How Do You Say “Magnificent” in French?
Leopard went on sale October 26th, 2007. Since then, talking about Mac themes has felt a little like talking about seeing unicorns, elves, and a beautiful mythical land where you could change the colors of your environment at will. Well, I’m finally standing in that mythical land again. I haven’t spotted unicorns, but I have been able to change a color or two, courtesy of the first app to hit the market, Magnifique.
Let me get right to the point: It works. It allows for modification of some of the basic Leopard GUI elements. It hasn’t mangled up my system or slowed it down. Everything seems to be running fine after 4 weeks of use and a lot has changed in those 4 weeks — gone from 1.0 to its 2.1 release, added a built-in theme browser and the Sparkle update system. So on and so forth.
And in the process, the interface design has gone from awful to adequate. But there’s still plenty to improve upon; the full screen preview function is poorly designed since it either opens the image in Preview or Safari depending on whether you’ve download the theme or not. The worst bit is that some themes don’t include preview images, which is why I dislike the fact that Magnifique relies on screenshots for the preview. I would also love to see a way to update themes to newer versions as opposed to having to browse and download the latest release. My Themes section has three versions of Aqua Inspiriat.
Magnifique also has some nice options though. In the latest release a theme mixer allows you to play Dr. Frankenstein and mix and match parts of themes to bring your own creation to life. It also lets you switch from 2D to 3D and toggle on and off CoreUI and the transparent menubar.
But interface aside, the biggest challenge for Magnifique are the same ones that ShapeShifter had: once upon a who gives a f**k anymore. Good design is hard. It takes a damn good designer to create so much as one good icon, let alone an entire OS theme. And at the moment, too many of the themes available for use in Magnifique are just mediocre modifications. Of old favorites.
So, this isn’t an app that’s going to win design awards, but we don’t need it to be. After more than a year of a themeless operating system, Magnifique provides us with a means to an end.
To that point, let me point out some of themes I do like thus far.
Aqua Inspririat 2.1: This is by far the theme I’ve used the most in the 4 weeks since I first installed Magnifique. A beautiful mix of old Aqua elements — minus the gloss — and deeply saturated colors. I’m particularly fond of the dark blue color on progress bar and scroll bar.
Mistikons Dark: This theme is, in many ways, just another Minimalist Dark theme until you start picking up on the little details. The search bar in a Finder window has a wonderful blockiness to it and a nice sense of depth. The way the Finder window changes when it’s not selected is also a beautiful touch. All about the details.
and…
Umaso: Susumu’s classic, ported for Magnifique. Enough said.
All themes are available for download within the Magnifique application.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
Well, I hate to be petty, but I think “magnifique” is a not a noun, but an adjective and does therefore NOT translate into “magnificence”…
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
Whatever happened to façade & architect?
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I wanted Architect as well, any news on how long its going to take?
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
you’re right…..
façade & architect : coming sooooooonnnnnn !!!!! - so soon we’ll wait for the rest of our life !!! not very serious i say
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I’ll have to take a look at it.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I’ve been using Magnifique for awhile now, and while I’ve toyed with some of the other themes, I’m only using the KISS theme for now. It’s unobtrusive, blends well with Firefox which a lot of the other themes don’t, and for now is a nice stand-in until Facade or Architect is finally released.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Tried this out and was far from impressed. Application quit responding after an Applescript error and I had to Force Quit. Relaunched, tried again, same thing. Relaunched, tried again, got to a downloading progress bar for a theme, progress reached about ten percent, got an Applescript error, program stopped responding, had to Force Quit again. Dropped it in the trash and decided to go back to waiting for Facade or ShapeShifter (even though I think Unsanity is pretty much dead these days since they can’t seem to do anything right anymore and it takes them forever to do something wrong). I would suggest that the developers learn more Cocoa and quit relying on Applescript because it is squirrelly at the best of times.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I tried the Aqua Inspiriat 2.1 theme and saw in the preview something that seemed like an app launcher, or a modified dock. Anyone know where I could get that application? What it’s called?
March 24th, 2009 at 2:26 am
I love this app. It’s made theming accessible to everyday Joe’s like me. It’s a lot of fun. I hope some old theming veterans will port their designs over to Magnifique. One in particular that I really loved was called GOOD GREY by Martin Ottosson. It was a ShapeShifter theme that was just simple and beautiful.
Martin, I hope you are out there reading this.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:21 am
Works great for me so far. I don’t know what is wrong with your system Twist. Maybe should repair your permissions or something.
The only issue I came across was when I applied the custom stuff for Aqua Inspirat 2.1. It appear to be not compatible with the latest release of iTunes.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Twist isn’t along, I got a bunch of apple script errors too, and also had to force quite the program a few times, so yea i’m back to waiting for Facade too.
But this is a very good attempt I must say, keep it up!
Ill give it another try when they have moved away from apple script, since thats what giving all the errors, and making it very un reliable.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:54 am
In fairness to the developers of this app, at least it is out there and they respond to ideas as witnessed with the upgrades to the app itself. The apple community were crying out for something like this and they delivered. Might I say, the developers of Architect and the phantom Facade have been less than forthcoming and have treated requests of progress with either silence or more excuses. My thanks and appreciation goes to those at Magnifique., well done guys!
