How did you find out about aqua?

Wondering, how did you find out about aqua? mine goes back a long time ago:

1. My dad showed me MS paint on the computer, I loved it. I was on the computer 24/7 making pics with paint. I am only just getting good at pixel art.

2. I saw on someone's computer that the colour of each window was green, not gret. I soon found out about the apearence in desktop properties.

3. I soon found out about "skins" and I went on download.com and found skinstudio. Even though I didn't know what it was for or how to use it, I downloaded the trial.

4. In the start menu, I noticed there where links to wincustomize and the object desktop set. I downloaded the trials of most of the apps, and looked on wincustomize for some stuff

5. I found an ad in a magazine about the "new" (g4) iMac. I read it all. I wanted one. When I got back home I searcged for mac skins in winCustomize

6. I found iSkin, and a DesktopX theme. The desktopX theme was complete crap. I didn't know that... half the shortcuts didn't even go anywhere. I soon got OSXP

7. I found the OSXP website, and the links on that site lead me to Iceman's emulation page. I downloaded his icons and stuff, and soon became a Beta tester.

8. Iceman's site's links took me to aqua-man.net, the home of the aqua-apps, but I came too late. "sorry, we're closed" it said on the front page. I clicked the image and it lead me to this site that not many of you know of, called aqua-soft.

9. I loked at the links, and that took me to aquaxp.com, I downloaded some stuff, and a while later joined the forums. I got up to 800 posts and then they killed the site (this all happened in about half/a whole year)

10. I went here. I'm staying.

If you want you can see the remains of aquaxp.com. there isn;t much. just a few articles.

Sorry about telling you my life story. Anyway, let's here yours.

#247559

I got the idea of turning my XP box into a Mac 3 years ago when I first saw OSX at an Apple store. Then after some googling I found a site called themexp.org I immediately bought StyleXP and began skinning my box, it was some kind of drugs that hasn't stopped me since then. I've been always searching, looking for new aqua stuff, I found out aquaxp and AS and I still looking searching and downloading new stuff everyday.

Thank you guys, thanks for all of the hard work you've done. ;)

#247561

My girlfreind she had an ibook g4 and it look really nice to me, and all there great future such as software and stuff, so i went back to my PC, try to make it look like the one she had, but then when am using the system replacement, my PC got mess up, so i have been replaced my system files so many time, and finnaly i got it fix,so here i am, in aqua-soft.org, to showing some of my aqua-stuff

This is how it look when am 1st starting to mess arought with my PC, to make it look like a mac..

#247562

Nice story Wuzzie, I think this thread so its my turn!

1. Got my first windows based machine. It was windows 98 I was messing around in the control panel and I saw the word wallpaper and googled for windows wallpaper. That took me to Wincustomize's wallpaper section with a wallpaper with the windows logo (ACK)

2. Later on I kept browsing thier site and download desktop x. Used my first theme.

---that pc got messed up and I sttod without a computer for a year :slant:

3. Then when I got a new computer with windows 2000 built by my brother. I went back to wincustomize and downloaded desktop x. I saw that most people there were using wierd skins. Anyhow

4. I then saw the new osx, it was so awsome. I got mad for switching from mac to windows. :slant:

5.I went back to wincustomize and searched for OSX and got nothing, i then searched for Mac and APPLE and other keywords I saw on apples site. I also found myself using OSXP, and found it herondous. I then found ICE and LOVED it. I also download objectbar and then download its skin. I wanted to make my pc look as close to the pics as possible so i read my first Read-Me file.

6. I saw that there was reference to windows docks. :s this included Icemans dock, yzs dock, and MobyDock

7. I went to MobyDocks site (witch at the time had a .tk domain And from there I was linked to Aqua-Soft under the link section. I fell ln love with aqua and hated myself for using windows.

8. My Objectbar trial expired and I foundmyself doing my first cyber crime act.

9. I then signed up here and loved windows more and more since.

----END----

#247563

@Jesus, your story was very interested.

#247566

I believe it was about a year ago...I was at work and noticed that the computer next to me had a really cool winamp icon. I started to fool around with the computer and realized that it was possible to change icons on Windows (god was I dumb). So for the next couple of days I had done some searching on the internet and came across Everaldo's crystal icon set. I was totally blown away and changed all of my desktop icons. I soon became curious as to if I could customize the Window XP themes. That is when I came across StyleXP and was introduced to themes, which brought me to Objectdock, Windowblinds, etc... I then came across Aqua-Soft and was able to really fine tune the aqua look. I really give credit to the monthly desktop screenshots (it's a shame that they are gone - since they did help a lot). I finally thought that my Windows PC was pretty much like a Mac interface until I decided to go into my Apple store. I soon decided to purchase an iMac and the rest is history!

