Comments on: New Unibody MacBooks get new CFL, but not QuickTime X

By: nat

nat — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:40:44 +0000

@ talonhawk,

I’d suspect Apple wants to draw more attention to the new MacBook and MacBook Pro MultiTouch trackpad gestures, which might otherwise be ignored if hidden under the Keyboard & Mouse pane.

By: talonhawk

talonhawk — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:00:27 +0000

Did anyone else notice that trackpad preferences have been spun off into their own pane?

I haven’t used any new MBs in person, so I’m curious to know if its more/less intuitive to have trackpad setting not under Mouse/Keyboard.

By: John Muir

John Muir — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:19:05 +0000

They’re busy crying over $800 Macs.

By: gus2000

gus2000 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:35:55 +0000

Interesting that OSX is sharing the benefit of iPhone development. Where are all the pundits that insisted the iPhone OSX wasn’t really UNIX and couldn’t possibly have anything in common with the Mac?

By: Shunnabunich

Shunnabunich — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:10:38 +0000

@droughtquake: You certainly wouldn’t have to be a “hacker” to replace the icon, as it isn’t embedded in the preference pane’s binary or anything like that. :) You can do it very easily yourself, assuming you have a replacement icon handy.

In Finder, navigate to /System/Library/PreferencePanes, right-click on EnergySaver.prefPane, and select “Show Package Contents” from the menu that appears. In the new window that opens, go into the Contents folder, then Resources (much like any app), and find the EnergySaver.icns icon. This is what you’d need to replace to customize the preference pane’s appearance on System Preferences’ “home screen”.

It looks like the preference pane icons have image resources for 16×16, 32×32 and (presumably to gear up for resolution independence) 128×128 pixel sizes. I’m not sure how effective an icon of a straight fluorescent tube would be, though, as it would essentially just look like a line unless the user made the effort to look closer. The incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs have a distinctive shape that cues the user in as to its meaning without them having to study it.

By: droughtquake

droughtquake — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:11:41 +0000

If Apple had been consistent, they would have used an old-fashioned fluorescent tube for all previous iBooks and PowerBooks and non-LED MacBooks. There’s still time to make the change…

(Would it be possible for a hacker to do this by editing resources?)

By: x23

x23 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:34:54 +0000

i noticed the CFL icon earlier today and got a bit of a laugh out of it. thought it was pretty clever of Apple… even *icons* of lightbulbs should be upgraded to environmentally sound CFLs.