Unsanity was a

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

shareware software developer founded in May 2000, notable for coining the term "haxie". Unsanity produced Mac utilities that relied on their own Application Enhancer, a utility that modified the system and other applications. Software incompatibility with

Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is available in two ...

Snow Leopard The snow leopard (''Panthera uncia''), also known as the ounce, is a felid in the genus '' Panthera'' native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is es ...

, and

Lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...

ended Unsanity's offerings.

History

Unsanity began developing audio player applications, Unsanity Echo and Mint Audio, before pivoting to Mac utility software. While Apple had offered an official extension system in MacOS 9, no similar add-on architecture existed upon the release of

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. Unsanity coined the term "haxie" (from "hack Mac OS X") to describe retrofits or tweaks made to the Mac OS X system. Unsanity's haxies included Mighty Mouse, which changed the system cursor, and FruitMenu, which adjusted the system menus. These haxies worked by using Unsanity's Application Enhancer (APE), which also allowed third-party developers to write Mac OS X haxies. By 2008, they made around a dozen utilities for the Mac. Because the haxies injected code into unintended locations, they could cause unexpected software issues. Other third-party developers would blame haxies as the culprit if their own applications unexpectedly quit, and Apple went so far as to say it would ignore submitted crash logs submitted from a system with Application Enhancer installed. With the release of

and

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conferen ...

, many haxies stopped working partially or at all; users with old versions of Application Enhancer suffered system crashes on upgrading their systems to Leopard. Promised updates to offer Leopard compatibility failed to appear; after months of silence, Unsanity announced plans to port specific products to Snow Leopard, creating new versions of popular utilities that only worked under Snow Leopard by leveraging new OS technologies like Core Animation. Some software, such as Windowshade X, did have Snow Leopard versions released, but compatibility would be short-lived;

Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

was entirely incompatible with Unsanity's Application Enhancer utilities. The company Twitter account stopped posting November 2011 and the company's website went dark soon after.

Software

Unsanity-developed software included: *Application Enhancer (APE) provides a framework that allows third-party developers to write haxies for Mac OS X. *Dock Detox: eliminates the bouncing of icons in the Mac OS X Dock when the application requests attention *FruitMenu: customization and enhancements for the

Apple menu The Apple menu is a drop-down menu that is on the left side of the menu bar in the classic Mac OS, macOS and A/UX operating systems. The Apple menu's role has changed throughout the history of Apple Inc.'s operating systems, but the menu h ...

*Labels X: adds color tints and labels for files in Mac OS X (Apple would reintroduce labels with

Mac OS X Panther Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003. System requirements Panther's s ...

.) *MightyMouse: allows customization and animation of the Mac OS X

cursor Cursor may refer to: * Cursor (user interface), an indicator used to show the current position for user interaction on a computer monitor or other display device * Cursor (databases), a control structure that enables traversal over the records i ...

*ShapeShifter: allows the user to make system-wide modifications to the appearance of the operating system's graphical interface by applying GUI skins *Silk: enables anti-aliased text in Mac OS X Carbon applications *WindowShade X: replicates the

WindowShade WindowShade was a control panel extension for the classic Mac OS that allowed a user to double-click a window's title bar to "roll up" the window like a windowshade. When the window was "rolled up", only the title bar of the window was visible; th ...

behavior of MacOS 9 *Xounds: brings

Appearance Manager The Appearance Manager is a component of Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 that controls the overall look of the Macintosh graphical user interface widgets and supports several themes. It was originally developed for Apple's ill-fated Copland project, but ...

sounds to Mac OS X

References

{{reflist

External links

ArsTechnica: What Happened to Unsanity?
Macintosh software companies MacOS-only software Discontinued software