Ever wanted to change the way your OS looks in X, but don't know how? This system preference pane will help you out with the process. Visage does just that. There are many things that this little gem helps you with and I will discuss them one tab at a time:
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In this tab you can replace the graphic that is used for the boot panel (pictured).
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Here you can change or edit the text that displays as your system boots up.
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This is one of the coolest features. In the Desktop Effects tab you can select a screensaver to use as your desktop background.
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This tab allows you to change the graphic used at the time of longin. Sort of a startup screen or login desktop picture.
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This tab allows you to alter the login screen even further by altering the logo graphic and the tagline.
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With this tab you can alter it so that alerts state your name or any other phrase you'd like.
Many great features as you can see. Some of these features are only available for OSX 10.2+ (such as Desktop Effects) as you have to use version 1.0.1 for systems running OSX 10.0 - 10.1.x, but even so it spruces up your user experience significantly. You may be wondering why I gave this application only 4 apples if I like it so much. Well, there are a few things I found buggy with it along with a feature I feel it is missing:
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The Desktop Effects (as cool as they are) do not work properly. Yes they do work the first time you select them, but upon restarting your computer the effect does not load. You have to open Visage each and every time you turn your computer on to choose your effect. Also some screensavers don't go to the background. I have only found two screensavers that do this (both from the Charlies Angels website), but you have to hard restart your computer to get out of them.
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There is no way to change the login panel. This is one thing I would love to do as none of the tutorials I have found on the net to do this work properly. Sure it's nice to change the logo and tagline, but I want to change all of it.
Each one of these things I think are worth an apple. So, if they ever are added or corrected I will update this review in the future. Don't let those things alter your perception of Visage though. It is well worth the $10. Why not go and check it out now as you won't regret it.
UPDATE: With the upgrade to Panther this application no longer works, even though a Panter-ready version was announced ages ago. The developer of this product has been contacted many times with no response, so it seems that none of their products are in development anymore. Pity. Until it is (or ever becomes) compatable with all versions of X it will have to go from 4 apples down to 1. This saddens me as this was a great haxie and it is very much missed on my system.
UPDATE #2: It seems that Sanity Software has returned from out of nowhere. The new Panther version 1.3 works well, although there still isn't a way to actually change the look of the login screen itself which would be nice. There may be a way to do this in the Tiger version (2.1), but since I have yet to upgrade to Tiger (mainly due to the limited amount of HD space I have) I can't review that version. Although the desktop effects "bug" seems to be fixed. I am going to reupgrade this to 4 apples and give an extra apple for the effects fix. For a total of 5.
UPDATE #3: Now that I've had Tiger on my system for awhile I finally installed the newest build of Visage which only works with Tiger (2.3). Now the desktop effects stay in place as they should and I'm quite happy with it. I don't really see what is different in this Tiger version from the others except that it runs more smoothly. I'd still like a way to totally change the login panel by adding a skin or something to it, but maybe that's just not possible. With this version of Visage I'm upping it one apple to 5+.
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