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Seven Snow Applications For The Mac - The Festive Mac 2007
•Hot Topics •Software Updates •Home & Personal •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
I like snow, although I'm never sorry if it holds off till Christmas, but here in Nova Scotia winter came early this year, at least by recent standards, and it hasn't been above freezing for several days. We usually don't get snow that sticks until after Christmas here on the Atlantic coast, but this year arrived with December. I've already shoveled the driveway more times this month than I did all last winter, and it's not even the middle of the month or officially Winter yet!
Here's the view out my office window today, and yes. it's snowing, although the camera isn't fast enough in this light to stop the flakes in mid-air.
However, if you're a snow fan, wherever you live, you can still enjoy some smow on your computer desktop for Christmas, and the great thing about virtual snow is than you don't have to shovel it!
However, if you're a snow fan, wherever you live, you can still enjoy some snow on your computer desktop for Christmas, and the great thing about virtual snow is than you don't have to shovel it!
There are more desktop snow applications for the Mac than you might imagine. Here are the ones I've been able to track down.
Snow 1.2 Snow Piling Up On Windows, Santa & Polar Bear On Desktop
Back when I wasrunning the Classic Mac OS, my favorite snow application was Rick Jansen's Snow for Macintosh, which let it snow on your desktop, on your windows, adds a Christmas Tree, and sends Santa and his sleigh flying around your screen for extra festive season cheer. However, one of the cool things about Classic Snow is that since the whole process of letting it snow on your windows is somewhat CPU intensive, if you found Snow slowing down your machine you could use the preferences to choose fewer or smaller snowflakes, no Santa, no tree, or no snow at all. You can set the number of flakes, how fast they fall, Santa's speed limit etc. It all worked very well.
Rick has happily released an OS X native version of Snow for the Macintosh. It still snows on your desktop and Santa and his reindeer still fly around your screen while snow piles up on top of your windows. However, the tree is gone, having been replaced by an ambling Polar Bear and resizable snowdrop plants. Rudolph the reindeer's nose also glows red once you register the application.
New in this version:
• Improved performance
• Universal Binary (PPC and Intel)
Snow is $10 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~janswaal/MacOSXSnow/
Sno 2006.12.8
Another snow application for OS X that makes a snowfall on your desktop is David Remahl's Snö (the Swedish name for Snow) which is freeware, OpenSource, and consists of two separate parts; Snö Desktop is a program that makes snow fall on your screen, while you are working with other things at the same time. Snö Screen Saver is a Mac OS X screensaver module.
To install this, drag the file to the Screen Savers folder in the Library folder of your home folder:
Mac OS X Drive -> Users -> YourUser -> Library -> Screen Savers
or, to make the module available to all users on the machine, you can put it in:
Mac OS X Drive -> Library -> Screen Savers.
As with Snow, Sno allows you to configure snowflake size and behavior in its preferences.
Sno works well, and its screen rendering of snowflakes is better than with Snow for OS X, but falling snow is the whole enchilada with this application - no buildup on windows, so Santa, Rudolph, bear, etc.
New in version 2006.12.8:
• Compatibility with Intel-based Macs (Universal binary).
• Now requires Mac OS X 10.4. For compatibility with earlier versions (10.1 and later)
Snö is donationware, OpenSource, non-copyrighted and totally unsupported.
For more information or to download Sno, visit:
http://ittpoi.com/stem.php?product=com.ittpoi.sno&type=frameset
or
http://www.ittpoi.com/sno/
Quartz Composer Classic Snowflakes Screensaver For Mac OS X
Quartz composer screensaver for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger features snowflake images by Wilson Bentley - The Snowflake Man. Once it’s installed in the Library/Screensavers, you can customize it to suit your tastes by modifying the options in System Preferences.
"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."
Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley 1925
For more on Wilson Bentley see:
http://www.snowflakebentley.com/
For more information, visit:
http://www.alittlebitofnothingleft.net/snowfall/
LotsaSnow 1.2 Screensaver That Displays Falling Snowflakes
This screensaver draws snowflakes falling down your screen. Simple enough, but the oh-so-clever part is that it uses a semi-physical model for growing each snowflake, meaning every snowflake is actually unique, and also that it uses a quite a bit of processing power. But that's the price you pay for indivduality!
