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HACK
#16 Make Your PC Work Like a Mac

H A C K Make Your PC Work Like a Mac Hack #16

#16 Feeling jealous about some of the Mac’s nifty features? Envy it no more. Use
these tools to make your PC look and work more like a Mac.

Have you ever wished you could turn your PC into a Mac? You’re not alone.
A lot of Windows users have eyed its slick user interface and handy features
with envy. But you no longer need to envy the Mac because in this hack, I’ll
show you how to make your Windows PC look and work more like a Mac.
Let’s start with changing the visual appearance of XP to get a Mac-like expe-
rience. It involves three steps. First we’ll change the boot screen. Then we’ll
replace the default logon screen. Finally we’ll make Windows and its icons
more Mac-like.

Get a Mac-Like Boot Screen

When you start your machine, you’ll see a vendor-specific welcome screen,
which provides access to BIOS settings. Depending on your setup, after that
you might see a menu that lets you boot from one of multiple operating sys-
tems [Hack #1]. But if you run only one instance of Windows XP, you will be
greeted immediately by the Windows splash screen. To get an almost com-
plete Mac experience, we are going to replace the default Windows logo
with something more Panther-like (at the time of this writing, Panther is the
name of the latest version of Mac OS X, Version 10.3). To do this, we use
BootSkin by Stardock (http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin), which is
free for noncommercial use.
After downloading and installing the program we need to obtain a Mac-like
boot skin. A particularly nice one is called G5, available at http://www3.
wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32&SkinID=740. Once you have down-
loaded it, you need to import it into BootSkin. From BootSkin, choose File
➝ Import from file. After you import it, it will show up in BootSkin, as
shown in Figure 2-13.
To get an idea how your boot screen will look, you can choose G5 from the
list and click the Preview button. Clicking Apply saves your settings and
presents the G5 splash screen upon your next boot. Modifying existing boot
screens is easy. Once you have imported a skin, you can find it in the skins
directory, which defaults to C:\Program Files\Stardock\WinCustomize\
BootSkin\skins. Documentation is available through the BootSkin Help
menu.

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Figure 2-13. The BootSkin main window with the G5 boot skin imported

For more ways to change your boot screen, see “Change the
Picture That Appears on the XP Startup Screen” [Hack #2].

Changing the Logon Screen

The next step in transforming your PC into a Mac is to replace the default
Logon screen with a more Panther-like version. Use the free program Logon-
Studio by Stardock (http://www.stardock.com/products/logonstudio). Down-
load the main program as well as a logon screen called Mac OS X Panther
(http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=26&SkinID=1476).
After you install LogonStudio, unzip Mac_OSX_Panther_LogonXP.logonxp.
zip into a directory named Mac_OSX_Panther_LogonXP.logonxp. Now,
move the newly created folder into the installation directory of LogonStu-
dio, which has the default of C:\Program Files\WinCustomize\LogonStudio.
Now, when you run LogonStudio, the Mac OS X Panther screen will appear
in the list of available logons, as shown in Figure 2-14.

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#16 Make Your PC Work Like a Mac

Figure 2-14. LogonStudio’s main screen

Select it and click Apply. To see how the new logon screen looks (as shown
in Figure 2-15), you can press Windows-L.

Changing the Appearance of Windows and Menus

The next step is to change Windows’ overall visual appearance so that it’s
more Mac-like. Use WindowBlinds from Stardock (http://www.stardock.
com/products/windowblinds).

For an in-depth look at how to use WindowBlinds, see

“Give XP a Makeover with WindowBlinds” [Hack #18].

It’s shareware; the registration fee is $20, although you can use a free ver-
sion that has nag screens and some features disabled. Download the pro-
gram and a visual style called Brushed Panther (http://www.wincustomize.
com/skins.asp?library=1&SkinID=3476). After launching WindowBlinds,
choose “Install skin from disk” to load the skin, as shown in Figure 2-16.
Change the desktop wallpaper to one that closely resembles Apple’s blue
one. If you’ve installed LogonStudio, go to C:\Program Files\WinCustomize\
LogonStudio\Mac_OSX_Panther_LogonXP.logonxp and find Bitmap_100.

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Figure 2-15. The Panther-like logon screen

Figure 2-16. Installing the Brushed Panther visual style

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Use that file as your wallpaper by right-clicking the Windows desktop,

choosing Properties ➝ Desktop, and clicking the Browse button. Navigate to
the file Bitmap_100, choose it, click Open, and then OK.

Give Your PC Mac-Like Features

At this point, we have a PC that looks very much like Mac OS X, from its
boot screen to its logon screen, and to its entire look and feel. But we’ve
changed only the way Windows looks. Now we’re going to give it Mac-like
features as well.

