Every default macOS wallpaper, in glorious 5k resolution | Hacker News Reader

Every default macOS wallpaper, in glorious 5k resolution

512pixels.net

267 pointswhalesalad63 comments

Oh, these are great. I just wish they would have included Quantum Foam, which was very similar to the Cheetah and Puma one, but in graphite gray and with more contrast in the highlights. I think it was the default in Mac OS 9.

It’s been very hard to find in decent resolution and quality. I’ve tried to use various upscaling tools, I’ve tried to do it manually (reconstructing it with vectors), but I’ve never been quite happy with the result.

Agreed. Sage Foam is another all-time favorite.

One of the things I hated about clean installing OSX was the previous wallpapers and user avatars weren't kept in the installer. If you were lucky enough to upgrade the OS without errors through each major release you got to hang onto some very important bits of the OS, like Quicktime 7, iPhoto, iMovie. Once you upgraded the hardware, if you didn't have the foresight to backup the application and the app support library folder, you were in for a letdown.

It's the same with iOS too - I've kept the milky way over a snowy mountain top since whatever version it was released because if you change it you lose it (well you have to search around and get it back from the internet).

Same! That's such a great iPad wallpaper. I've found copies of it online but they all seem to be lower quality than the one included with the OS.

If you really want it, you can pull it from the IPSW…

I just noticed quicktime 7 was deprecated in Catalina

It's been deprecated for much longer, it just stopped working in Catalina.

good point

10.0 to 10.4 wallpapers have always looked the best IMO. Even more so today in 5k.

Looks boring to me though. I like the galaxy ones better.

If you like the galaxy photos, the original photographer is Rob Gendler: http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/

Excellent. Thanks for linking this

No love for Mac OS X Server 1.0? I have my phone using the same background as Rhapsody DR2.

you must be stepwise

Ha, I am. I feel like OPENSTEP and Rhapsody are ignored these days, much in the same way people think every GeoCities website was in Comic Sans.

OS X 10.7 is still my favorite default wallpaper. I was surprised to see the author didn't care for it. Given the minimal descriptions for 10.10+, I take it they care more for the abstract blue backgrounds of the earlier releases than for mountains as well.

I miss snow leopard & spaces. Never really figured out how to be productive w/ Mission Control and full screen apps.

> Never really figured out how to be productive w/ Mission Control and full screen apps

Has anyone? I'd love to see the stats on this. One of those things that looks prettier than it is useful.

To me the full screen feature is really useful. I work with my notebook in a stand right by the side of an external display. On the notebook I keep everything in full screen mode except for the VS Code windows, which stay in the other monitor. When I need to switch from browser to Slack, Spark (email client) or Spotify, I just have to swipe with two fingers on my Magic Mouse or with four fingers in MacBook's Magic Trackapd.

It works wonderfully for me at least, for one counter anecdata. It only works well because I can swipe back and forth between screens with the touchpad. I don’t know how I would use a mac without one.

you can still do spaces.

You have to enable mission control and enter it with the bar across the top.

Then hit (+) to get a bunch of desktops.

Then go into keyboard shortcuts and you can assign keyboard keys to each space.

In mission control settings you have to turn off rearrange.

(backed out of latest os's not certain if it's in still in catalina)

TotalSpaces 2 gives you a 2-d desktop grid again! Unfortunately it also requires disabling (parts of) System Integrity Protection because of the way it interacts with the Dock.

Why is "Mac OS X" crossed out with "macOS" written in place of it? Is the former wrong somehow?

Officially it's macOS now.

Oh interesting, I didn't realize. Thanks!

Mac OS, then Mac OS X, then OS X, and now macOS. Probably Mac OS again some time soon to go full circle.

I personally just say Mac OS. If there were some device called the Blarg, with an operating system built to run just on the Blarg, then that operating system would be most naturally called Blarg OS; I suspect the vast majority of people would call it that if no name were supplied.

Also, since OS X's full name was always still "Mac OS X", "Mac OS" correctly refers to every iteration of the operating system.

macOS matches watchOS, tvOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Unless Apple decides to rename all their products, I don't see macOS changing.

Yeah, jeez, what's NeXT?

Well then say that MacOS is 3 pixels slimmer than Mac OS but it just doesn't have the same feel and I'm constanly get crumbs stuck between the c and the O.

It started nameless, colloquially called “System”, became “Macintosh System Software” in 1987, and only became Mac OS in 1996 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS)

If this makes people stop pronouncing it “ecks” (it’s “ten”, a roman numeral), I’m all for it.