God bless aqua!

#247588

1) Winamp (some really old version, ~7 years old, can't really remember wich one) lead me to skinz.org (at the time that it was the best place for app skins) wich introduced me to a lot of nice applications (litestep, kjofol, sonique, windoblinds, chroma, aston shell, and a lot more). Until someday skinz.org went down...

2) After that, I started looking for some other modding/skinning sites, like customize.org, deskmod.com and most of all, some litestep/alternate shell sites, like blizzle.com, desktopian.org, floah.pimpin.net, and a lot more...

3) I was pretty happy with all the modding apps I had been using, and I think I never really liked anything new for quite a few years, until I found the news on one of those sites about a mac dock application (i *think* it was mobydock... not really sure now, but I'm pretty sure it was one of the first public releases of that dock). I downloaded it, even thought I wasn't really sure what the dock was on a mac (I had only seen a few screenshots of OSX at the time). Needless to say, I loved it

4) A little while after that, every few days an updated dock was released. Following a link on one of the posts reporting it, I got to emaculation.com, wich became my homepage for a few weeks, during all that dock release rush (good days )...

5) Until one day I followed a link to aqua-soft.org. Once I started browsing the site, I found some incredibly amazing aqua skins... I had dowloaded a few in those past years (for audio players, aternate shells, and so on), but most of those never really had the kind of quality of the ones I found here, making me stick to a-s for almost 2 years now

#247676

When browsing www.fark.com (BEST NEWS EVAH!), I came across a story from WIRED news showing this idea of making XP look like a Mac. Sure enough, the article showed off screenshots of Duckie's desktop and my jaw dropped. I looked at Iceman's site, but there was only material and no community. I then shipped over to AquaXP, the other link provided in the news article. I joined under the user supertrippy247, but quickly came across an awesome graphic that simply forced me to change my login to gnomexp (our unofficial class mascot is the Metro Gnome so I had to do it). I released a few icons (that sucked) but I sure enjoyed all of the goodies that got released, but AquaXP went belly up. I had an account at Aqua-Soft, but I didn't really use it but everyone went over here so I followed.

I've included an avatar history for no apparent reason...

#247747

I saw Timan's aqua-style windows skin and it said aqua so I searched and found Iceman's page and it also linked me to Aqua-Soft but A-S was mean to me back then (I had to have a legit e-mail) so I contacted Timan and he was like "theres nothing I can do about it, I'll try to fix it soon" and then it was sposed to be fixed and it wasnt and I joined AquaXP and posted there and it was a crappy site and people posted like once every 5 hours there so I finally joined Neowin and some other sites and then registered here when the site was updated a couple of months after the aqua apps got shut down or something...actually it was like October of 2003. And then I made friends with Seph and then I got some rare disease that made me go crazy one night and I ****ed with Seph and then he blocked me and before all this I was at forums.ffinsider.net and that was where the internet forums thing started and before that all I had was AIM and some games that came with my crap 1999 PC and Windows 1998 and then I upgraded to 2000 for a month and then got XP in like 2002 early of the year. And then I didn't really do much and I started customizing my desk and then I got into that stuff, and then I started downloading with kazaa but I called it kaaaaaza or something. And I had no idea what Mac was or anything and I flirted with some emo girl in chicago and some stuff and then I went BOOM.

#247763

the FBI asked me to spy on your forkers on a suspicion of an underground terrorist link... i just submitted my report back. here's a copy of it:

Attn: Robert S. Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Re: Suspected terrorist network, "Operation Aqua"

It was all a ruse, the network must be elsewhere. They are just nerds.

Hugs and kisses,

Agent TV

#247773

look Nico, AquaXP is not a CRAPPY site, Jieun's gonna kill you for that lol :P

#247774

I had kept a close eye on OS X (Aqua) when Apple was showing it off, before the release. A friend was, "d00d," he even pronouced the zeroes which was really odd, "look at this Aqua shiz-nit." Then I was like "DAMN!" Then he was like "Yessir! You sir are welcome."

