y agoIt's an elegant and damning presentation of how Apple software has gotten more flashy and less usable over time.
- m463 7y agoHere's an interesting apple-related song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwcCRdTZw0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwcCRdTZw0A (of course it might diverge from your memory after a moment or two)