Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Desktop & Screen Saver

This panel represents the mating of two separate panels called Desktop and Screen Effects from Mac OS X 10.2. But they still do the same thing:

• Desktop lets you dress up your desktop with the background image of your choice. You can choose from one of the several dozen background pictures that come with Mac OS X or use your own pictures. In fact, you can even schedule these background pictures to change automatically at regular intervals—an essential feature for the easily bored.

• Screen Saver controls the Mac OS X screen saver—the wild, animated light show that appears on your screen to protect its contents when you’ve wandered away for a cup of coffee.

NOSTALGIA CORNER You Say Screen Saver, I Say Screen Effects

Hey, in the last edition of this book, you made a big deal about how Apple called it Screen Effects instead of Screen Saver, because in this era of flat-panel monitors and dramatically improved CRT monitors, screen burn-in is a thing of the past. You said that Apple called it Screen Effects because these days, “Screen savers are mostly about entertainment, pure and simple.” So how come it’s back to being called Screen Saver, hot shot?

Who knows what secrets lurk in the hearts of Apple programmers?

In this case, the secret probably was this: Most people call these displays screen savers no matter what the logic.

So Apple went with the flow.

Desktop

Mac OS X comes with several ready-to-use collections of desktop pictures, ranging from National Geographic ...