Icon Porn: Feast Your Eyes On Snow Leopard’s Beautiful Icons
1:01 am, September 5th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Dictionary and TextEdit
The Latin text on the Dictionary icon is Lorem Ipsum placeholder text from the publishing industry. When creating dummies to show off design elements or fonts, designers will often use Latin text to fill in the text boxes: “Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etiam.”
The TextEdit icon contains the words to the “Think Different” television commercials that Apple ran in the late 1990s.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, OS X, Top stories | Comment on this article
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staggering!
just when you think you love everything there is to love about your mac… there’s always something you missed out.
dramaqueen, on September 5th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Eye-Candy for the service pack?
Ian, on September 5th, 2009 at 3:35 am
[...] this page was mentioned by Graham_Ellis (@graham_ellis), KatsuMooMoooo (@katsumoomoooo), Leonidas Tsekouras (@leotsekouras), classic2mac (@classic2mac), Kara DeMaeyer (@_karabanana) and others. [...]
Tweets that mention Icon Porn: Feast Your Eyes On Snow Leopard’s Beautiful Icons | Cult of Mac -- Topsy.com, on September 5th, 2009 at 3:53 am
These posts, where you split across 10 pages just for what could be advertising profit really sucks and just put me off coming back to this site.
So, possibly re-think your greedy marketing strategy? If a proportion of people are of similar mind to me then they wont even bother reading or returning to your site…so short term profit will lead to long term slump.
Think about it…
sooper8, on September 5th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Does a compass have minutes? Surely it’s degrees? Who knows, but these are beautiful icons. Any chance of uploading some of Micro$haft’s latest offerings for comparison, and hilarity?
Helius, on September 5th, 2009 at 4:32 am
Oh, the whole point of my original post (which I forgot, again) was that I hate the new folders which we first saw in Leopard – Really really dislike those flecks. There’s something wishy-washy and insipid about them.
Helius, on September 5th, 2009 at 4:33 am
Totally agree with sooper8, I was thinking about not coming back to this site after halfway through the 10 pages.
chaosboi, on September 5th, 2009 at 5:26 am
I agree with sooper8, its pretty cheap to split the post in TEN different pages. Its not enough that I am clicking my RSS feed and coming to your site, now you have to make me go through 2 icons a page? Pretty ridiculous.
zurielb, on September 5th, 2009 at 7:22 am
sooper8 and chaosboi, these icons are huge! it they were all on one long page it would have been a ridiculous scroll fest. multiple pages is simply much more efficient… he could have put a pop up gallery in here, but still, this is probably faster and fit his workflow better. give it a rest…
nice website. nice design. thanks for the porn…
Meatle Gee, on September 5th, 2009 at 8:08 am
sooper8, chaosboi
I’m sure COM and their “greedy marketing strategy” will do just fine without you so please do the rest of us a favor and take your bitching and moaning elsewhere.
Paul, on September 5th, 2009 at 8:18 am
wow. CoM provides a completely free service, full of great op:ed pieces, helpful tips, and bits like this. FREE. for you. you don’t pay a dime.
and you jackassess complain about them being greedy. you’re right. i’d rather them take all the ads down so this just becomes a huge moneypit and in six months its offline because they couldn’t pay the bills. [major sarcasm]
Luke, on September 5th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Interesting, but reminds me of a previous article by Pete Mortensen: http://www.cultofmac.com/snow-leopards-beautiful-giant-obsessive-icons/15245
Tycho, on September 5th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I also hated the number of pages to the article. But I also wanted to letHelius know that bearings and azimuths typically consist of degrees, minutes, and seconds rather than simply degrees. And yes, the icons are awe inspiring.
FrozenDude, on September 5th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Sometimes I understand the gripes made by this site’s commenters. Not this time. Bitching about layout? Really? Would you have done so if you weren’t anonymous? Methinks not.
I like seeing these icons up close-n-personal, even if it meant a bit of clicking and scrolling.
JAYnLA, on September 5th, 2009 at 10:32 am
The icons are beautiful!
Mike Williamson, on September 5th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Beautiful icons… Except the folders. No matter how large and detailed you make these, they are TERRIBLE icons. Just because you add lovely detailed nuances doesn’t make them nice and easy to use.
Joe, on September 5th, 2009 at 10:41 am
The Keynote icon contains lyrics to a song on iTunes given free, and the title is “Q4 2009″. Doesn’t anyone think this is a nod to the up-coming Wednesday “Rock & Roll” event?
