After Dark Screensaver for Mac OSX / X+ fish
Product Review
Product: After Dark Screensaver for Mac OSX / X+ fish
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Pros: Fun throwback to the oid screensavers of the early computing days; abundance of options, choices and screensavers.
Cons: Some of the graphics will look dated and clunky compared to modern advancements in computer animation. No U.S. website; difficult to read instructions.
Product Rating
Mediocre
By Robert Arrington, AAUG Member
Reviewed 12/05
After Dark Screen Saver is the classis best-selling screensaver collection that has been around since 1989 and in fact was the very first screen saver ever created. These fun retro savers are now available for Mac OSX.
Best known for the “flying toasters,” After Dark + Fish adds a whole army of additional screensavers to its toasty repertoire. Fans of the original who long for the 80’s version – like a 70s junkie misses Atari – will have great fun experiencing what was, back then, a groundbreaking success in the world of computer animation. But Mac users spoiled with 21st century graphics might want to check out the demo first before shelling out the cash for this puppy. This is, for the most part, a nostalgic throwback to another era.
One of the first things I noticed about the initial downloading of the program is that there is no American website address for the program. Rather, it is a long and complicated website name linked to a server in Japan and so after manually typing in all of the sub folders I finally arrived at the page and downloaded the software which is a .dmg file.
Inside the .dmg file are several folders and several text documents explaining how to download the file, but these text documents are also heavily peppered with what looks like programming code and the help text is sandwiched between this unintelligible language.
The instructions, once found, are simple. Drag the contents of the .dmg file to the Screen Saver file on your hard drive. Then open System Preferences and go to Desktop and Screen Saver. There are 12 new screen savers now loaded and ready to run. These include perennial favorites such as Circles, Fireworks, Kaleidoscope, Mandelbrot, Mowing Man, New Line Art, New Message, New Starry Night, New Warp, Shower, and the hilarious Space Toaster, which features flying toasters blasting off from the earth and circling the moon defending our planet from the onslaught of threatening asteroids.
The beauty of these screen savers lie in the variety of options that are available for each individual app. Fish X, though not as realistic or detailed as Marine Aquarium, another highly popular screen saver, actually offers something that Marine Aquarium does not – the ability to create your own aquarium environment down to the last floating piece driftwood and seaweed, and It includes ma variety of backgrounds and fish with which to populate your tank.
Fans of the retro flying toast and its accompanying family will love this app, but those who are looking for 21st century stunning graphics might be cautionary. The screen savers, though fully updated and compatible with Mac OSX, are still, for the most part, old school.