I’ve always been fond of the Iconfactory, since I first grabbed a Halloween set for System 7 or something. (Incidentally, compare those icons to last year’s Halloween set.) They’ve always been the best source for high quality freeware Mac OS icons. I was there today to grab CandyBar, which arrived just in time. I was a little dismayed that Jaguar no longer allows custom icons on key directories like Applications and Documents - not without getting a little messy, anyway. CandyBar will allow you to customize those icons as well as the Trash and anything in the toolbar, which I hadn’t felt the need for but I admit it is nice to have a G4 as my Computer icon instead of a god damned iMac.

I like CandyBar, yes, but that’s actually not what interested me most during my Iconfactory visit today. For whatever reason, I’d never actually checked out their Design Services site until this afternoon, and I was surprised to see the kind of work they’ve done that I had no idea was theirs. I’ve admired the UI for the OS X version of MSN Messenger since I first downloaded it, and sure enough - the Iconfactory did the application and toolbar icons, as well as those for Office X.

More surprising than their presence among Mac applications, however, was their work on Windows XP. While I don’t own a Windows box, the first time I saw one running XP (at Gabe’s house, in fact) I remember thinking that it looked both awfully good and awfully reminisicent of OS 8 or 9. Is it a coincidence that the first non-ugly version of the Windows UI is the one produced by a talented and respected design group that has historically specialized in Mac OS?