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Latest Leopard build from Apple suggests much work ahead - Page 6

post #201 of 214
3/9/07 at 3:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro View Post

You can already have fully animated desktop backgrounds. Anything that is written as a screensaver can also be made to run as the desktop. There are several small apps like Backlight that will automate launching the animated desktops without having to invoke the one terminal command that does the same. That's been around since 10.2!




Writing almost anything into a screensaver is terribly simple if you have any Cocoa programming work at all. Even a live feed is easy, just dump it to the GL context in the screensaver and bang! That might take an extra few minutes but not too long.




Now we have to ask: If this capability has been around for more than three and almost four years (in OS X) and got a bit of buzz at the start, where did the interest go???

We all got bored with it after the first couple weeks because it just sucked up cycles and wasn't sexy anymore.

Dang! I took so long in getting to finish my reply to Brian that I never saw your post, as you sent it while I had to go away from my computer.

Yes! That's the way to do it. I couldn't remember offhand. Embarrassingly, I was going to ask my daughter when she comes home tonight. Now, happily, I won't have to!

I agree with your last two sentences as well. It's what I've been saying.
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post #202 of 214
3/9/07 at 6:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Dang! I took so long in getting to finish my reply to Brian that I never saw your post, as you sent it while I had to go away from my computer.

Yes! That's the way to do it. I couldn't remember offhand. Embarrassingly, I was going to ask my daughter when she comes home tonight. Now, happily, I won't have to!

I agree with your last two sentences as well. It's what I've been saying.

That's clear as mud you two.

You may as well give me directions by saying things like, "Drive on out a ways to where the old barn used to be and take a right. Go a ways more and that field that used to be an orchard will come up, take a left there.

The point being, I have zero programming experience. If I knew what you did, I'd already have a movie playing on my desktop and wouldn't have even discussed anything here and left all of you change-haters (said lovingly of course) to get upset about a "cycle" or two that got used when most of your CPU power isn't even being touched.

With Core Animation there ought to be a way to make it look flawless and not obviously animated. I've seen so-called animated desktops and they look like they were put together by three year olds. I'm talking about the desktop looking as good as a movie. The laptop already has the power, I just don't have the option to do it myself. Perhaps a tutorial is in order.
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post #203 of 214
3/9/07 at 6:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro View Post

You can already have fully animated desktop backgrounds. Anything that is written as a screensaver can also be made to run as the desktop. There are several small apps like Backlight that will automate launching the animated desktops without having to invoke the one terminal command that does the same. That's been around since 10.2!




Writing almost anything into a screensaver is terribly simple if you have any Cocoa programming work at all. Even a live feed is easy, just dump it to the GL context in the screensaver and bang! That might take an extra few minutes but not too long.




Now we have to ask: If this capability has been around for more than three and almost four years (in OS X) and got a bit of buzz at the start, where did the interest go???

We all got bored with it after the first couple weeks because it just sucked up cycles and wasn't sexy anymore.


Hiro,
I have tons of cycles to get sucked up. Please let me make the determination of how those cycles are used rather than dictating their conservation of use. My Activity Monitor shows next to no CPU action. My GPU is probably using next to nothing as well. I've got tons to spare.

As it is I rotate pictures on the desktop every minute. I'm looking for more. The point isn't just the desktop though, it's the whole thing. I really hope Leopard addresses these issues and allows them to be turned off because you might miss a cycle somewhere or get distracted from working on a paper you probably don't want to write anyway.
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post #204 of 214
3/9/07 at 9:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Green View Post

Hiro,
I have tons of cycles to get sucked up. Please let me make the determination of how those cycles are used rather than dictating their conservation of use. My Activity Monitor shows next to no CPU action. My GPU is probably using next to nothing as well. I've got tons to spare.

As it is I rotate pictures on the desktop every minute. I'm looking for more. The point isn't just the desktop though, it's the whole thing. I really hope Leopard addresses these issues and allows them to be turned off because you might miss a cycle somewhere or get distracted from working on a paper you probably don't want to write anyway.

How true.
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post #205 of 214
3/10/07 at 2:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Green View Post

I have tons of cycles to get sucked up. Please let me make the determination of how those cycles are used rather than dictating their conservation of use.

Here you go Brian:

Run a screensaver on the desktop

Play a movie on the desktop

Say goodbye to your battery life
it's = it is / it has, its = belonging to it.
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it's = it is / it has, its = belonging to it.
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post #206 of 214
3/10/07 at 8:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Green View Post

Hiro,
I have tons of cycles to get sucked up. Please let me make the determination of how those cycles are used rather than dictating their conservation of use. My Activity Monitor shows next to no CPU action. My GPU is probably using next to nothing as well. I've got tons to spare.

As it is I rotate pictures on the desktop every minute. I'm looking for more. The point isn't just the desktop though, it's the whole thing. I really hope Leopard addresses these issues and allows them to be turned off because you might miss a cycle somewhere or get distracted from working on a paper you probably don't want to write anyway.

