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Curved Corner Tops
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IridiumPro
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Jan 15, 2001, 11:41 AM
 
I know this isnt that important but how come in 9.1 the corners on the menubar are still curved? i was at compusa last night and the comps there ran macos9 and the corner tops were squared boxes instead of curves. if anyone knows how to fix this, then please tell me.
     
MacMatt
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Jan 15, 2001, 12:01 PM
 
Probably a different Appearance Theme was being used. The Apple Platinum theme has the rounded corners...some others do not.

Matt
     
yadda_yadda_yadda
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Jan 15, 2001, 10:24 PM
 
Originally posted by MacMatt:
Probably a different Appearance Theme was being used. The Apple Platinum theme has the rounded corners...some others do not.

Matt
Is there any way to hack the platinum theme to get rid of rounded edges?

     
error404ts
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Jan 15, 2001, 11:34 PM
 
I, too, have seen the squared corners of the Platinum theme, even on 9.0.4 Macs. However, I have only seen it on Cubes attached to 15 or 22 inch Apple flat screens. Regular G4s are rounded. All others are rounded, tops and bottoms. I would like to have a Platinum theme with squared corners, too. Let me know if you figure it out...

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JBracy
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Jan 16, 2001, 05:51 AM
 
I think it is only on LCD displays (incl PowerBooks) that the corners are square
     
P
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Jan 16, 2001, 06:51 AM
 
This is a quite difficult question. Essentially, the Platinum scheme (the default) has rounded and square corners depending on the machine - eg all Powerbooks seem to have square corners. Other schemes may have different settings - my iMac DV has square corners in the current scheme and round in other schemes. Whatever.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Misha
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Jan 16, 2001, 09:49 AM
 
By default the corners are only square on LCD displays. Early on, CRTs were very distorted, especially at the edges and corners. Rounding the menu bar is a trick to make this appear less evident. It also gives your system a very Mac-look.
     
hmr
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Jan 16, 2001, 10:26 AM
 
I personally would like to have "round corners" - is there a way to "turn" it on on PowerBooks?
     
MacMatt
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Jan 16, 2001, 12:12 PM
 
For yadda_yadda_yadda,

The Dark Platinum theme has the square corners. If you can't get a copy of it, email me and I'll send you a copy. It's not exactly the same as the Apple Platinum, but is very similar.

Matt
     
moofman
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Jan 18, 2001, 03:42 PM
 
What are you talking about? I'm lost, anybody post a screenshot?
     
benk
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Jan 18, 2001, 03:46 PM
 
As far as I know - all PowerBook models and LCD displays (Apple Studio Displays and Apple Cinema Displays) have square corners under any Classic Mac OS (7-9). Mac OS X, including the Public Beta, restores the rounded corners to all Apple systems, both desktops and laptops. My PowerBook (FireWire) 500 has square corners under Mac OS 9.x, and round under Mac OS X Public Beta.
     
gabrielf
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Jan 18, 2001, 03:58 PM
 
I don't know if this is correct but I thought that the idea of rounded corners is so that you can see where the desktop-area stops. Let's say you connect a second screen placed on the left side of you main screen then the corners would be rounded on the right side of the right screen and left side of the left screen and they would be square in the middle corners since the desktoparea doesn't stop there.

At least that's what I've heard but your stories are different so I don't really know.

/Gabriel
     
Fuci
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Jan 18, 2001, 03:58 PM
 
OSX has rounded menubars, but the lower corners are not rounded. It gives the OSX screen the look of an OSX window (the menubar is the same texure as the top bar on the windows, ect).

In OS9 and lower the bottom corners are rounded.
     
ktappe
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Jan 18, 2001, 04:06 PM
 
Originally posted by Fuci:
OSX has rounded menubars, but the lower corners are not rounded. It gives the OSX screen the look of an OSX window (the menubar is the same texure as the top bar on the windows, ect).

In OS9 and lower the bottom corners are rounded.
On my non-LCD display, OS 9.1 has square bottom corners, not rounded. So again, I guess the answer is it depends. :-)
     
sushu
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Jan 18, 2001, 04:19 PM
 
Originally posted by gabrielf:
I don't know if this is correct but I thought that the idea of rounded corners is so that you can see where the desktop-area stops. Let's say you connect a second screen placed on the left side of you main screen then the corners would be rounded on the right side of the right screen and left side of the left screen and they would be square in the middle corners since the desktoparea doesn't stop there.
/Gabriel
I have a second monitor on the right side of my main screen and every corner is rounded. But I like those rounded corners, maybe I'm sentimental but I had them on my MacSE and don't want to miss them now :-)
What about MacOS X? Rounded or square?
g3/315/320mb
     
Maelsson
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Jan 18, 2001, 04:25 PM
 
Why are we discussing this? Are we that bored? To what end can it matter? I'm a graphic designer, and I am usually very picky about aesthetics, but what difference does this make? I must say, this is probably the most inane discussion that I have ever read. I can't believe I read this it this far. I'm sorry for offending anyone, but really people.
     
toh
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Jan 18, 2001, 04:30 PM
 
All LCD displays have always appeared with square corners (why waste pixels?), while all CRTs have had the rounded ones for the reasons mentioned (minimising distortion, indicating which edges ajoin to another display).