Sorta. The old name still works, when referring to a proper old release. Going forward the OS family is referred to as macOS.

I see, thanks!

How would you write out a rebranding like Mac OS X to macOS

I'd go with one of these:

* macOS (née Mac OS X)

* macos (formerly Mac OS X)

Ah yes, the classic game:

- "macos!"

- "polos!"

Didn't mean to lower case that one.

The operating system formerly known as Mac OS X

TOSFKAMOSX. Rolls off the tongue almost as well as TAFKAP.

Here's an interesting apple-related song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwcCRdTZw0A

(of course it might diverge from your memory after a moment or two)

It's kind of a shame that the thumbnails are 1400x1050. I mean, it's a thumbnail, ~500p would be absolutely fine (probably even less), and the load times would have been much better.

The entire purpose of this page is to disseminate high res wallpapers. I think in this case the small asset size ship has sailed.

Is there a similar site for all the iPhone/iOS wallpapers?

Are there similar libraries for the non-default but also-included wallpapers? I think I liked some of the alternative El Capitan wallpapers more than the default.

It's an elegant and damning presentation of how Apple software has gotten more flashy and less usable over time.

what about the tiles for OS8 and OS9?

There's a pretty decent collection of pre-OS X wallpapers here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6c8veze05y4dou8/AAABpBWhiGAtqKzOc...

Thanks! Blue kittens (#139 in your Dropbox) is the best wallpaper I ever had :)

10.6 is best IMHO

I don't think the wallpaper by itself is anything special, but I absolutely love how it makes the window control traffic lights pop.

Here's a Finder window on my computer. I'm running Mavericks, but with some UI hacks to bring it closer to Snow Leopard. And of course, the Snow Leopard desktop picture in the background. https://i.ibb.co/S6hCkhQ/Screen-Shot-2020-03-24-at-8-07-28-P...

Whatever happen to copyright … .

As someone who is probably more supportive of intellectual property rights and copyright in particular than the median HN user, "how dare someone nostalgically resize and make available a handful of background wallpapers that were distributed with obsolete versions of an operating system" strikes me as one of the tiniest, most pedantic hills to die on I can imagine.

I take it you've never paid for food and rent from the income from your photographs.

I don't know the copyright story of the photos included with the macOS releases, but I don't think it's wrong for the parent comment to at least ask the question.

I appreciate you getting huffy at me in the ostensible defense of photographers and art creators (seriously, I do), but the only way these creators could possibly be losing potential income from this site is if retained the rights to sell these images digitally. I can't swear under oath that they didn't, but under this particular circumstance, that would be awfully unusual. (It would be almost unheard of these works to have been licensed to Apple on a per-unit royalty basis rather than a flat fee, but in either case the creator would have made all the money they ever would have from Apple by now anyway. And, it's quite likely these were done either under a work-for-hire contract, in which Apple retained all the rights, or -- like "Bliss," the iconic green hill/blue sky image in Windows 95 -- they bought all the rights to the image for a flat fee.)

It's also worth noting that OS X has been free as in beer since at least 10.9, and it looks like 10.1 was also free if you had 10.0.

For all intents and purposes, these wallpapers are free to the end user. Additionally, resold versions of the OS also have a cost approaching 0. Finally, the marketplace for resold wallpapers that were effectively free to the end user is nonexistent. Though there may still be interesting legal questions here, as you point out, the creators of the wallpapers almost certainly retain no rights anyway.

The point isn't that the photographers don't have rights to these particular photos.

The point is you criticize a person for even asking the question.

Not everyone has the same insight into the licensing and legal ramifications of images being distributed with OSes, and there's never a reason to be condescending and demeaning to someone asking a simple question.

You could have chosen to educate them in a helpful and friendly way, but you didn't.

> You could have chosen to educate them in a helpful and friendly way, but you didn't.

> I take it you've never paid for food and rent from the income from your photographs.

Are you talking about yourself being unfriendly and throwing accusations?

You're absolutely right that my reply wasn't the friendlies way to go about things. I bit back to the original comment, and I shouldn't have done that.

The original comment I was responding to was, in its entirety:

"Whatever happened to copyright..."

And I'm gonna be honest: to me, that is not just asking an innocent question in a friendly and non-confrontational way. It's implicitly pretty accusatory.

I have already paid for all of the original that were part of paid OS updates and the rest were distributed for free.

I promise I will plead no contest in court when Apple sues me for downloading them to my MacBook Pro.

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