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Every default macOS wallpaper

512pixels.net

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Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://bzamayo.com/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-scre...

The videos on this page don't work for me (tried Chrome and Firefox)

https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_LA_A005_C009_PSNK_ALT_v...

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#72
Don't forget the OS 9 wallpapers:

https://512pixels.net/projects/mac-os-9-5k-wallpapers

My favorites among these are the gradient-rich desktops that dropped in Mac OS 8.5 back in '98, like those UFO ones.

That's when the OS gained support for icons with 24-bit color and 8-bit masks, which are the direct ancestors to today's 1024x1024 32-bit app icons. Perhaps to commemorate this full leveling up of the classic Mac desktop to millions of colors, Apple hired a small team of designers to custom make the UFO, Capsule and Tub desktop pictures.

Screen sized gradients between two relatively close colors almost always land in the sandbar of banding or dithering in order to quantize all those subtle variations to the limited color depth. But these desktops do a beautiful job at avoiding that. I'm not sure, but I think they achieved it by color grading a zero-to-255 3D render with a high bits/channel ratio in Photoshop, tuning the grade and quantizing to 8 bits per pixel from time to time as a sort of gamut warning. Any problematic areas could then be "buffed out" with careful blend mode shenanigans on the boundaries.

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#73

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 sub…

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.)

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#74

To me leopard is the most iconic. In my head it’s the wallpaper of modern macOS. I still remember back in the day that was the first thing I downloaded when I tried to make my Vista PC look at least a little bit like a Mac :-)

Agreed, it felt like such a major leap in modernity from the Aqua wallpapers. I still think of it as the definitive 2000s Mac OS X wallpaper, it really was everywhere in no way any of their wallpapers have been since. It was like the Bliss counterpart to Mac OS X

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#76
post #18
post #7

Here are some ones from MacOS 7: https://osxdaily.com/2018/01/01/classic-mac-os-tiling-wallpa...

System 7... it didn't become Mac OS until 7.6 or something, and then Mac OS 8 came out very soon after that.

Also conveniently made sure that clone manufacturers (who only had a license for System 7) didn't have a modern Mac OS anymore.

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#78

The one that mystifies me, is why Apple pulled their original Dubai At Night screensaver[0]. [0] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=766810966790684 (This seems to be the only place to find it online).

I thought you could pick that categories in the settings, I swear I turned off the city ones cause I hate the city and I don’t live i. A city.

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#79

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 sub…

To "hide" the notch, try Top Notch: https://topnotch.app/

Re: Every default macOS wallpaper

#80

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 sub…

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.

[1] https://wallhaven.cc/

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