Mac Users Are Crazy To Use Desktop Photos.

How many Mac users open a few dozen folders on their Mac’s desktop? Desktops are cluttered with folders and files all over the place.

So why have a desktop photo as a background on your Mac if it cannot be seen? Desktop photos are a waste of time and effort.

Sometimes I have the privilege of helping out a new Mac user who switched from Windows. Invariably, their Mac’s desktops are cluttered with folders and files and that’s how they navigate the Mac’s file system.

Double-click, double-click, double-click, ad nauseum. It’s almost as if new Mac users don’t know about Column View in the Finder. Just as common is the desktop photo or image. Nearly every new Mac user customizes the image, adds a photo. Why? For the most part, the Mac’s Finder obscures the desktop.

What got me started on this observation was Friday afternoon. A couple of hours was devoted to helping a few new Mac users with some “file and folder” navigation issues; not a strong point of many Windows users, former Windows users, and new Mac users.

Whatever you think of the Mac’s Finder, Column View is the way to be efficient and orderly. Back to the Finder. Each of the three office workers I helped out on Friday had a nifty Mac utility called Pic-a-POD. This crazy tool downloads a photo a day from different web sites and sets your desktop picture to match.

Pic-a-POD will also randomly change the picture or photo at various intervals. In other words, the desktop photo can change throughout the day. Cool, huh? But what’s the point? Most Mac users can’t see the desktop because the Finder covers it up. How attractive are photos you can’t see?

Granted, the photos downloaded by Pic-a-POD are superb. The picture of the day comes from sites such as National Geographic, Astronomy, Earth Science, and Wikipedia (go figure).

You can schedule Pic-a-POD to download according to a daily schedule, then set the desktop picture to match one of the downloads. The scheduled downloads update automatically each day, and Pic-a-POD can change the desktop picture periodically.

Is this a solution looking for a problem?

In case you find there’s a shortage of desktop pictures on your Mac, Pic-a-POD also downloads pictures from any selected date. What a great way to load up your Mac with desktop pictures you can’t see.

If that’s the case, and it usually is, Pic-a-POD mini to the rescue. The mini utility stays open on your Mac so you can browse through all your downloaded pictures. There’s even a scheme designer.

I know what you’re saying to yourself. “Desktop pictures are nice to look at, and it’s a convenient way to customize my Mac.” Yes, the Mac is not as customizable as Windows, but the desktop pictures are mostly hidden so why bother?

Inquiring minds want to know, hence, the Pic-a-Pod Survey Page. Maybe the developer is trying to figure out why anyone would use such a utility.

Pic-a-Pod is available for both Mac and Windows, so if you’re using a new Intel-based Mac and running Windows, too, you can have daily downloads of beautiful pictures that you won’t be able to see because they’re stuck behind the Finder or a few dozen folders and files.

I would rather see a utility that would download all the pictures from Secrets-in-Lace or Met-Art instead (warning - links not for office viewing), especially if they could be saved as screen saver pictures.