Editing Appearance Manager (section)

==Appearance themes==

[[File:Copland Platinum theme.png|thumb|Platinum in Copland]]The default look and feel of the Appearance Manager in Mac OS 8 and 9 is '''Platinum''' [[design language]], which was intended to be the primary [[Graphical user interface|GUI]] for [[Copland (operating system)|Copland]]. Platinum retains many of the shapes and positions of elements from [[System 7 (Macintosh)|System 7]] and earlier, like window control [[widget (computing)|widget]]s and buttons and while [[Charcoal (typeface)|Charcoal]] is the default system font, [[Chicago (typeface)|Chicago]] was available via a menu option. However, various shades of grey are used extensively throughout the interface, as opposed to previous interfaces which are mostly [[monochrome]] black and white. Apple Platinum is not a theme, however, as it is actually embedded into the Appearance Manager. The Appearance Control Panel has the ability to attach a theme to the Appearance Manager. There is an Apple Platinum file in the themes folder in the [[System Folder (Mac OS)|System Folder]] which acts as a [[Method stub|stub]], but no functional theme elements are embedded into it. Customizable palettes ('clut' resources) are used for progress bars, scroll thumbs, slider tabs and menu selections in Apple Platinum and this unique option is not available to real themes. The Appearance Control Panel uses the type code 'pltn' to identify if a file should act like a palette modification stub to Apple Platinum and the type code 'thme' to identify if a file should act like an Appearance Theme. An important distinction is that the Appearance ''Control Panel'' implements themes into the Appearance Manager. Kaleidoscope is third-party software that implements schemes into the Appearance Manager. Kaleidoscope is not a substitute for the Appearance Manager; it is a substitute for the Appearance Control Panel.

Apple widely demonstrated two Appearance Themes which override Apple Platinum, '''Hi-Tech''' and '''Gizmo'''. Hi-Tech is based on a shades-of-black color scheme that made the interface look like a contemporary piece of [[audio-visual]] equipment. Gizmo is a period-appropriate [[Memphis Group|Memphis-style]] interface, using many bold colors, patterns, and "wiggly" interface elements. Both changed every single element of the overall GUI, leaving no trace of Apple Platinum. A third theme, '''Drawing Board''', was later introduced, developed at Apple Japan. This theme uses elements that make the interface look like it has been drawn in pencil on a [[Engineering drawing|drafting]] board, including small "pencil marks" around the windows, a barely visible [[graph paper]] grid on the desktop, and "squarish" elements with low contrast. Although themes are supported in all released versions of Mac OS 8.5 through 9.2.2, the three aforementioned themes were only present in pre-release versions of Mac OS 8.5 and were removed without explanation in the final release.<ref name=brickness />

One retrospective review by a long-time Mac user described the themes as being a mistake and waste of engineering resources, saying the "Hi-Tech" theme "looked like a typical dark over-decorated techno skin that became popular for [[Linux]] desktops" and that "Gizmo" looked "awful...the Finder in a clown suit".<ref name="Retro Mac Computing: the long view">{{cite web|date=February 26, 2011|title=Retro Mac Computing: the long view|url=http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2011/2/26_Copland.html|url-status=live|access-date=23 September 2015|website=The Long View|publisher=Basal Gangster|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130401185701/http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2011/2/26_Copland.html |archive-date=April 1, 2013 }}</ref>