25 replies to this topic

[Arttymis]

Ok Fans of macs I have done my reserch and checked it twice and I now present my tutorial on how to make your windows XP desktop look like a Mac operating system. For those who think its really hard your wrong and without any more jiber jaber lets get started.

Step 1: The Downloads
Ok for this to work your going to need some items to make it work.
The first one is the skin to make your windows look like a mac.
Its called Panther you can download it here.
Second your gonna need a doc for your programs. The best free one out there is Yz's dock and you can download it here The dock
Thirdly every good mac desktop needs a program to run what are called widgets. There are two good programs out there called Konfabulator, which is a shareware program that reminds you to register it every seven days and the registration is only $20 USD. Also there is one out there called Samurize
which is freeware. I prefere Konfabulator but its up to you. Download Konfabulator here and Download Samurize here.
Finally no mac desktop is complete without the icons which can be found hre.

Step 2: Applying the skin

Put the skin in a folder somewhere on your pc. Right click on your desktop and click properties and from your select style screen go to browze and go to the folder you put the skin in and apply it.
Your desktop should now look like this,


Step 3: The rest of the applications

Ok where in the final stretch All you need to do now is move your taskbar to the top. Run the Yzdock installer and add your favorite programs to it. If you want to add a trash bin follow the instructions here
Finally install Konfabulator or Samurize and run a widget. If you have konfabulator you know how now.

Your final desktop should look kind of like this:


Now for you people who want one quick program to install the skin and doc you can use Flyakite it makes your whole computer look like the Mac os

You can download it here from here

Hope you like it and give me some feed back.

[szupie]

Wow, great tutorial! Too bad the reputation system is down, or I'd give you a point! I'll try it on my computer once I can get my hands on it.
I'm not using a mac, so I don't know what widgets are. What are they? Are they what you would see when you minimize a window, with just the top bar?
Is it possible to hide that Start menu? It looks really hideous when it's in a mac-like environment.

[Sean_Paul23]

This is sick man!
I've wanted something like this for years, u rock!

[crs_cwiz]

Well, sorry to play spoilsport, but isn't Yzdock used to replace the explorer icons??? To make a dock on the bottom like in a mac, you have to download Objectdock from www.stardock.com (freeware or paid - it's your choice) and then customize it to look like a mac. for the widgets, the best program out there is desktopX, again from the same site. and for the skin, you can use the popular windowblinds program.

the advantage of using these programs over other, lesser known ones is that many skins and widgets (thousands) are available. cheack out www.wincustomize.com

[moonwitch]

Nate posted this on trap last night, where I tried it. I had a few serious issues.

It eats away resources up to a sluggish comp (mine has 1024MB RAM, AMD Athlon64 3400 CPU, ATi Radeon 9250 128MB graphics card). My taskbar which you can 'hide' with YZDock disappeared but never came back, YZDock froze and didn't let me work with anything on it. My MSN Messenger 7 couldn't open anymore. Etc, I was forced to use taskmanager to shut down most processes and then go to the CP to uninstall it.

My suggestion : Get StyleXP, the MALE version (the chick version is ugly LOL and I am a chick, we are not all Paris HIlton fans -- makes obscene signs with the thought of Paris Hilton) and run it to set Panther Skin. It's the same LOL. Only it keeps your taskbar on the bottom.

[Arttymis]

Well, sorry to play spoilsport, but isn't Yzdock used to replace the explorer icons??? To make a dock on the bottom like in a mac, you have to download Objectdock from www.stardock.com (freeware or paid - it's your choice) and then customize it to look like a mac. [/url]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Objectdock and Yzdock do the exact same thing You can download object dock if you want to but i gave the opition for freeware. As for widgets you can find many of them at Osx-e or at the konfabulator main site which is konfabulator

Finally Im glad you like the tutorial

[rhodesian.dragon]

wow making a Window XP look like a mac... wow... thanks for the post...

[dot_rain]

I used these themes before , it did look good and attractive at beginning , but then . . . . it started getting anoying~ and I needed to change back to dafault mode kinda often

[Fasga]

Personally, all I care about looks is that I can see what i'm doing, and it uses up a small amount of memory.

