The Breakroom

If you love to collect, organize and customize Mac OS X desktop icons as much as we do, CandyBar has probably been your best friend since it launched back in 2007. Unfortunately, over the years Apple’s efforts to make OS X more secure have slowly crippled the app. Customizing icons of signed apps causes the Mac App Store not to recognize potential updates and the new release of Mac OS X Mountain Lion means it is no longer possible to customize the OS X Dock at all.

We and our good friends over at Panic have taken a hard look at the future of desktop icons on the Mac and unfortunately, the writing is on the wall. There may come a time, very soon in fact, when it won’t be possible to customize any system level icon on the desktop except perhaps folders. Apple’s push to sandbox applications, the addition of signed apps and the increasing unification of OS X and iOS mean CandyBar’s days (in its current form) are numbered.

Given all of these developments, Panic is no longer willing to charge money for CandyBar and we agree with them. As of today, the app is free to download and officially becomes unsupported. Users who purchased CandyBar in July can write to us for a full refund. To help existing CandyBar users, we’ve set up a new Iconfactory knowledge base that answers basic questions about the app, although it will remain officially unsupported by us as well.

Because Cabel and the rest of the Panic gang love the Mac and their icons as much as we do, they’ll continue to keep CB working with minor icon updates, but they cannot guarantee it will continue to function in the future. We’ll also be here, making freeware icons for you to download and enjoy as long as we can. Icons are our passion and they helped get us where we are today. We love pushing pixels and sharing our creations with you, our loyal visitors and fans. We’re hopeful that CandyBar or its software cousin will eventually return in a new form that plays well with the App Store and gives desktop icons new life, but that day is not today.

We encourage you to surf on over and read Panic’s blog post about CandyBar to get their side of the pixelated story, and where we go from here. We thank everyone who’s supported our and Panic’s efforts by purchasing CandyBar or downloading one of our iContainers. We hope you’ll enjoy our iconic creations for years to come. Onward ho!

Summer on a Stick is a set of ice creams and popsicle icons to keep your desktop stylish, cool and refreshing. Designed by Kate England, these icons are inspired by childhood memories. Refreshing like popsicles on a hot, sunny day. Nostalgic like a childhood memory. The clarity of a recollection, expressed with simplicity, rich in colour and with elegant lines.

Summer on a Stick is designed in a crisp, contemporary Art Deco style where vintage meets modern, just like childhood memories revisit us in the present. Download for your Mac, PC or as a handy Candybar iContainer today. Enjoy!

Slab is a new icon style from Iconfactory designer Corey Marion. His original intent for this set was simply to extend the popular Smoothicon collection with all of the latest Apple hardware but somewhere along the line it evolved into something more precise and more technical. Inspired by the BeOS icons from the 1990’s, Slab is bold and fresh, modernizing the hand built pixel-by-pixel quasi-isometric style.

Give your fancy desktop a bit of late 20th century retro operating system style. Download Slab from our freeware page today.

With the imminent release of Prometheus, Ridley Scott is returning to the ever-popular science fiction franchise he kicked off more than thirty years ago with the classic Alien. To say that we’re all excited to see what he’s going to show us is putting it mildly – it’s sure to be an impressive experience.

Of course, marketing has changed a lot in thirty years, and Prometheus has used some very modern and clever approaches to building anticipation for the film. One of the best has been a slick faux corporate website for the imaginary Weyland Corporation that one can wander through for hours, finding all sorts of hints about the upcoming film, as well as nods to past entries in the franchise.

Dave Brasgalla has created several icons and desktop wallpapers using the graphic sensibility of that site so that you can extend the look and feel onto your own devices. Building better worlds – one desktop at a time! Head over to the freeware page and download “Weyland Corp” today, and we’ll see you in the cinema!