Aral Balkan

After Tiger, Leopard looks butt-ugly to me with its Vistaesque (think "grotesque as only Microsoft can manage") semi-transparent menu bar, square screen corners, over-the-top 3D dock, and ridiculous default wallpaper.

Thankfully, the fine folks at Many Tricks have a tool called Displaperture that gives you your rounded corners back!

You can also run a quick hack to remove the 3D dock (via macosxhints). Open up Terminal and type the following to regain your 2D dock:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

And, I just created a version of the Aqua Blue wallpaper that ships with Tiger that gives you an opaque menu bar.

Download Aqua-Blue-Tiger.jpg (1MB) and place it in your /[MainDrive]/Library/Desktop Pictures/ folder and set it as your desktop wallpaper in your System Preferences to get your opaque menu bar back and regain some semblance of Macishness in Leopard.

You can also download the PSD (12MB) here if you want to refine it further (since Leopard blurs the image, the resulting gradient is not exactly the same as the one in Tiger -- it's a little darker, which I personally like better with the darker Apple logo -- you could probably tweak it to make it exactly the same but I need to catch a place back to the UK in a few hours and need to head out to the airport now!)

I hope you guys enjoy these little hacks. Personally, I've begun to enjoy looking at my Mac again for the first time since I installed Leopard :)

Comments

• Hey Aral, I really will enjoy the dock hack. I can't judge about the other things since, I'm still waiting for my leopard to arrive by mail. I'm really looking forward to it. But since I change my desktop image every few days, the bg doens't quite work for me :p Thanks for sharing, man!

  by Ronny Welter on 2007-10-27 23:36:10

• At least you got it installed OK ;) I honestly though my screen was broken. But I realised it was the semi transparent tool bar with stars shining though, not dead pixels and ink leeks!

  by Rob on 2007-10-27 23:39:57

• Vistaesque (think “grotesque as only Microsoft can manage”) ... seems Apple plagiarized Microsoft this time, not vice versa.

  by sascha/hdrs on 2007-10-28 03:01:18

• [...] The most controversial “feature” is the new desktop translucent menu-bar.  Depending on the picture you have on in the background, this can make viewing and using the menu extremely difficult.  This is a rare slip up for Apple, who normally pride themselves on good UI usability.  I never got the whole transparent thing, but if it’s there then there should at least be an option to turn it off.  I know I’m not alone in suggesting this.  If they wanted to conserve desktop space, they could have made it an auto-hide menu (a la the Amiga c. 1985).  As far as I can tell though, this new transparent menubar is just wank for wank’s sake, and actually reduces productivity by making the damn thing harder to read. Oh yeah, they’ve also finally done away with the rounded corners at the top of the screen.  I kind of miss them, but they really were a relic of the old CRT macs. and looked a little dated.  I’m not really a fan of the new folder icons either (they’re pretty chunky), but I’m sure I’ll get used to them. [...]

  by Dan Makovec’s blog » Impressions of Leopard on 2007-10-28 12:54:57

• [...] I stumbled across Aral Balkan’s blog where he talks about a hint he found on macosxhints to set the dock to be on the bottom in the same style as it is on the sides: [...]

  by Random Technology » Changing the Dock In Leopard - Tips, tricks, howtos, reviews, and some Chinese by Rob Rohan on 2007-10-28 21:59:41

• It's nice to see that the new aesthetic is the only real complaint anyone is coming up with. And to all of you I can only say this, I like the new aesthetic. I liked Vista's aesthetic too. And, honestly, I don't see how being different from Vista for the sake of being different accomplishes anything. But, I must admit, it's a matter of personal choice. I wish that Apple allowed for more customizability in their OS, that's for sure. I use Shape Shifter for that...just glad it didn't break anything for me, can't say the same for everyone else.

  by Jay Carr on 2007-10-29 00:19:10

• I really think people over react to changes. Give it a couple days. I really like the transparent menu bar - makes it more color matched to the background. I also like the reflective dock, it makes it more neutral.

  by David on 2007-10-29 06:30:12

• Any details or how to get the old Tiger folder icons back?

  by Ingwe on 2007-10-29 23:23:59

• Instead of having to adjust your wallpaper, you can also use the free OpaqueMenuBar which will make the menu bar solid white. Check out http://www.eternalstorms.at/utilities/opaquemenubar/ to download.

  by Jon MacDonald on 2007-10-30 17:06:16

• Hey Jon, I tried it but it didn't work at all for me. Thanks for sharing.

  by Aral on 2007-10-30 18:28:54

• > Instead of having to adjust your wallpaper, you can also use the free OpaqueMenuBar That's funny, because all OpaqueMenuBar does is adjust your wallpaper ("/tmp/ombbgimg.tiff"). I'm still looking for ways to bring Non-Transparent Menu Bar back to life. In the mean time, I'm glad you like Displaperture.

  by Peter Maurer on 2007-10-30 21:42:51

• Aral, thanks for the suggestion of that Display* thingy application. OpaqueMenuBar didn't work for me either. Now Leopard is perfect... now they only need to fix the windows network printing, wi-fi and the flaws in Spaces and we are set for now...

  by Weyert on 2007-10-31 10:23:40

• Just found this and thought you might like it: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071115135215262

  by Jolyon on 2007-11-16 09:47:45

• @Jolyron: Cool, man, thanks for sharing. I'm up and running with an opaque menu bar again :)

  by Aral on 2007-11-16 17:09:45

• Anyone know where the menubar's Apple logo is located or how to change it back to the Tiger blue one? Thanks

  by Terry on 2007-11-17 17:17:22

• Just to keep the question warm ; anyone who knows how to get back the blue apple in the menu bar ? the greyish one in leopard is sooo ugly.

  by dev singh on 2007-12-03 20:27:51

• welcome to my new website

  by may on 2008-01-10 13:08:15