Joe, on September 5th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Thats Apple. The details are quality are mind blowing. Something Windows and its trolls running around the net yelling Service Pack will never get. To them a beat up chewed on pencil that broke in half and held together with tape is good enough. Yeah it comes apart, but you can tape it more to start again. Yeah the lead point wears out, but I can grind it over and over to sharper it again. Thats Windows and thats their users.
Apple the pencil is made of machined aluminum, perfectly proportioned and the lead used is of the best quality and always sharp. To advance more lead, it takes one click and your good to go. Thats Apple products, easy, elegant and exemplarily for what it does, compared to Windows.
slappy, on September 5th, 2009 at 10:55 am
What the! These icons have been 512px since Leopard! Can’t believe someone like Kahney would make such a mistake. Or maybe he just wants to prove his point about SL being a touchscreen OS.
goobi, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am
This got me thinking, it’s really about time to update the iTunes icon. I mean, CD, really? How many of you still rip or burn your music? In fact, how many of you still use your optical drive on a regular basis? I do about once in two monts.
Marian, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Nice……………
jazzyl, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Bitchin and a moanin?
Not really..just pointing out a fact that to split posts over 10 pages as has been done a few times lately is a pain in the ass.
No need ,and smacks as greedy and ruins the whole look and feel of an article.
No matter how big the pics, do they need to be just 2 per page…?
sooper8, on September 5th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I love how Leander talks us through the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS.
(Picture of a radar)
And here we see a picture of a radar. I love how it’s a radar. Radars are cool. I like radars. It’s a radar everyone.
owen-b, on September 5th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Pundit Anil Dash said it was arrogant, ugly and smug.”
I think that was the point. I love that icon.
William Ruzicka, on September 5th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Need better navigation for us iPhone useres. Large next and back would be nice.
Ron, on September 5th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Only one other person here knows that they have been 512px since 10.5? How on earth do you miss that?!
Adam, on September 5th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Theve been that big since 10.5… Leander, your articles suck….
anon, on September 5th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
you guys are all idiots, all the icons shown are the same as in leopard os x 10.5.
fags
john, on September 5th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
you could have always seen the textedit poem in previous OSes
me, on September 5th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Helius – Deg., Minutes, Seconds … not that that is what is on the icon. Still beautiful tho
mie, on September 5th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
So the question is which version of Windows OS is going to copy the look and feel of these icons? LOL
Toyuwa Newton, on September 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Try opening the Applications folder in Leopard and enabling the huge Cover Flow. Same thing.
Larry, on September 5th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
[...] CultOfMac references the genuinely artistic icons found in Snow Leopard. Talk about attention to detail! Take a look! [...]
MacZealot » Blog Archive » Cult of Mac – Excellent article, on September 5th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
would be nice if the pic of the continent changes depending on your location….
Daniel, on September 5th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
pornography |pôrˈnägrəfē|
noun
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
From my Apple dic(-tionary).
So they are not ‘porn’ and degrading to call them so.
How ironic?
Sharpen up CoM!!
ged, on September 5th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
“Icon Porn” is the most clever (and apt!) teaser I’ve heard in a long while.
Gorgeous mini works of art indeed! Absolutely excites me for the launch of Snow Leopard.
And for those who don’t approve of the PC icon…there’s a reason the phrase “Blue Screen of Death” has become commonplace.
Taylor, on September 5th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I politely second the request to keep things on one page; the icons are indeed large, which means I am scrolling regardless of how many you place on one page. I understand others may find a different user experience more pleasing, but I’d like to express my preference.
Sam, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Nice icons, but I can’t do ELEVEN pages. Sorry.
snr, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
@Marian,
Yes, I do use my optical drive on a regular basis, and I do rip and burn music lent to me by friends and collegues, and from my own large CD colletion. As soon as I get the software, I’m gonna start ripping DVD’s, too. So please do not assume that everyone else has adopted your lifestyle or workflow.
@sooper 8
Dude, the bills must be paid, and you’re not paying them, so quit yer bellyaching and just click the link to the next page.
Steven, on September 5th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
@ged
We all know the technical definition of “porn,” thank you very much for the information, and for your indignation. However, porn in this context merely means something which provokes lust. I’m sure you knew that, though. I doubt if anyone here besides you is feeling very degraded.
I’m sure he could have called them “pinups” or something like that but it wouldn’t generate any hits. And besides, if you’re below a certain age, you probably don’t even know what a pinup is.
Steven, on September 6th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Looks like they were produced with Pixar RenderMan, using custom shaders.
