ShapeShifter for Mac2.5

discontinued.... sad

HELP !!!!!! okay so i download shape shifter right. well right after i download it says " Could not load ShapeShifter preference pane." i need help what do i do ?

I paid for Shapeshifter a few years back and thought that this program would be supported into the future. I've been waiting and waiting... Will this ever work with 10.5? How about 10.6? Is this program done? Should we all just stop waiting? What's the deal?

Magnifique - http://magnifique.pcwizcomputer.com/forum/portal.php

Hey you guys up in unsanity, leopards been out for like a year and a half now.. and I still don't see a compatibility update in sight.. I dont know maybe you guys are making it compatible with snow leopard and will blow us away with its stability in the New 10.6.. however I doubt it.

Go here: http://www.slightlypretentious.com/ Unsanity's days are numbered.

freakin' 10.6 will be out before this is updated for leapoard!

Unfortunately, it crashes all of the Firefox 3 versions, at least on 10.4.11. It would be great to have a fix for this, since quite a lot of people use Firefox and a lot of us are still running 10.4--having paid for it, it would be nice if it were still maintained.

I've been using APE since it came out and never, not once, has it ever caused me a single problem. I use a host of Unsanity products as well as other programs that use APE. Again, no problems. Neither have I had any problems with this most recent version of ShapeShifter. As for performance issues, I've found that it depends on the theme. Some themes I've used actually (at least subjectively) make my Mac seem faster than it does without SS. Seti, in particular, is exceptionally fast. So are Muku, Aluminite, iMetal, Cold, X-Metal, and Quad. I don't know why some themes bog my system down and others do not. But I do think that the speed issue needs to be examined in this light. Kaleidoscope themes had a similar range of performances.

Hi ! I updated to 2.5, trow away all themes, pushed the default button and then restart! Finder, still aren´t supported!!

It's great fun to change the same old boring look of OS X but be aware that it can cause problems with some software. I thought my Final Cut Pro was broken and sat here reinstalling everything, looking for help in the apple forums, when eventually it turned out that if I disabled ShapeShifter everything was fine again. So basically what I'm saying is, if you are using it and something stops working properly, you can just disable it while you're using that application.

This app is great and works with 10.4.9 but I don't what happened with Download function since 2 days but I have this message "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access /content/titanium9/ on this server". So I can't download ShapeShifter guiKits from the app. My network works fine, my authorizations are repared...etc. I don't understand, if someone can help me ?

I used to like unsanity products but my last two support requests fell on deaf ears and I never heard from the devs about it. This is piss poor customer service. I doub't I'll be purchasing any more of their products anytime soon

exclude DVD Studio Pro - SS brakes functionality of every dialog window

It appears APE is the memory hog here. Without APE, memory usage seems to be normal for the most part. Hopefully they'll release an update for APE that solves the memory/lag issues that some people have been experiencing.

It's memory hog. Compare your XBench scores with and without shapeshifter/application enhancer enabled. Very few themes work with it.

gr8 program, but i just wish more of the themes that are 'out there' appeared in the downloads tab. Save me hunting them down...or am i just lazy!?? ;-) But there should be more themes available in here.... Gr8 program - 9.9/10 ;-)

are we gonna see an intel version soon? it's been in beta for a loooong time now.

This software just works so nicely and fast- I mostly enjoy that no system files are changed while applying the mods. Best of all, depending on the applied skin You'll notice an increase of speed in the GUI- just try it and get Tomorrow 2.0 and You'll be amazed... cheers, mat!-)

installs but then is "unable to contact****for update instructions" (or something like that). Same ol' ShapeShi*er...still shlockey... Figured I'd give it another try, but...

just bought my first mac ( macbook pro ) and would love to be able to use this software seems really great.

I have some problems with Unsanity. I purchased WindowShade from them and it had all sorts of problems starting up (basically it wouldn't) in OS X 10.4.4. Their support was snitty and not any help at all. I finally figured out what their problem was, and when I told them how I got around their bad programming, I never got a "thanx" or... So... this is why, as much as I'd like to get ShapeShifter, I'm very reticent. albabe

As a paying customer, I'm a bit disappointed to see that I still can't use this program on my new Macbook Pro. Hopefully they will get Intel themes working soon.

