Customizing Leopard Updated

OK so since I made the switch to Leopard I was having some trouble with the default icons. It was a bit too cartoonish for my taste so I went looking for ways to customize them. The best thing out there on the Mac for this type of thing is CandyBar but CandyBar was not compatible with Leopard until yesterday. CandyBar was finally updated to version 3 and is now Leopard compatible. I hopped on over there and took it for a spin and now my icons are the way I want them to be. The only thing was that the CandyBar upgrade is a bit steep at $24. Its like I’m paying for it all over again, not so nice since its and upgrade. However, version 3 does include the ability to change your dock as well as Pixadex for organizing your icons which was a separate product. If you want to customize Leopard for free and save your $24 for something else, you can use PimpMyDock to change your dock backgrounds and indicators (they actually have dock themes on the site that you can download and apply). To change your icons similar to CandyBar use LiteIcon. I haven’t found a way to change application icons using LiteIcon but maybe I’m overlooking something there. For some good wallpapers, themes and icons try these links.

Jonas Rask- good icons

Macthemes 2 Forum

Michael’s Mac- some of everything

Leopard Docks- lots of docks

Bob Marley on my iPhone

So back in early November a bad thing happened This has been the year for not so nice things happening to me, first I had to spend lots of money fixing my car on my birthday and early November I was using my iPhone and it went all green and funky and hot on me and just died Now where I live we don’t have an official Apple store and the closest one is like over an hour away so I had to do the mail shuffling thing. I called Apple up the next day after said iPhone went green and they told me that they were sending a box for it, problem was that I was going on a conference and by the time they sent it I was between here and Vermont. I wasn’t happy here I was going out of town and my iPhone was not working. It would turn on one minute with a greenish tint to everything, get hot, and just die. Anyway, when I got back I figured out that my neighbor had signed for my package which I gladly retrieved and opened. It had a loaner iPhone (which switched out gladly with my old funky one), the box also contained some handy instructions for shipping your old iPhone and some tape to help re-seal the various boxes. Nice touch! A few minutes later I had the loaner all plugged in and was able to transfer my data and authorize the loaner for use. The loaner worked fine and I had it for a few days before I finally got back a new iPhone from Apple. Apparently, my old iPhone could not be replaced (no surprise there). Anyway, I did the FedEx thing again and while there, this employee at the Fed-Ex wanted to know what was in the little box. Apparently, they were getting quite a lot of these little boxes of late. After telling him that it was an iPhone he had all kinds of questions about it and wanted to know if I liked it or not. I told him I was liking it very much until the day my last one died on me.
The replacement experience was not too bad and I wasn’t charged that dreaded $29 fee but I thought that for those folks without an Apple store nearby its a bit of a hassle if something goes wrong with the phone. I think that Apple should have its customers without an Apple store within a certain distance just return broken iPhones to our local AT&T stores. This just makes more sense to me than dealing with FedEx and all the waiting. I’m thinking that the average iPhone owner has a day job so dealing with FedEx is not the most convenient approach. My “new” iPhone seems to be working just fine now and the only thing that is really green on it now is the Bob Marley iPhone Wall. I do notice a greenish tint in the photos taken by the camera especially in low light settings but really I wasn’t expecting very much from the camera just glad I can use my phone and ipod again.

Happy Thanksgiving

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you all. It was a fun-filled day spent doing some chores in the morning then off to a Thanksgiving feast at the Millers, back home gabbing on the phone with friends and then a movie. Very intense movie actually now my head hurts and I have to get to sleep. There will be much slaving over the stove tomorrow as I prepare a mini feast for some friends. Yikes and I’m supposed to be on a bit of a holiday. Yeah right.