#247778

Aha, I always wanted to tell this story.

1) Was on a plane, and flipping through an issue of PCworld (approximately August 2003)

2) Liked it, bought a subscription

3) Some months later, read an article about betanews.com

4) Just for the hell of it, went to the site. First thing I saw was StyleXP 2 beta, I think. Downloaded it (again, just for the heck of it), and restarted.

5) HOLY ****! MY COMPUTER LOOKS LIKE A MAC

6) From there, I somehow found my way to AquaXP (Iceman's site first, of course), and signed up.

7) Signed up here, mostly for lurking. I liked AXP better for some reason.

8) Saw a question here that I knew the answer to. Post #1 !

9) Post 2 was... ah, I don't know.

Thus began the life of venerable Aqua-Soft newsposter nightcrawler1089. Tune in next episode for "How I started worshipping AndreasV, and KDX Chat, even though everyone insulted me there."

Anyway, 1-9 is all true. Interesting, huh?

-NC

#247802

It was July 2003, and I was on a trip. At one of the places we stopped at, there was a Macintosh running OS X. I used it and decided I loved the way it looked. When I got home, I started researching the Mac interface, and used Google to find sites like this one, AquaXP, Iceman's Page, and Neowin. I "aquired" WindowBlinds and ObjectBar, and downloaded Y'z Dock. OS X graced my desktop for a few months, then came UXTheme patching and branching out of the Mac-inspired themes. It was pretty cool.

#247834

i just got bored with my wincustomize.com themes (used to be all gt2 stuff from tiggz on objectdock, iconpackager, bootskin, and finally curser xp) and i got bored, so i tried and tried. i saw some mac ones so i tried to have a normal windows interface that has mac aqua style. turned out that i coulden't live without the dock and some stuff and fount that it's copied from panther's gui. i also got interested in system file modding at the same time when i just tried using iceman's system files. that's when i found about here in aqua-soft.org and that's when i started liking apple and mac more and more. great site this place is. what a revolution for me and what a nice site this is! from wincustomize to aquafy

#247962

My friend first showed me msstyles on ThemeXP and so I downloaded StyleXP, with it came a Jaguar style theme, and I thought, wow, it would be cool to have a Mac on my desktop! So I did some searching and found this site, along with others that had everything I needed

Thanks guys

#247967

I started the emulation on my crappy old pc (1.6GHz, 256Mb RAM, 32Mb VC), and since it was so weak I was always looking for the apps which took the least resources, so I switched to LiteStep at the time, one day while browsing through dA I found a cool OS X Panther skin there for LiteStep, used it > liked it > modded it > got bored. Saw a link to A-S at AquaXP when it had the forums, found out about ObjectBar, but my old pc could barely handle all the aqua stuff, so for the time I switched back to Luna. Got my new pc, now everything runs nice *rubs the dual xeons* .

#247980

and KDX Chat, even though everyone insulted me there."

-NC

WOO, good times.

Me? To be honest, I can't even remember. I joined forever ago. We're talking The Time Before Seph :slant:

#247985

WOO, good times.

:cool: yeah...

#248018

Oh yeah, let's all gang up on nightcrawler, shall we? esXXi, you are NOT to respond to that.

-NC

#248019

started out with Basilisk II, and an aqua Kalaedascope theme.

from emaculation i found a link to PCDesktops that had a very early WB Aqua Theme.

searched for more, and found Aqua-Soft.org and Duckie's Hotline Server.

in OCT of '01 i was working on an AquaMSStyle for TGTsoft's new "Patch".

up untill that point, my desktop looked like this.

#248036

I Basically was tired of the UGLY xp interface, and wanted badly a mac, so i found themexp.org, i learned how to skin and all, however i never actually made a vs, and the site that mostly influence me was www.OSXP.com, than i came across www.aquaxp.com which gave me all the links, i quickly learned about themes, and VS, i looked, and found several good themes, however i PRAISE flyakite's software for his awesome transformation pack!! the yz dock was found on google, and believe it or not the site that still has this is in the link section of AQUAXP site, the site that has this on the bottom says "this site is made for a computer!!"