I personally don't like the round corners because they prevent Apple, or me, from using the screen corners as rapid-access points. For instance, I put the Trash in the exact bottom right and an alias to the System Folder in the exact bottom left of my Powerbook display, and can get to either with a quick whip of the mouse pointer. It's disappointing that the same isn't done by default for the Apple and Application menus in the top corners, but that's a legacy of the rounded edges. Go read Tog's endless rants on "Fitt's law" for more on this sort of thing.

I too would like to know what gestalt entity to set to turn off the rounding on a CRT - it can't be that hard. Another way to do it would be to patch the display recognition code to use the LCD corners on any screen.

     
ergomedia
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Jan 18, 2001, 04:35 PM
 
FWIW, the original Macintosh (and probably back to the Lisa) most likely had rounded corners because of the aesthetic value (remember, this was Jobs baby!). At least, that's what I remember hearing way back then (maybe Tog knows for sure...).

At any rate, my PB Bronze has square corners on the LCD (regardless of whether it's the menubar screen), and has rounded corners (all four) on the 21" CRT that's plugged into the VGA port (which is my normal startup and menubar screen). There probably is something to the argument for rounded corners on CRTs vs. LCDs, based on the difficulty in holding the image perfectly square in the corners of a CRT.

es
     
maxintosh
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Jan 18, 2001, 05:17 PM
 
As I remember on my CRT, if the Control Strip or other global floating window is a bottom corner, it makes that corner square. On my PowerBook all of the corners are square. I wonder how the Mac OS differentiates.

Max T-M
     
Misha
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Jan 18, 2001, 05:20 PM
 
If you use ACTION GoMac (a great utility), the bottom corners will become square.
     
Lunchbox
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Jan 18, 2001, 05:26 PM
 
Originally posted by Fuci:
OSX has rounded menubars, but the lower corners are not rounded. It gives the OSX screen the look of an OSX window (the menubar is the same texure as the top bar on the windows, ect).

In OS9 and lower the bottom corners are rounded.
In OSX it's also really easy to remove the rounded corners- the're in the extras.rsrc file and can easily be changed to whatever you want. The top corners are also square during startup and when the login box is up.
     
calumr
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Jan 18, 2001, 05:41 PM
 
Rounded corners have been around as long as the Mac itself. They give the desktop a less harsh appearance and utilise Quickdraws 'regions'. Way back then this was a luxury, like the antialiasing and morphing windows in OSX.
     
kjell.krona
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Jan 18, 2001, 05:54 PM
 
If I remember correctly, in the good old days of the 9-inch screen you got square corners while using HyperCard, if you hid the menubar. Of course, memory may fail me... but Im getting nostalgic.

- kjell
     
imacman11
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Jan 18, 2001, 10:02 PM
 
It doesn't really matter that much...

Those 10 pixels are really unnoticable and keep the mac round instead of squarish conformity.



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deasys
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Jan 18, 2001, 11:00 PM
 
The radiusing of the corners wasn't an aesthetic issue -- it was an interface feature. Since CRTs can position the image off-centre and oversize, the user needs a way to know if she can see the entire screen. The corner radius makes this obvious. If the radius is "cut off" in any corner, the image size or position needs adjustment.

Just one of dozens of interface refinements and subtleties in the Mac interface. I hope Mac OS X shows the same *real* sophistication...
     
mkincaid
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Jan 18, 2001, 11:08 PM
 
Originally posted by ktappe:
On my non-LCD display, OS 9.1 has square bottom corners, not rounded. So again, I guess the answer is it depends. :-)
Are you sure this isn't because of the Control Strip, which will use the full corner and make it look square, even if the screen's corners are rounded underneath?
     
Phaedrus
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Jan 18, 2001, 11:32 PM
 
I like the rounded corners. I was using the "liquid" theme for a bit, but it doesn't depict progress bars very well, so I went back to platinum. But in the liquid them it rounded the top corners of windows like in OS X. I like the more "organic" appearance it gives.

This is interesting, but it suggests we've run out of interesting topics. There must be SOMETHING interesting to talk about...
     
broken name
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Jan 19, 2001, 02:20 AM
 
Several people have said that "all LCD displays" have square corners; this is not true. I have dual LCD displays menu bar corners are rounded on both (even on the edge that flows onto the other screen, disproving the other theory )
     
Sjakelien
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Jan 19, 2001, 05:28 AM
 
While acknowledging that this is a complete nonsensical thread, I would like to contribute the following:
In the old days of System 6.x , I used to be able to distinguish different versions of the OS, because each version used to have a different rendering of the (black and white) rounded corners. The difference was mostly not more than a pixel, but it was significant enough to notice. I forgot the exact details, so if anyone out there with a Plus or sinilar ancient has the posibility to check out different Systems, let me know....
     
danbrew
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Jan 19, 2001, 10:25 AM
 
Ummm... yeah, I have an LCD screen and a cube and I've got rounded corners.

fwiw...
     
old timer
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Jan 19, 2001, 11:06 AM
 
The MACOS team constantly talked about the desktop metaphor when the MAC first arrived. Andy H. wanted icons to continue moving when you dropped them, slowing by some "friction" factor. The rounded corners, I always thought, were to look like a desktop blotter with those black corners. Course nobody uses blotters anymore.
     
IFLY2HIGH
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Jan 19, 2001, 06:06 PM
 
I have an LCD screen running off a 9600 with 9.0.4 and 9.1 and have rounded corners.

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