Brian, I suggest you take an in-depth look at Quartz Composer. It's bundled with OS X, but you have to install the developer tools to find it.

Quartz composer is very powerful, and can be used by someone with no previous programming experience. There's nothing like Quartz Composer in Beryl.

It can be used for many things, including interactive screen savers. Read more about it, search on google for tutorials and sites about it, download .qtz files and open them in QC to see how they work, modify them, have fun!

The RSS feed screen saver in Tiger is built using Quartz composer, you can even open it in QC and modify it to suit your needs. An application called "Quartz Desktop" enables you to put a QC .qtz composition on your desktop.

That "flying leaves" desktop in Beryl would be very easy to build in QC, and it could be interactive. Just drag and drop a Particle Effects module on your composition, set the image to leaves, adjust parameters, add mouse control if you want, these things are trivial in QC.

It looks like QC will receive some relatively major update in Leopard, so it can takes advantage of Core Animation amongst other things.
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post #207 of 214
3/10/07 at 11:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Green View Post

Hiro,
I have tons of cycles to get sucked up. Please let me make the determination of how those cycles are used rather than dictating their conservation of use. <snip>

Didn't I give you the name of the app Backlight already? Isn't that enough?

I see Mr H got you a couple links and they are good. But grab Backlight from Versiontracker for the screensaver desktop instead of manually mucking about the terminal.

Then please go run one of the Matrix screensavers on your desktop and tell me how much fun you have trying to type a URL!!!
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post #208 of 214
3/10/07 at 10:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H View Post

Here you go Brian:

Run a screensaver on the desktop

Play a movie on the desktop

Say goodbye to your battery life

Thanks a lot I'll look into these. As for battery life, I always have my laptop plugged in. It functions as a mobile desktop for me. Sure beats lugging around an iMac - it's a nightmare stuffing an iMac into an overhead bin on a plane!
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post #209 of 214
3/10/07 at 10:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro View Post

Didn't I give you the name of the app Backlight already? Isn't that enough?

I see Mr H got you a couple links and they are good. But grab Backlight from Versiontracker for the screensaver desktop instead of manually mucking about the terminal.

Then please go run one of the Matrix screensavers on your desktop and tell me how much fun you have trying to type a URL!!!

Hiro,

I'm using Backlight now. Surprisingly it didn't show up with a versiontracker search for me. But Google found it. I'm running the Forest screensaver now and I have to say that I like it. It's still not even touching my CPU usage according to Activity Monitor.

I don't have a movie to play on the desktop yet, but I'll shoot one when I get back home to Seattle in April. When I shoot one and play it on the desktop, I'll see how it plays. So far so good with Backlight. I'll keep it as my desktop for now.

Thanks for all your help.
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post #210 of 214
3/10/07 at 10:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by VL-Tone View Post

Brian, I suggest you take an in-depth look at Quartz Composer. It's bundled with OS X, but you have to install the developer tools to find it.

Quartz composer is very powerful, and can be used by someone with no previous programming experience. There's nothing like Quartz Composer in Beryl.

It can be used for many things, including interactive screen savers. Read more about it, search on google for tutorials and sites about it, download .qtz files and open them in QC to see how they work, modify them, have fun!

The RSS feed screen saver in Tiger is built using Quartz composer, you can even open it in QC and modify it to suit your needs. An application called "Quartz Desktop" enables you to put a QC .qtz composition on your desktop.

That "flying leaves" desktop in Beryl would be very easy to build in QC, and it could be interactive. Just drag and drop a Particle Effects module on your composition, set the image to leaves, adjust parameters, add mouse control if you want, these things are trivial in QC.

It looks like QC will receive some relatively major update in Leopard, so it can takes advantage of Core Animation amongst other things.

Thanks so much for this information! I've printed it out and will start messing around with all of it.

You've been a real help. I've said goodbye forever to static desktops!
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post #211 of 214
3/10/07 at 10:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H View Post

Here you go Brian:

Run a screensaver on the desktop

Play a movie on the desktop

Say goodbye to your battery life

Mr. H, I can't thank you enough for this. I'll never have a static desktop again. Who knows, when Core Animation comes along in Leopard, I might even be able to get more cool stuff moving around on the desktop. VL-Tone mentioned that Quartz Composer will be getting some updates in Leopard so there might be some cool new animation stuff built in. I'm looking forward to it!8)
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post #212 of 214
3/11/07 at 10:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Green View Post

Thanks so much for this information! I've printed it out and will start messing around with all of it.

You've been a real help. I've said goodbye forever to static desktops!

And if you take the time to learn Linear Algebra and OpenGL you can do a lot more.
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post #213 of 214
4/13/07 at 2:35pm
Why, exactly, was the main article removed? What was so revealing?
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post #214 of 214
4/13/07 at 2:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Why, exactly, was the main article removed? What was so revealing?

And why did it take them this long to ask them to remove it? It's been quite some time (over a month ago since my last post on that thread) since it was posted. I didn't find anything in that article particularly interesting or jaw dropping so I think Apple's legal team ought to relax a bit.
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