Straight from the mouth of Steve Jobs: "We decided not to make a blue wallpaper for Leopard because nobody used it. We found people used their own digital photos."

Some could argue that Steve is, yet again, making up his own statistics for the sake of strengthening his opinions. Personally, I know a lot of people who chose to use the default Tiger wallpaper. If I get tired of a wallpaper, I find myself going back to it. A lot of people have made wallpapers inspired by Apple's design. In fact, their wallpaper has been iconic for each release of OS X so far.

Of course, the audience's initial reaction to seeing the new grass wallpaper was utter laughter. So do you really think what Steve said is true?

I use my own pictures.

On my Apple machine I use the default wallpaper. On my hackintosh I use the JAS Tiger wallpaper. I never use my own photos.

I must admit I do use the default wallpaper. I think it’s a big mistake that Apple have decided against using a new one for leopard. You only have to look at how many times it or similar wallpapers are used for advertising other companies PC's. Imitation is the sincerest for of flattery

I use the new Leopard wallpaper When I first got my mac, I did use the Aqua wallpaper for a couple of weeks, but soon after I did start using my own, or the clownfish one (that one should have been the default). I would guess that there probably will be some type of Aqua-type wallpaper included with Leopard, so I think everyone will be happy in the end.

Wait, Steve was wrong?

i use my own pictures

I get all my wallpapers from deviant art

I used the default Tiger since the first day I had Tiger, now I use Leopards. The same goes for when I had Jag.

BIG MISTAKE. When you saw a computer with that background, it signified a Mac, now it's just gunna be a random background. It's like McDonalds saying "Well, a lot of kids buy happy meals but don't eat all of the fries, so we're removing them completely." It just seems like they're too lazy to make one this time around, it's a shame...

who cares? do the wallpaper design affects your personal computing?

They could have a background of steve smashing an iMac to pieces for all I care. The background is one of the first things I change and I usually change it again every few months.

I was originally using it for quite a while. Then I got bored, and started switching it up every so often. And then I switched it back, and it just makes everything much more Mac-like for some reason, so I like it. And I'm hoping they include a new one in Leopard, if not, I'll probably just use Tiger's a lot of the time.

I used the default Tiger wallpaper for a while. It made me feel more "Mac-y" when I used it. You always see the wallpaper in the Mac ads, and its something I have come to associate with Macintosh computers. Each major 10.X release has had a cool, iconic wallpaper and I'll be dissapointed if Leopard lacks one.

In a way, the one they are showing off is iconic in that it's different than anything else that they've shipped before. Just because it's not a swirl of blue it's not any less of a mac wallpaper. Take bliss in XP for example. Once you see an image associated with a product for a long enough time, you'll eventually be thinking of that wallpaper as Apple. And I bet Leopard will come with a cool blue wallpaper for those that want one.

I've always been a big fan of the abstract wallpapers Apple made. It would be a shame for them to stop the trend. And I also find myself using the default Aqua Tiger wallpaper every now and then. However, it's just the beta, so it doesn't mean that the shades of grass with the beta is the official default Leopard wallpaper.

- Sb.

I should've voted halfway through, but since it's a Yes-or-No pool I have to vote yes because even if I'm constantly switching Desktop Pictures sometimes the nostalgia settles in and I switch back to the default Aqua Blue.

Plus, when Steve said "we found out nobody uses them anyway" my reaction was "that's not true, I use them".
Though I must admit I didn't like the pre-Panther ones that much...

im sure that they wont just delete it off of leopard, im sure they just put it in another folder or something

I always used the deafault wallpaper on my macs since the Jaguar days. Its kind of weird but apple keeps changing things the way we were used to....

I think we geeks are more attached to the default abstract wallpapers because they represent Mac OS X in a way, and we feel a certain connection to our operating system.

Normal users, on the other hand, feel no such connection, and throw up photos of friends or family as their wallpaper.

I currently have 211 pictures, which randomly changes every 5 minutes.

u call this my family backround, btw, this is my actual backround
i mean hot girls and borat, what more could u want

Steve hanged wallpaper not because nobody use it, but to show his mega super transparency menus

I'm sure they aren't about to throw away any existing Aqua wallpapers. They always release new operating systems with all the walls of every prior OS X included, creating an ever-expanding collection of Apple-designed wallpapers. I just wonder if they will make a new wallpaper. Steve said directly that they didn't make one, but in the 4 months leading to Leopard's release, a lot of things are subject to change.

The grass wallpaper is reportedly visible as the backdrop of the Leopard login screen, which means that it just might be the official wallpaper of Leopard. Well, at least for the WWDC beta release.

I think OS X 10.5 server has a shoreline photo as its default wallpaper.

i use my photos and the default ones.

I use the Tiger aqua desktop as my wallpaper on the work XP box.

The wet grass is tragically average.

The grass isn't the important point, Apple wanted to make a point of saying you can do what you want now that we can upload pictures and so on, but I think they wanted to get away from the boring old blue look too, it had its day.

The blue is classy, it has style. It sets the theme for the OS, even if you choose to change it.
The wet grass is, well, still just wet grass.

Might be they couldn't think of an other look of the blue wallpaper we have now~ LOL

I ve never used the Aqua Blue, I Like Black Backgrounds like this -->

it was cool, but im in windows now so i use the one i made for it the other day

Wasn't the default wallpaper for all the vista betas a pic of wet grass?

The wet grass is so vista'ish, I would like to see an new aqua wallpaper, but please, not the wet grass, they made it for show the "super l33t h4x0r transparent menubar", no thanks.

No, but only because it wasn't wet if I recall correctly.
Other than that it was a nice closeup of some grass.

Yep. And RTM Vista had a cool, identifiable blue and green wallpaper though (and for Ultimate users it was animated if you got dream scene):

But they stock some nice digital photos too, when you first create a user they ask you which wallpaper you prefer and give you five choices.

I always pick the lake+mountain one, it's gorgeous.

That is the work of Hamad Darwish. A lot of his Vista related work didnt make the final cut (even though some of it was in RC1) so it is available for download from his website. I highly recommend it!
http://www.hamaddarwish.com/vista.html

Astonishing, thanks for the link.

I cant believe they have set the grass wallpaper to the login screen backdrop, it doesn't make sense. Fair enough use the aqua wallpaper as the backdrop because where can you go wrong with a few abstract blue lines crossing over each other but an actual picture of grass is different, I dont know.

Also I use the aqua wallpaper, I would say, most of the time, because it looks great with the dock, it signifies mac os x and its actually a nice wallpaper that you really cant get bored off. A picture of some grass is going to become old incredibly easily just like bliss in windows xp, when I first saw it I actually liked it and now it makes me sick.

It would make better sense to use a solid color, don't they do that right now in Tiger?

To those of us living in dry, arid, desert regions and on water restrictions, the wet grass is a slap in the face. Culturally insensitive.

They're just taking the piss out of Vista in the beta, the final default desktop will be something seriously more classy.

LOL... i use my own architectural design as my wall paper... Didnt use much of the original one....

nice work! Is that handdrawn or did you make it with a program?

it was a rendering using archicad, using the sketch render option

Awesome you did a great job!

Ah ah! This one cracked me up.


One can only hope...

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.p...=1440&h=900

this place has REALLY cool desktops.. all widescreen high res.

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.p...=1440&h=900

this place has REALLY cool desktops.. all widescreen high res.

I love that site for getting my desktops. It's poorly designed, but the content is great.

This is the one I used to use before I saw the one posted... PixelGirlPresents

I used the clownfish and I agree that should have been the default.

i like the new pagoda wallpaper from apple. when i upgraded from tiger, it kept the original blue ones