Of course, theming is completely different under Intel versions of the OS. But let's not let that stop anyone from complaining.

Did unsanity NOT get the memo that the intel Macs require Universal Binaries?

U-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-L

U-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-L

So is Shapeshifter finally powerful enough for Omega, or is still need further tuning before it can use this state of the art theme? (Duke Nukem Forever of Themes)

Since I got rid of this cr4p I have not had a single crash. My new theme is Iridium. Nice looking and it doesn't need shapeshifter. Give it a look. ;-)

Completely screw up your Mac's stability is more like it. Just ran it on 10.4.5 and all hell broke lose upon reboot. It was fun in the beginning but all things must come to pass.

great program this and i've been using it for about a year - registered - without any problems. Those that do, i suggest you look elsewhere in your system for the problem. This is not a system hack! It would be great if the download option was updated more often. Perhaps this is the fault of 3rd party theme designers not submitting their work to Unsanity? I dunno, but i'd love to see this feature updated a heck of a lot more often!!! Can growl be used more? ie, to announce new downloadable themes?? Great software atm - 9.5/10 !! :D

Hasn't everyone figured it out yet? LEAVE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM ALONE!!! Altering the core appearance of your OS almost always effects performance. Shapeshifter looks kind of cool, at first, but it makes everything SO buggy that a clean install is usually not too far down the road. It may run fine for people that basically fart around on their Mac, but those that rely on their machine for a living should never alter the OS with an app like this or Might Mouse. It could mean a day spent reinstalling everything and tweaking prefs in order to get everything running in accordance with your normal workflow...never mind any lost data...a day (or more?) lost!

There is a bug in Shapeshifter 2.2 in OS X 10.4.3. After update the system to 10.4.3, my office 2004 Powerpoint program quit unexpectedly shortly after I start the program (e.g., I could not start the program). Thought it is due to 10.4.3 update. Thus I switch back and forth between 10.4.2 and 10.4.3 for several times (waste me lots of time!). Finally figure out it is because of Shapeshifter conflict. when I disable it, everything works like a charm now in 10.4.3. The author might need to have a look of this issue.

Shapeshifter doesn't theme my finder on my Powerbook but it does on my G5. Both running Tiger. Still no fix even though the developer said they know about it. The bug was reported about 2 months ago. A waste of my $20.

Shapeshifter has permanently changed the themes on all applications. Even when choosing defaults, the only theme that changes back to Aqua is the finder. All other applications remain unchanged. I regret having paid 20 bucks for this unstable piece of junk!

At first the demo was good fun and some of the themes were really cool. But don't let the demo time out! It wrecked my system folder and I am still trying to recover and replace my files from backups.

Shapeshifter reset itself again because i installed a security update.

Shapeshifter makes the system slow and sometimes unstable. It does not worth 30 bucks at all. After several weeks, I won't use it anymore, even for free. I am glad Iridium is now usable without this bad dog, as it is the only valuable theme around (imho).

Omega? The Duke Nukem Forever of themes.

Having paid for Shape Shifter and Mighty Mouse.. I am pleased with Shape Shifter...however Mighty Mouse still does not function correctly and all I get from Unsanity is an apology.

MES and this new version rock! This version is also quicker about matters.

Still missing unified toolbar suport..

My biggest complaint with the current crop of theme-changers is that none of the themes available look anywhere near as nice as the old Kaleidoscope themes I used to have. I miss the glassy and reflective ones the most, and I remember some that were really intricate. Most of the current themes look like they were ported over from a Windows PC........

- Shapeshifter slows down everything. - Themes are ugly. Seems to works but it is slow and ugly: useless.

you know, shapeshifter's cool and all but... the themes available for it are really mediocre, and it seems that people are really not interested in creating much more than the dreary grey/black themes. I question my purchase of this item

I am a registered user and so far it's been working great for me. I haven't had any problems and with each update, ShapeShifter seems to have gotten better. I haven't tried to get any support from Unsanity yet so I can't really comment on that. However, from the comments I've seen, I am not expecting too much...

Needs to support the unified toolbar look. Needs an update. Needs to be worth purchasing.

Great idea, a couple of themes are nice, but there are biiig!!! bugs and stability issues. And the exclude liste is a pain in the ---. I use OS X, not Mac OS, not Linux, not Windows.

