TheAppleBlog

Since updating to iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPod touch, the icons of some apps periodically get replaced with a faded version of another app’s icon, or with a strange combination of multiple images. Others don’t have an icon at all. I’ve grouped together a number of affected icons on my springboard in the screen [...]

Last week, we discussed the evolution, rhyme and reason behind some of Apple’s icons since the public release of OS X in 2001. This week, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the “Easter eggs” that are hidden in these icons.
Hidden Detail
An easy way to one up the competition when you release [...]

As a follow up to my article on the hidden gems of Apple’s design and inspired by the comments that you, the readers, left, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the icons of OS X. The second part of this article is where I’m going to go in depth into some of the hidden messages and “easter eggs” that Apple has hidden in their icons, but first, I felt it was important to revisit the history of some of these icons that we see on a daily basis. As you will be able to see, there’s a lot of thought that goes into Apple’s thought process when it comes to icon design.

While they may not reveal revolutionary changes, some graphic elements found deep in the iPhone SDK beta 5 do add to the mounting pile of evidence indicating Apple is indeed planning an iPhone hardware update in the near future. The images in question are icons associated with “iPhone2,1″, which is internal Apple code for the [...]

In the course of my daily wanderings, I came across this post by Turkish web developer Cagan Senturk. Cagan was working on his first foray into iPhone development when he ran into some difficulty. He describes the process at length, but it’s the third rejection of his app (an iPhone companion to Profesyo.net, a Turkish [...]

Apple’s user interface is heralded as a sleek, modern experience. A great deal of attention is paid to the design of icons, and a guide is published to help ensure that developers also create icons which meet the standards of OS X.
If you’d like to use custom icons in OS X — whether for applications, [...]

I have a whole batch of criteria for what makes it in my dock and gets tossed. I know we all have something that makes us promote an application to its often-clicked life in the Dock. I thought I would share some of mine and also see what readers do with their Dock icon set. [...]

No sooner do I write about how I miss CandyBar then lo and behold it appears! CandyBar 3 was released today, available at Panic. It’s $29 for a license, and there’s a free 14 day trial if you want to take it for a spin first. A discount is available to registered [...]

As you might have guessed from my past articles here, I tend to heavily customize the appearance of OS X on any machines I use regularly. Looking at my desktop, I see no default icons, my dock isn’t much better, and every time I use someone else’s machine, I’m generally surprised by the candy-colored [...]

There was a mention on TUAW the other day of a version of the System Preferences icon made to look like the one from Leopard. Being both excited about Leopard and and very fond of changing my system icons, I took a look – and was very pleasantly surprised.

The icon is quite nice, and [...]