New in version 1.2:
• Now a universal binary, and works on Intel macs!
• Can now optionally display snow falling on the desktop.
• Added an optional clock.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
System support
PPC/Intel
:Free
For more information, visit:
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/lotsablankers/lotsasnow.html
flakey-saver 0.6 Snowflake Screen-saver For OS X
Well, its getting colder in New England. getting ready for the holidays? It puts me in mind of the time Jon Maeda asked us to participate in a 'snowflake-athon' at the media lab. This is not complete, no pref-panel yet. i am also working on a version for Win XP people.
Flakey-Saver creates softly falling snow that decorates your screen, twirling and swirling in the wind.
New in version 0.6:
• User pref panel
• better polygon drawing snowflakes
• better looking flakes
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2 or later.
System support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://noah.cx/software/
Snow Version 2.4
Dave Warker's' Snow is a small, free application for Macs running the Classic Mac OS, categorized as a "Sanity Saver" by its author, that drifts snowflakes down your monitor screen accompanied by the gentle sound of sleigh bells or Christmas music.
You can select the desired snowstorm intensity using the Flakes sub-menu, from gentle flurries to blizzard conditions. Turning on causes some of the flakes to be blown about. Snow supports multiple sets of flakes.
You can also adjust the volume of the jingling sleigh bells, or turn them off completely The Tunes menu requires QuickTime 2.0 or later By default, Snow plays available tunes in random order but you can uncheck the Random Order menu item to hear them sequentially. You can also add more tunes by placing MIDI files in the Snow Tunes folder. Several download site links are included in the program's online documentation.
The package includes sample QuickTime music files of jazzed up holiday favorites. With this release you can now convert MIDI files to QuickTime music files via drag-and-drop.
System Requirements:
This version has only been tested under System 8.1 and later versions of the MacOS, but the basic flakes and sleigh bells should work on any Mac except those that use the original 68000 processor (Mac Plus, SE, Portable and the original 128k/512k Macs.) 68000 based Macs. Users of those machines should continue to use version 2.2. Note that the new music files will work fine with this version. The automatic wake-up feature uses system features that may not be present on recent system releases. It doesn't crash but it is possible that it may wake up when it shouldn't.
Automatic wake up requires System 7 or later. Music requires at least QuickTime 2.0 but for best results you should be using Apple's latest QuickTime package. You can download it from the QuickTime site at http://www.quicktime.apple.com.
A jumping off point to other MIDI sites.
http://www.tcmidi.com/
New in version 2.4:
• Can play MP3 audio files if you have QuickTime 4 or later
• Additional snow flake sets
• Fixed a memory leak when aliases are used in the tunes folder
Also available:
Snow v2.2 for pre-PowerMacs
Older version for 680x0 processor based Macs (Plus, Classic, II, etc) and Mac OS 6.x
Snow is free for personal use.
For more information, visit:
http://www.warker.com/snow.html
Snow'ed 1.0
Snow'ed is another older desktop application for the Classic Mac OS that puts snow on your desktop, this time in a window frame. From the menu bar you can choose options like different color window frames and how much snow to fall.
The snow in the application is anti-aliased, and each flake has its own speed and brightness.
You have your choice of four window styles : White, Brown, Moonlit, and Walter Mitty.
System requirements:
• "Snow'ed" requires thousands of colors minimum with millions suggested.
• Best at resolution of 800 x 600 or higher, will work at a lower resolution of 640 x 480 though.
Snow'ed 1.0 is $1 Shareware
For more information, visit:
http://mac.tucows.nyi.net/preview/204953.html
Charles W. Moore •Hot Topics •Software Updates •Home & Personal •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
Article URL:
http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/18528
Next Article: Charles Moore Reviews Liquid Ledger 2.0.4 Personal Finance Software for Mac OS X
Previous Article: Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Friday, December 14, 2007
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