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Cool Mac Gear• iPod Video • iPod nano • iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Garageband |
As I type these words, snow is gently falling and building up on top of windows and tabs on my PowerBook's desktop, which currently depicts country house amid a delightful snowy pastorale, a cozy redoubt with steep gabled roofs and with light shining from its windows casting a warm and welcoming glow in the gathering dusk. Just the sort of setting I love in the winter, which is a season I enjoy immensely. 
For a change of scenery, I can switch to a shot I took last Christmas of my own front yard at night, the hydrangea bush glowing brightly with Christmas lights, and the virtual snow continues to fall, while Santa and his reindeer make their way through the night sky, battered by headwinds. 
In the interests of research, I turned my PowerBook into a Christmas extravaganza that would do Snoopy proud, Of course its frivolous, and my sophisticated teenage offspring are aghast, but I like the effect because I really love the Christmas season. As the Holiday Lights folks put it: "Is it useful? Well, no. Is it really cool? Absolutely! " If you decorate your house for Christmas, why not your Mac? Personally, for Christmas decoration I tend to prefer a more subdued festive array, with just a seasonally appropriate desktop picture and the cyber-snowfall, which I love watching (easily amused.) However, if it appeal to your taste, you can go all-out for a Snoopy/Tim Taylor wretched excess motif, or anything in between. Snow Version 2.4 Dave Warker's' Snow is a small, free application for the Mac, 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 basic flakes and sleigh bells should work on any Mac. Music requires QuickTime 2.0 or later, though QuickTime 3 or later is recommended. The package includes sample QuickTime music files of jazzed up holiday favorites. Snow is free for personal use. System Requirements:
New in version 2.4:
For more information, visit: Snow for Macintosh Rick Jansen's Snow for Macintosh, the snow app I'm currently using on my PowerBook, lets it snow on your desktop, on your windows and sends Santa running around your screen for that extra Festive Season Cheer. 
For more information, visit: http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/MacSnow/ Snow'ed 1.0 Snow'ed is yet another desktop application 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. Snow'ed 1.0 $1.00 to anyone-who-has-less-than-you-ware. System requirements:
For more information, visit:
Christmas Desktop Pictures For a Christmasy desktop backdrop for your lights, music, and snowflakes, you might want to download a seasonally appropriate desktop picture from one of several sites around the Web. I found several Christmas desktops that I like, including the one I described above, at Pierce Software's Great Deskpictures Website. Wreath in the Dock 1.0 Animated Christmas Wreath In The Dock There's not a lot of Christmasy stuff available for OS X yet, but Stimpsoft's Wreath in the Dock, for Mac OS X 10.1.x only, puts a Christmas wreath with glowing (or flashing) lights in your dock. Provides minutes of amusement. Sorry, no Christmas music is included. 
System requirements:
Wreath in the Dock is freeware Κ For more information, visit:
Holiday Lights 5.2 Tiger Technologies' Holiday Lights is a little shareware application that strings rows of Christmas tree bulbs and/or other small decorations around the borders of your monitor, with festive music playing the background. It even includes a screen saver with gently falling snow that gradually builds up on the glowing lights, and other seasonal choices to put you in the festive spirit. 