But nice tutorial anyway, keep up the good work!

[twitch]

Although customizing your OS look is cool. The novelty soon wear's off. Trust me. I paid for WindowsBlinds and all the other little blocks and used it once. It just get's annoying, where the OS loads up in it's original state, then suddenly zaps into freak mode. The Longhorn skin for WB is a little buggy to say the least and causes some errors.

Great tut though.

[abhiram]

i remember spending one whole evening just trying to make my Windows XP look like a Mac. I got styleXP, konfabulator (and plenty of widgets) , objectdock, objectdesktop and iTunes. I must admit, it looked refreshingly different ... but the system slowed down like hell. I had a 512MB RAM and the RAM usage (in the memory widget) was a constant 70-90% . Even opening firefox or anything started becoming a pain. And I had trouble getting used to iTunes, being a fan of Winamp. I even got a small app on the net which would enable shadows for all the windows and menus.

It looked really great, but I couldn't use it for more than a couple of days. I'm the kind of person who prefers a fast system to an attractive one. I just had to scrap all the crazy apps and my system was back to normal.

But, after I installed gentoo, I installed xfce4 which already has a ready made theme to make the windows and taskbar look like Mac. It's pretty good and it doesn't slow down the system. This will remain my theme for some days to come... atleast until I get bored of it .

[Saint-Jimmy]

hah, i was gonna post that... it was in the Personal Computer World magazine... and since I own all of Stardock's appliactions (Stardock Website), I can use the windowblinds skins for FlyakiteOSX. It's good, but it practically doubles my startup time... but that mgiht be because i'm only running with 512MB RAM.... sucks. But I'm getting an Alienware Aurora 5500 in a few months, so that'll rule bigtime

[Quatrux]

I use windowblinds and it didn't double anything for me and I only have 256 DDR, well I never was a fan of mac style, I would prefer something else.

[Jguy101]

Um, I tried installing just the skin (nothing else, I don't wanna gobble up my RAM), but XP wants .Theme files, not .msstyles. What's going on? Do I need some sort of skinning program? >_<

[twitch]

Um, I tried installing just the skin (nothing else, I don't wanna gobble up my RAM), but XP wants .Theme files, not .msstyles. What's going on? Do I need some sort of skinning program? >_<

What program are you using? Only windows desktop uses .msstyles

[Jguy101]

I downloaded the Panther skin he linked to; I'm not using a skinning program. What program do I need for .msstyles?

[hazeshow]

Well, me ... I can see absolutely NO reason why I should make my beautiful Windows look like Mac. I f I would like the look of Mac OS I would buy a Macintosh machine, but I don't so I don't.

I wonder it there are Mac users wanting to make their desktop look like a Windows desktop.

[twitch]

I downloaded the Panther skin he linked to; I'm not using a skinning program. What program do I need for .msstyles?

http://filext.com/de...detail=MSSTYLES

[Shadow X]

This is one of the most amazing tutorials I have acually ever seen. It's really cool how a Microsoft Windows computer can be made to look like an Apple Mac computer which is really Windows's rival in computers! Thanks alot for the tutorial Nate, I am definetly going to try this!

[techocian]

I don't exactly get the part where you're supposed to browse and find the folder where the style is when you go to the display properties of your desktop. Can you explain it? Also, when i open up the folder with the msstyle files and double-click them, they open up the display properties and nothing happens or changes at all.

Overall though, it looks like a great tutorial although I've heard of many people doing this before (Ack...including me =P) I've used a different tutorial to help me out with the transformation though and it requires more downloads:

http://www.engadget....28351836181248/http://www.engadget.com/entry/8828351836181248/

It's a pretty cool tutorial and you can download the widgets you want. Although the tutorial is quite old and i think like Nate has obviously told us that there are much more better programs and modify everything into a Mac already so well yeah you get the idea.

Personally though I'd prefer to use a real Mac if i want a Mac interface. I've used a Powerbook before and i find it pretty interesting to use and much different from the Windows Interface. Took some time before i finally got used to it but i still don't like Macs so much because of the lack of computer games designed for Macs or converted from Windows to Macs capabilites =P.