Shapeshifter is very buggy!!! With APE my Mac behaves like a PC. Tips: Candybar is a good app to personalize the system, but APE-haxies are not stable. APE is fun, not good.

Do not buy this program. Shareware fees are supposed to promote further development, and when i went to request a single simple feature I was snubbed, quite rudely in fact. I requested an option to turn off the automatic disabling of the themes when an update is installed for individual programs. I hate using this program because it's every other day that it disables itself. I don't know about you, but a program that disables itself every other day feels a lot like shareware, and I definitely paid for it. I ended up emailing unsanity support for the feature request and got the following response: "Nope sorry about that." that's it, entirely. Not "thanks for the suggestion we'll consider it" even. Just "nope." Below comments are talking about how support sucks and I agree with them. This is a good program, but paying for it is supposedly going to entitle you to some sort of extra "support." Well, this is not the case, and I feel ripped off. Don't buy this. It's not worth paying for the full version at all.

While usually excellent (I'm a paid user), this release seems to interact badly with Microsoft's Intellieye Wireless Mouse driver v5.1 (unsure whether this is Microsoft or Insanity's issue - but it wasn't an issue with version 2.1). VERY erratic windowing (windows pop to the front or back unpredictably when opening new folders), and title bars are hard to select and manipulate. Console is also filled with debugging comments each time I click on or open a folder. Will be reverting to previous version.

With APE activated Traktor refuses to run. People at Unsanity refuse to answer my mails concerning the problem... sucks...

I installed the recent update (2.1.1) and it crashed part of my home folder. All my calendars, bookmarks, contacts and many preferences were deleted instantly. Shapeshifter itself disappeared from the preference pane and also one other Unsanity haxie (cleardock). I reinstalled all the deleted items and then reinstalled Shapeshifter 2.1.1 for the 2nd time and the exact same crash occurred again. I went back to v2.1 and it now seems to be stable. I did repair permissions before the initial update.

Fantastic update! It fixes some major glitches I was having with my non-CS Adobe apps, and Graphic Converter.

been using it for about a month now, cant live without it!

ShapeShifter is nice and it does make your Mac look great, but after running it on my G4 for 2 weeks I have noticed that a few apps tend to run slow and I get app crashes where I never had them before. As soon as I disable the haxie, things do speed up. I like the way that it makes things look but for my day-to-day, processor-intensive work I'm going to keep it disabled for now. Those who don't do a lot of Final Cut or InDesign work may not run into these problems. G4, Powerlogix Dual 1.4 upgrade, 1.5 GB RAM.

Great Program I bought it and havent had any problems with it on my Tiger. Great if you are a wild type of person!!!!

Tip- install unsanity haxies as "only for this user" instead for all users. It is going to work. That is how I figured it out for Tiger.

NO SHAPE SHIFTING ON MY TIGER WHAT'S UP?

Wow...seems like the three comments prior to mine were all by the same disgruntled person. Shapeshifter simply works and has caused no problems whatsoever on my machine. Great application.

Added a Spotlight metadata importer for guiKit files. My goodness, how "useful". Oh how I despise feature creep.

Great update works great on my PowerPC G3 B/W 500 MHz. Never had any problems what so ever and as for support, Great. As for the people complaining. No one is twisting your arm to download it.

The best argument against SS isn't that it's dire (but it's close). The best argument isn't even it's instability (a skin that's unstable - think about it). No, it's that these muttonheads continue to get people to put root-enabled pieces of crap code on their computers. Here Apple have made one of the most stable implementations of Unix ever for the desktop - and what do these people do? Convince people to open the portals to the wild hounds waiting outside. Someone please put Unsanity out of our misery!

Really, the best argument against ShapeShifter is that most of the themes that aren't made by Max Rudberg are simply *dire*. Worse than the Kaleidoscope 1.0 days. Oh, look, another flattened version of Aqua with solid-colored buttons!

The only thing that sucks about SS other than it's instability, is the fact that the authors are trying to make SS A MUST if you want to use a theme. SS shouldn't be necessary to theme OS X. Theming ability is already built into OS X. It is not like Kaleidoscope were it was necessary to have to theme. But the authors are trying to make it that way for some reason. This is a major bummer to someone who just uses one theme, and wants to just install that theme manually. Hard to do if theme makers are being pushed to give out SS files only. Someone could easily copy those themes, make them usable without SS, and hand them out.