The colorful lights blink (or optionally just glow) on your desktop while you continue to work, so it's not just a screen saver. You can choose from a variety of different bulbs and decorations, and change them as suits your fancy by simply clicking and dragging bulbs in the Holiday Lights Bulb Factory dialog box. Holiday Lights also includes a large selection of Christmas and Hanukkah music (as well as other music files), but most of them are not accessible until the program is registered. You can also easily add any MIDI tune to the music selection. If you wish, the colorful lights can flash on your desktop while you continue to work, so it's not just a screen saver. Choose from more than forty different bulbs for any season, including standard Christmas tree lights, chili peppers, stockings, holly, snowmen, happy faces, Valentine's Day hearts, Thanksgiving turkeys, Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns, Chanukah dreidles and menorahs, and more. New in this version for 2001:
The settings for the bulbs, music and screen saver are now all in one window, which is accessed by choosing "Settings" from the "Edit" menu. The settings for the bulbs, music and screen saver are now all in one window, which is accessed by choosing "Settings" from the "Edit" menu. Support for themes. Arrange your bulbs, music and screen saver settings the way you like them, then click "Save Theme" in the theme area of the Settings window. Your settings are saved as a theme for later use. Better randomization of music: songs won't repeat until you've heard each of them. The music now supports MP3 and AIFF files as well as MIDI songs. It supports aliases; you can put an alias to your folder of MP3 songs into the Holiday Lights Music folder and it will work. (Requires QuickTime 4.) System requirements: • The Macintosh version requires a color Macintosh running System 7 or later, including Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. QuickTimeis required for background music. Holiday Lights for Macintosh is an application program — not a system extension — so it can't cause extension conflicts. Holiday Lights is $19.95 shareware Κ If you know someone else who might enjoy Holiday Lights, you can use the Holiday Lights gift ordering page to send your favorite people copies for $9.95 -- 50% off the normal price, and it's delivered instantly. For more information, visit:
SnowBall 1.0 SnowBall is a snow globe for your desktop. 
You can check it out at:
Xmas Lights 1.1 Xmas Lights is a control panel consisting of a string of colorful, blinking Christmas lights that hang beneath the menu bar. 
You can find it here:
Christi's Tree 1.1 Christi's Tree is a Christmas tree for your Macintosh. 
You can download it here: http://allmacintosh.ii.net/preview/47771.html Christmas A La Dickens 1.0 Christmas A La Dickens icons remind you of the classic story of one man's redemption and how he learned to turn his spirit from coal to ember. 
Enjoy this set of ten "A Christmas Carol" icons, plus eight bonus icons within the Christmas Present folder. For more information, visit:
Christmas Desktop Pictures 1.0 Christmas Desktop Pictures allows users to drag entire folders of desktop pictures onto the "Desktop Pictures" control panel's picture screen. Every time you start up or restart the Mac, the program will choose a random picture from that folder. 
These pictures look best on monitors set to thousands or millions of colors. These pictures are set as 640 x 480 pixels, but can be seen in full under many different settings. System requirements:
This application is $8 Shareware Download here:
PhotoAdvent 2.0 An Advent Calendar is a special Christmas calendar with 25 numbered windows. Behind each window is a picture. You open one window on each day of December leading up to Christmas. 
PhotoAdvent is a personalized Advent Calendar that runs on your computer using your pictures. PhotoAdvent allows you to import your own picture files so that when you click on a day in the Advent Calendar, the pictures which are revealed are your own. PhotoAdvent presents a traditional winter scene for background and family-oriented photos behind the dates. Just click on the date, hold the mouse button down and "erase" the covering to reveal the photo beneath. In addition, you can import your own photos to personalize the calendar for your family and friends, or even make some as gifts. Features include:
System requirements:
PhotoAdvent is $20.00 shareware For more information, visit:
Ecclesial Calendar (PPC) 1.0 Ecclesial Calendar is a small program written in cooperation with George Gallagher that displays the dates for Easter, Ash Wednesday, Ascension Day, Pentecost and the day of the week on which Christmas occurs for any year between 1584 and 2190. 
Ecclesial Calendar is free, but if you find it useful, you should donate a small sum to the trust fund, set up by George and his wife Margaret, on behalf of their daughter Mary Catherine, who is autistic. The money raised by the fund will be used to send Mary Catherine to the Option Institute in the United States. You can check it out at:
Christmas Fun Time ChristmasFun Time provides very young children with an opportunity to enjoy some Christmastime activities in an interactive way, all on the computer. 
Decorate the tree, decorate a gingerbread house, or dress some snow people. Maybe you'll even get to see Santa! For more information, visit:
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