March 24th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Yea, as Jurgen said, I also agree with him.
It is better to have something then not to have anything at all.
If I had the time, I would help debug the issues and report them to the correct places.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Works fine for me too. Using Gaia Snow and loving it….
March 24th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
@Durnaurion: Magnifique is indeed an adjective. Magnificence is the noun for something that is magnifique.
Can’t wait to see a Somatic/Amora theme on Facade
March 25th, 2009 at 12:29 am
I thought this would be really cool for a noob like me… but after a few days I keep thinking how happy i was with leopard looks… yeah i know… i might be out of line here
sorry
March 25th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
“Magnificence” is “Magnificence” in french…
(from latin magnificentia)
March 26th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
I understand that this is ‘better than nothing’ and I agree. The app does have some developing to do. However, the approach that this app takes to skinning when you compare it to something like ShapeShifter, is MASSIVELY better.
This thing is lightweight, non-intrusive, and has some really great conventions already set up. I mean, aside from the screenshot stuff, aquiring new themes is ridiculously painless. Right off the bat there’s a theme mixing tool. It’s not the BEST THING IN THE WORLD, but it is still pretty great. It’s already a fully functioning theming app, just needs some polishing up here and there.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I really had a bad experience with this software. It didn’t preview themes right, there weren’t that many, and none of them were complete. And when I installed a dark theme, I couldn’t get my computer back to normal. After trying fixes for two hours, I had to do a time machine restore.
I don’t recommend this software at its current stage.
I’m waiting impatiently for the release of Façade, which seems almost discontinued…
March 28th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Hey guys,
I am the dev. of Magnifique and I am always open to your comments
We are planning a 2.2 release soon that fixes some of these problems. Now those with “AppleScript errors”, it would be helpful if you could describe what the error is, so that I can find out where it is occuring.
And yes, AppleScript is a limitation sometimes and I am working on learning Cocoa
March 28th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Well, pcwiz, it’s very exciting that you’ve created the first Leopard theme manager and installer. And I’m sure the 2.2 release will fix a lot of issues.
I would recommend making the preview better (not just screenshots), making sure all text is white in the black themes, and streamlining the process of restoring Leopard’s original Aqua theme.
I think I was a bit harsh… Freeware doesn’t deserve to be criticized like that. You’re on the path to magnificence.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:44 am
I love magnifique, simply because of the ease of using it and it saves time for theme developers who actually don’t want to make installers.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
What I love is how alot are using this as a stopgap until Mactheme2’s most anticipated vapourware comes about … read that a few times if you missed it.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Sean,
To make dynamic previews (e.g. auto generated previews) SArtFile and ArtFile will have to be decompiled on the fly to get the necessary images, and that will add a considerable delay to the load times. Does anyone know how ShapeShifter went about doing this? And for making black text white, there is no current discovered way, unfortunately, to change the text color in Leopard.
As for streamlining the restore, could you elaborate on that a bit?
Thanks
March 30th, 2009 at 3:29 am
pcwiz,
In response to your points:
- If dynamic previews are too much to ask for, for the sake of clarity, you could have a required screenshot template for theme creators to submit, which shows all of the modifications their theme makes. I found that some themes didn’t show the majority of their aspects through the preview, or displayed no preview at all.
- I guess black themes just aren’t for me.
- You know what, I think I must have used this application during one of its very early stages. I gave it a second chance, and I had no problem restoring the original aqua theme. So never mind what I said about streamlining the restore process, since clearly it has already been done.
I wish I could remove what I said. This application has improved a lot, and I use it on a regular basis now.
And if the things I complain about can’t be fixed, then I shouldn’t complain at all.
Good job.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Your idea about a template is a good one
I’ll think it over and see what I can do
April 1st, 2009 at 11:43 am
Have been using this since Beta 1, it just gets better. Great job, team.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
how do you say “buggy” in French?
April 1st, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Hey guys, take it easy on me
I’m an independent developer and I just began programming last year. I have some bug reports in right now and I’ll do my best to fix them.
What I can say right now is that all of the AppleScript errors I have seen so far are with the downloads system, and these errors almost always are occurring when the download does not complete and there is a time out on the user’s side (or server side, but that’s unlikely). I’m working on getting this fixed, so bear with me for the time
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:36 am
Keep up the good work pcwiz.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Wow, blown away. Been missing shapeshifter so much and gutted apple destroyed our skinning. But now it’s definately back! I only found one decent theme, and a lot of super cheesy shit, but as with all themeing software, it’s down to the designers to get the most out of this software.
Great work, really appreciate the dedication put into it and I may have to have a crack at doing a skin myself now. Let’s hope snow leopard doesn’t kill this off and make it EVEN harder to write apps like this!
April 5th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Not to belittle your work (very good job BTW, it works perfectly on my machine), but if pcwiz was able to do something like this with just 1 year of programming experience in Applescript (which he himself said was limited), why has it taken this long for someone to actually make a theming app? Remember that Leopard was released 20 months ago.