Douglas Ward, on September 6th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Also to be noted on the Aperture icon is the 50mm 1:1.4. The defacto lens for portraiture work.
Chuck, on September 6th, 2009 at 1:52 am
These are JPEGs! ewww! Icon Porn #FAIL!
Manan, on September 6th, 2009 at 1:59 am
Adam: “Only one other person here knows that they have been 512px since 10.5? How on earth do you miss that?!”
Quite easily; after Leopard was released, everyone tried Coverflow in Finder about once, then decided it was totally pointless and even remembering this feature was a waste of brain capacity, and so forgot about it and the pretty icons that enabled it.
I may be a bit too harsh on Coverflow, but the point is that compared to the live previews and the size slider in Snow Leopard, Coverflow (in Finder) is not really worth remembering
Tycho, on September 6th, 2009 at 2:47 am
As someone who values my screen real esate, the most important thing to me with large icons is how well do they work when scaled down to 24px X 24px or even smaller. I like eye candy like the best of them, but I always customize my OS myself too as I tend to apply the philosophy of “the default is always wrong for me”, so I don’t particularly care what icons an OS ships with. It’s more important to know how easy is it to change the icon set, and how vibrant is the community generated content I can draw on to use, or how easy is it to create my own content.
On these points, I find Windows tends to edge out Mac OS as Windows users historically have HAD to create their own sexy new icon sets, and also because the windows icon mechanisms works better for supporting small/low colour icon sizes.
Personally, I’ve been enjoying the ability to use 512×512 icons on Windows for at least 5 years – OK it needed a 3rd party add on, but that’s the Windows philosophy. DIY.
As for the analogy made about an Apple pencil being highly engineered and beautiful – very true – but it would also cost much more, need returning to Apple at great expense when it breaks or runs out of lead, and at the end only puts the same marks on the page. Sometimes a chewed up broken pencil is adequate for the job, and sometimes you want to spoil yourself and flash the bling with a fancy over engineered pencil. Of course the latter is pretty, but the functional minimalism and independant nature of the former is also beautiful and powerful in it’s own way.
Sputuk, on September 6th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Get ‘em all here: http://blog.tice.de/icons.php?sprache=englisch
Tice, on September 6th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Brillant! — Thanks for making us aware of Apple’s attention to detail, again. There is something deep (pun intended) especially about the miniature-like text put in the depth of the icon. As if the world go on, monade-like (cf. Leibniz), for ever in ever more small scale, reflecting itself. I really dig this.
The visual quality of the columns in the Numbers icon, to me–this ist art.
Hans Taktmann, on September 6th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Notice the bottom “adding numbers”? It seems like a derivative of “64″, “128″ and, maybe, “160″. Maybe I’m justing seeing things.
Jerry Godsey, on September 6th, 2009 at 6:48 am
[...] Looking at the icons at that size is not always useful, but it turns out that some of them are fantastically beautiful and detailed. For example, on the hard drive icon below, you can actually read the drive [...]
Bits & Pieces » Icon Porn, on September 6th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Right.
And you expect us to click through a dozen “pages” of this blog post just so you can sell a few more ads, i.e., one more ad per hundred thousand?
Let me ask a serious question: Do you know the first thing about blogging?
Joe Clark, on September 6th, 2009 at 7:33 am
am I only the second commenter to write that the icons already were 512px in Leopard?! the micros~1 analogy would be: behold! transparent windows in win7!
paul, on September 6th, 2009 at 8:00 am
This is really great! The attention to detail is really outstanding here.
But apple also makes mistakes! Look at the compass: The shine of the glass is actually underneath the needle. Shouldn’t it better be on top of it?
And, a mistake in the authors comments:
The windows “blue screen of death” icon isn’t a blue screen of death! Yes, it’s blue, but if you press “any key”, you’ll be able to continue to work without rebooting the system.
dartrax
dartrax, on September 6th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Loving the CSSEdit Icon…with a note saying “ie sucks”:
http://twitpic.com/gpmln
Nice touch!
Jan, on September 6th, 2009 at 8:59 am
One thing that allways bugged me regarding these, otherwise flawless, icons is the Maill.app icon. How can it be possibly stamped/sealed and with shadow underneath it, with no break of seal lines? It’s absurd.
If there is a shadow, icon is above its background and the seal marks should be discontinued on the stamp edge. Otherwise, seal mark displayed as in the icon means that the stamp lies right on a surface and there should not be any shadow on that side of the stamp.
It’s only nitpicking, but we like it.