#248051

I saw windowblinds in a magazine under its "cool applications" section. It was still in like the 2.* s so it couldn't do much but skin the window buttons and start bar. I ended up getting the shareware version of it, but it couldn't skin anything else then what it was already skinning. I figured out that, that was because I was still in Win ME. I got Win XP and windowblinds and then started looking for themes and I was really struck by how nice aqua looked. Then in one of the skins on wincustomize I found a link to Iceman's page giving credit for the icons, and fonts. I followed it, got into msstyles, found links to y'z dock, y'z shadow, and aqua-soft. Tada. Thats how I started. A bit more then a year ago I believe.

#248312

#1 used to try WindowBlinds (2.x ?) on Win98,

loved the skinning concept, really disliked the resource hogging, incompatability & buggyness it brought with it back then. Especially with my limited k6-2 system back then.

Amongst the included skins there was an OS X skin, which I didn't understand (open, close, min buttons top-left, etc.), but I fell in love instantly with the Aqua-gel scrollbar.

#2

2003 - Made the switch to WindowsXP.

Tried WB again, but ... it screwed up my installment op WinXP, which led me to believe WB & winXP were incompatible, not realising I was simply using an outdated version of WB.

Anyways, I ditched WB, but it had triggered a lingering for skinning. Eventually found StyleXP and went using that, not experiancing the troubles I had with my (ancient version of) WB I assumed I had found the perfect solution. Used an (not so great) Aqua skin.

Something made me want to know more about the OS X/Mac skin and it's origin and I ended up with the Iceman homepage eventually. There I learned that the Mac was more than the skin I used, apparently I was all about better productiveness and ... a Dock? (Icemans Flashdock). Loved the magnification in the preview on his website, but couldn't use it with my version of winXP since Icemans flashodock was incompatible with my installed sp1.

#3

So my new holy grails became:

- better OS X skins --> eventually Found the ones by TD4 & Kol via MacThink

- and a working Dock --> got myself Aquadock (wasn't aware of the fact it was a rip of Y'z back then). But the Aquadock wasn't what people on AquaXP or Macthink were using. Then I learned about the existance of Y'z, OD, and Moby's. and that my Aquadock was a fake. So moved to Y'z (after thorough Googeling ).

#4

Via AquaXP I learned about Aqua-soft. And the pictures of a real mac didn't quite completely resemble my 'perfect' OS X skin via StyleXP. According to what I read in the forums WB wasn't the buggy resourcehog of times past. So I re-tried WB, which led to the abolishment of StyleXP on my pc. Which I was becoming to dislike, because of the new features that screwed up my desktop wallpaper, and re-enabling sounds effects every time I tried a new skin.

Now I had myself top left callout buttons (close, min, max), rollup funcionallity, I had become the proud owner of a Dock on the bottom of my screen with the stylish magnification effect on it's icons which I liked go over with my mouse just to watch the effect (sic). But that wasn't enough.

#5

So we added shadow; first through Y'z shadow, which led to many graphic glitches (shadows remaining on desktop while the corresponding window was allready closed). Then WindowFX, which I still permanently use to my satisfaction.

The finderbar was problematic IME up till now and even though Objectbar approached OS X looks (with the crni skins applied), but not all the functionality and was too slow in terms of responsiveness on my K6-2. I prefer the Finderbar way above the M$ menup-top-of-each-window approach and honestly believe is more effective and saves up space. So, I can but hope that the upcoming version of Objectbar (v. 2) or McBar's taskbar plugin propsal will bring a better option. Till then no finderbar for me, alas.

After a while I ditched the Dock, but today re-tried it with the most recent version of RKLauncher which re-enable my lingering for an effectively working Dock and seems to fulfill the promise allready, which is truely great since it hasn't even entered the beta-stage.

But, so much for off topic ramblings by me.

Anyways, I keep on returning to the OS X Aqua skin (both Panther as the original OS X.1 one) after regular daytrips to other skins like Milk & Fear Platinum. I always use OS X skins with top-left call-out buttons (close, min, max) since I got very used to that and can no longer stand the top-right (min, max, close) M$ setup.

To me Aqua is...

Stylish fresh translucent blue gel

on a glossy white marble

which keeps my eyes aesthically pleased.

I check Aqua-soft about everytime a get online since I joined in april 2004 and haven't got bored with this obsession yet.

Risking other members get bored by me I'm gonna end this posting now

#248373

This is starting to look like a competition to see who has the longest story!

Some of these are quite interesting too, and this is probably my best topic I started (postwise)

Wondering, has anyone here started with a mac, switched to windows, then wanted a mac again?

#248480