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Frame of preference A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004


A story of early Mac settings told by 10 emulators.

It feels alive, depicting a perhaps surprising amount of movement sometimes via animation, sometimes via comic book-inspired conventions: soundwaves exiting the speaker, menus blinking upon activation, a finger pressing a key, the mouse rolling on the desk. Appearance and Internet use tabs, Energy Saver uses… something else (before committing the cardinal sin of throwing a lot of instructions you have to hold in your head, instead of showing them in context), QuickTime Settings has a little menu, and Control Strip and CloseView stick with older ways of organizing things. The top row celebrates all the cool things about Mac OS X: new wallpapers in Desktop, a more professional Graphite appearance (in General), and a completely new Screen Saver section (would you believe that a platform famous for flying toasters didn’t have built-in screensavers until now?

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