Miloš, on September 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
The Windows or “Other” computer icon is th eheight of Mac douchebaggery (yes, that’s a word). I own a Mac and a PC and have problems with both, but I haven’t had a blue screen in years. Not to mention that the vast majority of blue screens are caused by poor drivers (not Microsoft’s fault) or failing hardware. Last time I checked Apple buys the same memory, CPUs, hard drives, GPUs used in Windows PCs. So, unless they sprinkle magic fairy dust that makes them impervious to failure Apples will have the same issues.
DC, on September 6th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Fantastic icons, all of them. But to nit-pick the article text, those tick marks on the compass are in 5 degrees apart. A minute is 1/60th of a degree (and a second 1/60th of that).
Chris, on September 6th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Snow Leopard has stunning icons, you’re right. Nice mini article you linked some of the best.
ikir, on September 6th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
The dashboard icon, is almost exactly a copy of the dashboard instruments and counters of a newbeetle… Very surprised Volkswagen didn’t sue them yet !…
see a picture here : http://l.yimg.com/dv/izp/volkswagen_new_beetle_convertible_gls_2.0l_2005_dashboard_instrumentcluster.jpg
Cil, on September 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Welcome to 2006, us icon and UI designers been doing 512×512 pixels icons for over 3 years now, and they’ve been on the system since 10.5
Fernando Lucas Lins, on September 7th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
[...] Fantastic piece from cultofmac.com on the intricacy of Apple’s icons in OSX – not a lot more, but to let these images speak for themselves. These are the actual icons that ship with the OS blown up to their maximum size. Click through for the full run down… [...]
Bumblegeek… » Why Macs are indeed awesome…, on September 7th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I agree with others. Trying to make me click through 11 pages, with two icons on each page is ridiculous. I won’t be returning to your site, and will ignore any mention of you on TUAW’s RSS.
Greg, on September 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Is it not hilarious that we complained about only two icons per page (and were told it would have been too long a page if it hadn’t been broken up) yet here we are, a gazillion scrolls down to the comments?
LOL. Oh the irony
Wayne, on September 8th, 2009 at 2:19 am
IMO, the keynote text is about the Designer’s dilemma within himself. Any artist will tell you what incredible amount of hours it takes to really design something and sweat evey detail. Every single time, it can be like pushing a boulder up a hill. And more often than not, most designers will tell you that the design is never really done, instead they they just chose a stopping point and accepted what they had.
Daniel, on September 8th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Lorem ipsum is not Latin. *Looks* Latinnish, but is actually completely made up. A fiction. A typographers work tool, because they want people looking at the beauty of their fonts, not quibbling about meaning. Fail.
11 pages is not unreasonable if it is the ‘price’ we have to ‘pay’ for ‘free’ content.
Tim, on September 8th, 2009 at 11:06 am
A few things:
1. As others have said, 512px icons are in Leopard. Even by using Quicksilver I can see all of the nuances of the icons pointed out above. Including the visual effects on Numbers and the detail on Keynote. Also, the “letter” on TextEdit is readily visible under…you guessed it…10.5.
2. Mac icons are pretty, no doubt about that. However I see folder flecks and think my screen is dirty. I’d much rather have an in-folder preview like Vista/7 have. Having a 512px icon for a mere folder is an egregious waste of space.
3. Eleven pages is a bit overkill for an article that probably took thirty minutes to write, tops. So you grabbed icons and put captions on them. The last multipage document online I viewed was a complete informational/benchmark piece about the new Core i7/i5 procs (which Apple STILL doesn’t have on the desktop). That took a lot more work…a LOT more. It’s rather fitting that both ads I’m seeing are PSAs. Gotta love using “porn” in your title…FAIL.
Ian L, on September 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
this is nice, but will have to wait until third party apps also create some 512px icons.
I ahve to admit, the Windows Vista/7 folder thumbnail previews are quite hot compared to the stagnant Mac OS icons, but it’s the attention to detail that brings Max OS X over the edge of competitors.
Anthony, on September 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I really like the article and i really appreciate the attention and therefore the respect you (author) have given to the icons and their designers. Maybe its my because of my english knowledge, but did i get it right: there are people complaning about this article seperated on 11 pages, oh my god are you serious. Thats not a reason for complaining unless you have been forced to pay for each page and the single clicks, but wait, no its the internet and a free page.
Never want to come back, hm, this is my first visit and i will definitely return, because of this article.
Ciao G who doesn´t care wheter scrolling or clicking for 11 worthy pages
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