Great work on this!
April 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
just get an applescript error for me
April 7th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Applescript error every time I try and download a theme.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
anyone with applescript error can always download from magnifique’s website
this software is not perfect but i must say this is a huge step toward leopard’s skinning ( and maybe snow leopard too )
April 14th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Nice Webseite,
Great Work
THX Jens
April 15th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
The only problem I’ve had is that sometimes I lose my Finder settings for no apparent reason. I stopped using Magnifique and have not had the problem since. It is very possible that this is the fault of a particular theme and not Magnifique itself.
I also wish there were more people out there creating new themes or porting old ShapeShifter ones. I tried doing it but hosed my system. I’d rather pay someone (anyone interested?) who can do it properly.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I’ll Never ever touch another customization program again
I’ll Never ever touch another customization program again
I’ll Never ever touch another customization program again
I’ll Never ever touch another customization program again
I’ve tryed Magnifique yesterday and i’m still trying to turn back my mac to the default Leopard skin!!! tried everything, now restoring system from Time Machine!
They don’t provide a real solution to this problem, be careful with the software…. “Use at you own risk”
May 1st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
@Dani: Did not use it yet, but I see an ‘Original Leopard r2′ as a possible choice with the themes? Or isn’t that what the name suggests it is?
May 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I have waited a long time for an app like this and sadly, it will not work on my machine. It hangs endlessly on downloading a theme or copying a theme. Heart broken.
May 4th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Guys, magnifique is being updated to an objective-c app. When this happens we should see a lot of improvements and less of these bugs.
May 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
@Dani : no “uninstall” button in your magnifique theme selector ?
May 17th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Magnificence is… magnificence in French. However, magnifique could be translated by beautiful in English.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Hey, Mistikon’s Dark theme is very nice but the text in my menubar like the account name, the battery, and all other icons exept for the little flag are still black and pretty hard to see, anyone have a solution for this???
thx a lot, i’m using titanium now, very nice!
May 25th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Hi !!
i have a little problem to appy Mistikons Dark Menu Bar
it doesn’t install black menu bar ??
can you tell how can i fix this ??
i mean , the white writed menus is applyed but black color are not displayed ;’((
i wanna a black menu bar , pleaseeee …
Merci pour ce magnifique logiciel (software)
Superbe
May 28th, 2009 at 7:59 am
I thought this would be really cool for me. but after a few days I keep thinking how happy i was with leopard looks. Good work!!
May 31st, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Two months and no new posts on macthemes? Come on guys…
June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Oh my god someone PLEASE write something else to put on the front page.. The title is really annoying me now.
At least can we change it to ‘How Do You Say “Magnificent” in French?’
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 am
What has happened to this site?
You guys have dropped the ball.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
There really must be nothing new in Mac theming… No updates in months!!! Why do you guys keep paying hosting if you post nothing?
August 1st, 2009 at 8:37 am
This isnt my idea of what a good themeing app should be, it holds a lot of bugs and seems to interrupt other apps if a theme is installed perhaps they will update it in the future untill then i wont be using it.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
You are quite right about that.
I would preferre a OSX theming app that works like Winterboard.
If someone were to make a theming app like that for OSX i would pay big $$$ for it
August 11th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Oui, merci pour cet excellent logiciel !
And… why a french name ?
Thanks for us
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I agree with the previous post even though he’s clearly one of the thickest people on the internet.
It’s called a pun. Wikipedia it.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Magnificent is more “splendide” than Magnifique I think
November 5th, 2009 at 12:10 am
how do you download the themes
November 24th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Why aren’t there bullet-proof pants?
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
yeeeeeeah dont want to be mean but just like me peopLe are going to have problems and just like me will look look up something about it if this blog pops up look at this:
DO NOT DOWNLOAD MAGNIFIQUE :
DO NOT DOWNLOAD MAGNIFIQUE :
DO NOT DOWNLOAD MAGNIFIQUE :
CRASHED MY WHOLE COMPUTER, HAD TO RESTORE IT COULDNT START IT IN SAFE MODE.
IT MESSES EVERYTHING UP, OTHER PEOPE TOO, THE PROGRAM IS GLITCHED THE F*** OUT!!!
January 4th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
-Hey, does it run on the latest snow leopard version?
-I open it, open a theme, and a popup apears
-i closeit and it stays in runing custom restore script
-any help?¿?¿
-thanks
January 26th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Merci pour ce magnifique logiciel
February 4th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
myraunz, i know how
February 8th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
thtanks yea.!
February 17th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
no windows theme, no download from me. and it doesn’t work
February 21st, 2010 at 6:15 am
I didn’t upgrade to Snow Leopard yet, and didn’t even think about customizing the theme… until I came across the manual method and the magnifique method to do so.
Currently running Umaso, and it’s awesome; I love it. It didn’t crash my computer, and it didn’t do any of those things that some people are experiencing (primarily because magnifique is currently only available for systems below 10.6).
March 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am
Página de inicio Muy bien, gracias por los consejos