Support, what is it? Customers have only to pay.

I personally like the idea, and it worked on my computer for about a month, and then every time I tried to open it, it would crash. I emailed the Unsanity team a few times asking for help, and when I did as suggested, it would still crash. I have tried uninstalling it and installing it many times, and to no avail. They have stopped resonding t my emails, and to pay 20$ for an app. that won't work and to get very bad customer assistance doesn't make me very happy. I liked using it, but it made me angry that it won't work anymore, and only did so for a month.

Its all good to say a programme is flawed but you forget to mention how

Every time that stupid nag screen comes on it crashes every app that happens to be open at that time. Ridiculous. I was going to register when I got paid Friday, but to hell with this. When will Devs learn that nags don't make people register, nags piss people off.

If you think the themes are bad, then I would suggest: a). review each theme on it's own; don't knock ShapeShifter b). build your own theme

The blessed day it will become stable it will be a great application. Now it is just flawed execution of a good concept. Features 2/5: themes are horrible Ease of use 4/5: good integration Value 1/5: no good themes, bugs Stability 2/5: random bugs

I registered it and also had concerns about the lack of good themes available, but that is slowly changing. Unsanity makes great stuff and I like their attitude. They have always been helpful to me.

At first it seemed like a great idea. Now, after experiencing sad (for lack of a better word) and limited theme abilities shapeshifter seems to be little more than a childs toy. On the topic of OS X themes. I don't know of any other OS with such a gross amount of trite and ugly themes. *nix theme engines are more flexible and appealing not to mention absolutely free. Sorry to say it but even the windows theme movement is looking to bitch slap OS X theme capabilities, minus the cost. Shapeshifter is fair in that it does what it says. But due to a gap of flexibility and a world of ugly gui themes it is coming round to passing its due. However, there are still some great guikits out there, but they remain absolute diamonds in the rough. Only a stroke of innovative software genius or a slough of exquisite and stylish guikits can bring back the luster to the notion of OS X themes.

When version 2.0 came out I purchased ShapeShifter. Approximately, 30 days later I was forced to return to the default Aqua. The reason was because ShapeShifter was dragging everything down to a crawl making life unbearable. With SS de-activated the system is now purring along. If only Unsanity could speed things up because I really miss using SS.

More than 2 weeks ago I asked Unsanity a few questions, but never received a reply: 1: Are older themes still supported by SS 2, like "Cricket" and "Champagne" which are still some of my favourites? 2: SS 2 now appears to automatically store all themes and any other related files (like desktop pictures) in one folder, presumably under System/User/Library. The problem is that my System drive is filling up, so I was wondering if the files can be moved later to a different location and remain available for SS? 3: I noticed on your web site that there is a bug with SS 2 that prevents certain applications from being themed. Does the suggested fix always work? And is this a permanent fix, or does it need to be repeated after every restart? 4: Should things go horribly wrong, is there a way to revert to ShapeShifter 1.2?

I've used ShapeShifter 2.0 extensively. I've not experienced any problems at all. In fact, quite the opposite, the program does what it says it will, and does it with class. It's a great product, works very reliably, and comes with several excellent themes. The fact that Unsanity made 2.0 free for 1.x users is a great bonus. If you're having problems with the program, talk to the developer. They are very responsive. For me, it's 5 stars all the way. Kudos, Unsanity!

which themes are people using, there are some drab ones out there plus others that are way to dark and can make things difficult. Using aqua pro atm - wots every1 else using?! :]

System crashed... can't recommend this software at all.

ShapeShifter is a fantastic app, it's has it fair share of nasty skins, but it also has some brilliant ones by well respected artists. If you're tired of looking at blue glass then you have to run this.

I threw out the preferences for ShapeShifter, restored Aqua and then re-applied my favourite skin (Titanium) and the new icon-set and now everything works... Give that a shot! I agree, though that it's a pity Unsanity didn't test this more carefully before flinging it in our direction...

Having same problems with OS X native apps and finder, but I don't have the courage to mess with the terminal. Let's hope unsanity does something about this fast, because I love, or have loved, ShapeShifter.

