“All the icons for folders and apps in Snow Leopard are now drawn in glorious 512 x 512 pixels. It’s a step toward making the operating system resolution independent, and perhaps also to make Snow Leopard a touchscreen friendly OS,” Leander Kahney reports for Cult of Mac.
“But it’s also obviously done just for the art of it. These icons are real beauties. They are full of great details and little surprises. One icon contains the words to a song, visible only if you blow it up to its full size,” Kahney reports.
Here are two samples to whet your appetite, Apple’s icon for Automator (yes, that’s an icon, folks) followed by Apple’s rather humorous networking browsing icon for a Windows PC icon:
Kahney offers many more gorgeous examples in his full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
Icon porn indeed.
First, btw 😀
automator appears to look like that right now in 10.5 unless there are some details i don’t see.
I don’t think they are saying the icon has changed. It has just gotten bigger. So there is just much more detail in the image, especially when blown up to this size.
Nice enough I guess. But What I really want to see is the new MacWrite and MacDraw apps!
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MacWrite MacDraw, lol
Would be funny if they were included in the new tablet as touch apps.
Lets face it. When it comes to a UI change, these apps were doing it from the beginning.
“A fatal exception has occurred… The current application will be terminated” I’m laughing! Mac Easter eggs forever!
I would be interested in knowing who actually created these icons. Maybe they should have signatures; they are little works of art.
All the default icons were drawn in 512×512 with Leopard. They’re the same in Snow Leopard.
I would have changed the Windows icon to “Welcome to the POS World of Windows”.
Lickable!
This is not new with Snow Leopard. Go ahead and copy the Automator icon from a Leopard installation and open it in preview. You will see it is exactly the same size as the icon in the article and that in fact it has not changed at all in detail or design.
Gorgeous icons are for namby-pamby, artsy-fartsy MAC sissies who don’t know how to use REAL computers. Is that what you MAC lemmings do all day—ogle big ass icons? On Windows we double-click on icons and get things done.
Your potential. Our passion.™
On Windows we double-click on icons and get things done.
Mmm Hmm.. Yeah, you get things done… Whenever you don’t have driver installations or conflicts, malware, Windows Updates, and virus scans getting in the way.
For instance, I’ve never plugged in a USB memory key into my “MAC” and had a missing “USB Mass Storage” driver, only to try to install it… unsuccessfully. After wasting two hours trying to make it work, I gave up and re-installed Windows. POS bailing-wire-and-duct-tape Windows.
I wonder how many MILLIONS of hours have been wasted by people trying to make crap work on Windows… Unsuccessfully.
It wasn’t so big, but the Windows icon was the same back in Panther days.
(That was OS X 10.3 for you newbies)
@ecrabb… ha HAH! another victim impaled by the rapier sharp wit of ZuneTang™!
Sorry, but who EVER displays icons at 512 pixels? Oh, wait, in the Finder we can’t!
It’s not that I don’t LIKE big, gorgeous icons! (I ONLY import 512 pixel icons into CandyBar!)
But really, do ANY of you have any of your window view prefs set at 128 pixels?
Is there really ANYwhere where we can use 512 icons?
I didn’t think so.
Nice icons, though!
Folder Icon damn sure had me doing a double-take the other day
Changes as it collapses or expands – too kewl for skool
Now Zuney Zuney Zuney …
Haven’t seen ya much this week – you been out in the Snow playing with Kitty ?
Now, we’re having a “Lemming Get Together” later today here at MDN, you’re invited
We all gonna get artsy fartsy and ogle some big ass icons
But oh, sorry, you got to “get things done” … Maybe another time, ok ? …
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BC
I’d soooo love to have a job designing icons for Apple. What fun that would be!
@ John,
Especially if you made icons of hot naked women.
Sir Gee Bee and John …
Maybe you two should check with Evony
My Lord …
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BC
Goobi,
Nope. In Leopard they only go to 128 x 128.
@Mr. Reeee,
Nah, no victim status, here. I’ve been around MDN for a long time; I know the Zune Tang game. I just took the opportunity to vent about how much I hate Windows.
Windows icons look as if they were drawn with a felt tipped marker…in 1974.
@ mark s.
you’re not giving felt-tipped marker artists from ’74 enough credit. i usually don’t like to hop on windows hating bandwagons but the icons, even in vista/7, are “UUUUUUGLY”.
Which icon contains the words of a song?
The Chumbawumba icon. It clearly says “I get knocked down/ I get up again/ You’re never gonna keep me down/”