Konfabulator. A popular Mac tool called Konfabulator displays so-called

widgets, which are mini-applications that fulfill a particular task, such as dis-
playing the state of your notebook’s battery, the current CPU usage, or the
weather forecast for your town. Widgets are not applications written in
ordinary programming languages like C++ or Java; rather, they are written
in JavaScript and can therefore be developed easily. So, not surprisingly,
there are a huge number of available widgets. In the upcoming Tiger release
of Mac OS X (early 2005), Apple is expected to include a new feature called
Dashboard, which closely resembles Konfabulator. For a long time Konfab-
ulator has been a Mac OS–only application. Fortunately, though, a new ver-
sion works for Windows (http://www.konfabulator.com). The program is
shareware; you can try it for free, but if you decide to keep it, the registra-
tion fee is $25.
Konfabulator neatly integrates itself into Windows. You can access its func-
tions by clicking an icon in the notification area to install a new widget.
Once you have selected the widget in the file dialog box, you will immedi-
ately see it on-screen. Moving the mouse over a widget and pressing the
right-mouse button produces a menu which you can use to close a widget or
to modify its settings, as shown in Figure 2-17.

Figure 2-17. The Konfabulator WiFi widget with its menu

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Some settings are widget-specific but others apply to all widgets. One nice
feature is called Konspose, which hides all widgets that are in Konspose
mode until a certain key is pressed. Just like on the Mac, the default key for
this is F8.

Switching between windows and applications. The Panther release of Mac OS

X introduced an intuitive way to switch between applications and windows
called Exposé. If you press the F9 function key you get neatly arranged pre-
views of all open windows. F10 does a similar thing but shows only win-
dows belonging to the current application. This is particularly useful
because it provides a quick overview of what is happening on-screen.
Entbloess 2 by Nipaco Enterprises (http://www.entbloess.com) brings
Exposé-like features to XP. The program is shareware; it’s free to try, but the
registration fee is $7.99 if you continue to use it. Figure 2-18 shows the pro-
gram in action.

Figure 2-18. Entbloess in Exposé mode

The Dock. Another eye-catching feature of Mac OS X is called the Dock.

Dock-like functionality has been present in several operating systems, and
even the Windows taskbar can be considered some sort of Dock. The basic

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idea is to have some drop zone where you drag files and programs you need
frequently. Accessing them is as simple as clicking the corresponding icon,
which remains visible all the time. Additionally, the Dock shows all cur-
rently running programs. If you minimize an application window, program
output takes place in the Dock.
What makes the Mac OS X version so outstanding is its visual appearance,
with lots of nice animations. Several programs for Windows deliver a Mac-
like Dock experience. One of them is called ObjectDock (http://www.
stardock.com/products/objectdock), yet another application by Stardock. The
program is free to use. One you have installed the main application, make
sure to download the Panther X Future (http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.
asp?library=29&SkinID=2924) and Striped Mac (http://www.wincustomize.
com/skins.asp?library=29&SkinID=78) extension packs. You need to unzip
these in folders that match the name of the archive without the .zip extension.
Put the MacOSX folder in the installation directory of ObjectDock, which
by default is C:\Program Files\Stardock\ObjectDock. The Striped Mac folder
must reside in the Backgrounds directory.

If you decide to uninstall the various pieces of software used

in this hack, make sure that you first reset XP to its original
appearance before uninstalling. If you don’t, XP might still
look Mac-like, even though you’ve uninstalled the underly-
ing software.

To get a nice Mac-like background, open the configuration dialog of Object-

Dock and choose Striped Mac, as shown in Figure 2-19.
To change the icons of applications, launch the desired program, right-click
its icon in ObjectDock (Figure 2-20), and open the Properties dialog box.
Now you have a PC with a Mac OS X–like Dock.

The Results
That’s it; you’re done. You’ve put considerable effort into transforming your
PC into a Mac. Figure 2-21 shows what the final results look like.

See Also
• “Customize Multiboot Startup Options” [Hack #1]
• “Change the Picture That Appears on the XP Startup Screen” [Hack #2]
• “Customize the GUI with Tweak UI” [Hack #8]
• “Create Your Own XP Themes and Find Thousands Online” [Hack #17]
• “Give XP a Makeover with WindowBlinds” [Hack #18]

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Figure 2-19. The configuration dialog box of ObjectDock

—Thomas Künneth

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Figure 2-20. Choosing an icon from the Mac OS X package

Figure 2-21. My Sony notebook running Windows XP Pro, but looking much like Mac
OS X Panther

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