If you have problems with skinning iTunes 4.7 and the Finder, do as Mac_Evangelist wrote and copy the following and paste it into the terminal: defaults delete com.unsanity.shapeshifter CustomSettings Kudos and thanks to Mac_Evangelist for the tip.

Same here. At first everything worked but, after installing the new versions of iTune and QuickTime, Shapeshifter doesn't skin the Finder or any other apple app that came with the Os. Authentication problems?

I was unwise; I downloaded this and found that it will skin neither Finder nor Safari. Nothing is listed in the Exclude List. I purchased the prior version months ago. I tried logging out, restarting etc.; upon logging back in and starting back up, it still doesn't skin the two applications. No other application is open right now. So far, those two are the only applications unskinned. I tried both graphite and aqua appearances, and all the skins with which 2.0 came. I am absolutely clueless as to what to do, besides downgrade to 1.2, but this likely won't work for 2.0 updated my registration.

Great upgrade, free too :)

Awesome! Love the free upgrade price too!

It's a FREE upgrade for registered users of 1.2 and earlier.

I've been using SS since it first came out. I've never had any problems with anything crashing. I have a very productive 24/7/365 PowerBook and simply couldn't stand looking at Aqua. If you're having crashing problems, there's something else going on! Upgrade is free.

Upgrade price? Can't find it on the Unsanity site, but I'm guessing it's NOT a free upgrade. What gives?

Free upgrade or not? They don't say anywhere and I'm not installing until i know. If it wipes out my current registration I'll be pissed.

If you have no productive use for your Mac, don't care if your apps crash every few minutes, enjoy looking at (and trying to use) rank amateur-level UI design, by all means install this.

I really like this program and didn't want to believe it was causing all the random crashing and other weirdness I was having but of course in the end it was. Or maybe it was APE itself. I had registered and thought it was worth the price. I didn't think SS or APE was the problem because when I disabled them I still had problems. Then I looked at "top" and saw that it was still running even though it was supposed to be disabled. So I finally uninstalled everything (APE and all "haxies") and my problems immediatley went away. Duh, just like a thousand other people have said all over the internet. It actually worked fairly trouble free at times so it was hard to pin it on APE or ShapeShifter. Bummer, I like Aqua in general just fine, it's the details I really hate (metal, stripes, blue). I'm running the "Demetallifizer" theme with Theme Changer as a compromise. It really sucks that no ones making non-SS themes anymore.

Well, Spoke WAY too soon the other day... As every other "appearance/theme" alteration, this one caused all kinds of strange things to start happening. I ended up unistalling 2 days after. Oh well...

You know, since I had MAJOR problems with Kaleidoscope years ago I've been of the mind to "leave it alone". But in a moment of bordom I decided to install ShapeShifter. It got pretty good reviews and everything I have is up-to-date as far as back-ups so I figured "what the hell". Well, I've been running it for 4 days and I see absolutely no change in my machine's performance at all. No buggy weirdness, no conflicts, nothing! I have a few other things running made by Unsanity and they've ALWAYS run well! Never a problem. works great!

This is a great program, for the small amount of time I was able to try it out. Unfortunately $20 is a much too hefty price to pay for such a program. If it were $10 or so, I would pay it. If the price drops, I'm sure there will be many more happy paying customers, myself included.

Works fine. So far so good. I can't agree more, ProLCD is a hit.

Amazing idea (Apple must implement this in Tiger :) but ShapeShifetr slows donw the Finder and sometimes bugs the system. I know the urban legend, haxies can't crash the OS, but sometimes they do. Too bad coz I like Pro LCD so much.

Great Application but I don't have the money to pay for it. Every hour or so shapeshifter nags me about registering. I tried deleting all of the file from shapeshifter and I tried removing shapeshifter from the preferences. NOTHING WORKS. How do I get rid of the constant ****ing nagging

I registered this program - it does what it says it will do, and runs without any slow-down. It also seems to be VERY stable on my system. I used to have Kaleidoscope back in the OS 7.5 - OS9 days, and have always missed theming OSX - until now. Theming isn't for everyone -- but I can say that the program works as advertised and does what it says it will do. If you want to customize your desktop, there's no better program than ShapeShifter.

To all those whiners complaining about the price -- you have options. If you want to run themes for free, try using Duality instead. Don't rate a product's stability as poor if the only thing you're complaining about is the price.