Over the past year the mac customization scene has seemed to take a dramatic downturn. This place used to be ripe with submissions daily and now We're lucky to see one or two new things a month. What happened? Where has all the awesomeness gone? Maybe I'm just unaware of all the avenues for getting cool customization resources because I do frequently see new and exciting things in the screenshots thread.. Am I alone?

Lion has proven damn near impossible to theme and everyone has basically shifted over to iOS theming now.

The kids that started this thing got older, got jobs. They run this as a side project. It doesn't make any real money - the ads probably just cover the cost to operate the site, perhaps a small portion goes to the moderators. The artists donate free projects to the community in their spare time, and the same goes for the developers. Not to mention that Apple been progressively making their enviorment more controlled and less themeable.

This is not the MacThemes that used to inspire me. This site, the way it used to be, prompted me to study web design in college.

I think everyone here wants MacThemes to be great again. It's still (in my opinion) the de facto themeing site for the Macintosh, but the community demands too much and contributes too little. Not to mention, that everyone here is so protective of their work (and they have every right to be) that it is difficult to achieve collaborative efforts, and theming is all about splicing different elements together.

There is a group actively working (I would assume) on MacThemes 2, which will be a reinvigoration of the site. I'm hoping that will draw some attention to the community. It would be nice to see some professional content on the site, possibly fueled by advertisements, but who knows if anything like that is in the works.

Ultimately, if you want to see better content, it starts with you. As JFK said: "Ask not what your MacThemes community can do for you - ask what you can do for your MacThemes community."

The Admin and Mods do not get paid anything for their work here - we does it for the love of the platform and art.

MacThemes v3 is coming - just very slowly

If anyone can think of good ways to reinvigorate the site while we work on v3 by all means let us hear them

The way to invigorate the site is to provide content. The wrapper is meaningless without it.

Are anyone working on a shapeshifteresque theming solution these days? Or have they all been given up? I really feel like that's where it went downhill, I mean although Leo and Snow were pretty themable, it wasn't easy and nicely packaged like it used to be. Seems like less power-user type people were alienated, and either left or became the somewhat uncontributing members. I think it's a sad thing, I had some great times back around 06-09.

theming on the mac is for all intents and purposes... dead. nevermind the domain name, since around 2009 it's really been iOSthemes.net

I dearly miss the ShapeShifter days... :/

Yes... NEOS and Shinobi I miss a lot.

The only real themeing solution for Lion is Crystal Clear...

http://crystalclear.musingsfrommars.org/

Not everyone's cuppa though.

There is limited themeing for Snow Leopard with ThemePark 4.

I miss the old days too but death comes to us all....

I know it's been bumpy in the past, but can't we open dialogue with the CC guys to come to some kind of comprehensive theming solution? Obviously their haxies are the best in the market right now.

DJ wrote:I miss the old days too but death comes to us all....

I bet you don't miss the whining for your Handel Gothic font mod

peetr wrote:

DJ wrote:I miss the old days too but death comes to us all....

I bet you don't miss the whining for your Handel Gothic font mod

Hahahaha. No way, man. DJ relished that. ;D

not even a little....

Ah... the old banter... just like ye olde days.

peetr wrote:

DJ wrote:I miss the old days too but death comes to us all....

I bet you don't miss the whining for your Handel Gothic font mod

Sorry, it's NFR.....

....there's some old school for ya....

Maybe someday themeing will pick up again

jivhg is the only guy who came up with something relatively new in the last year or so, some kind of input manager hack that seemed promising. But he got stuck in some technical dead end somewhere down the line and put everything on the back burner.

I'm also still trying to understand what the heck happened with Façade. Was it real of just very well orchestrated hype? Matt Patenaude, the original coder, won't even mention the project as if there is some kind of omertà on it...

If only smeger would stop his drinking binge around the globe and actually update ThemePark for Lion!

Lion is just as themeable as Leopard and Snow leopard. The question is the tools. I have my tools open-sourced on github but they problem is they need maintaining and attention and it is not really something I could give. They are located here and here,

Though, FBEye is right – I do have a crazy theme hack made that is NFR due to it being incredibly unstable. If CydiaSubstrate ever comes out you can except a theming solution from me

vaporware /cough

truth is lion is pretty fukking great. for me, theming dock/expose window border/mission control bgrd... this has satisfied me. there's no urgency like 5+ years ago, with brushed metal and gel capsules and yickety yuck everyplace. apple did a great job unifying OS X, i mean, as great as we should reasonably expect for apple. it's not perfect, but it's pretty close. 'course it'd be great to see a theming revolution prove me oh so wrong, but OS X themes have had their day. :-[

there are some pretty decent lion themeing solutions over at blackcursor, y'all just need to get out of your macthemes rut!

Y'all just need an invite to blackcursor, obviously... :rolleyes:

What is blackcursor?

Some private UI community, kinda like Macristocracy...

ahhhh.......