I Miss Aqua: A Retro-Themed Maverick

Revisited Years Later

This project is one that barely worked, for a time. There was a time when it provided an Aqua-themed virtual machine with a live web browser. Since then updates have undone most Aqua theming. More problematically, the one (then) current browser I could find that would work under Maverick Meerkat was a developer's build of Firefox, which didn't have to pull in the web of newer dependencies that practically anything else would, and that newer browser became astonishingly unstable, much worse than Internet Exploder 6. The main reason I am keeping it around, besides the fact that I can't foresee all of my visitors' needs, is that it provides the least geeky way to access the programming project I cut my teeth on programming, an arcane game called The Minstrel's Song.

Since then I have purchased one of (then) ten copies of Snow Leopard Server available on Amazon, the one OSX version where you are allowed to run on a virtual machine, and it has the Aqua look and feel. I've actually had to use some of the same skills; an older Chrome installs but will not update, and I had to do some juggling to get LibreOffice 4.3.3 installed. All the same, it's nice to have that option now open. (And use the installed Terminal.app without Sierra's epic instability in the built-in command line.)

I've been trying to find a way to get Aqua back on my Mac, and getting Aqua to display under any OS has been a trackless waste. But I've been able to stitch something together (nothing new) to offer a Linux old enough to display old Aqua themes and "look and feel" appropriately, while running a modern version of Firefox. And now it's here.

Some people regard the Aqua theme as done and gone, and passé. It's out of the Mac mainstream at any rate, and has been for the past couple of releases of Mac OSX.

But with a little help from VMware and a little open sourced Linux theming magic, it's possible to get Aqua back:

This configurable and nostalgic blast from the past, made available through customizable themable Linux, provides a small treat for people who liked the good old days of Mac Aqua. And it is available on all of Windows, Linux, and Mac: search for the free VMware Player, VMware Workstation, or VMware Fusion from the VMware site.

Download the "I Miss Aqua" virtual machine and network appliance now!