Unlike many themes, Vitae came on the scene with near-zero hype and zero marketing, a complete surprise to all but a few. At times misidentified as an Aqua modification, Vitae is actually 100% redrawn by its author, Dan of improvpastence. But is it anything more than another SmoothStripes?



Aesthetics

Vitae immediately seems familiar, and why not? If there’s one theme we all know, it’s Aqua. Despite Vitae’s aquatic influences, however, it feels new and original: the brand new Prius to Aqua’s 15-year-old Silverado. Where Aqua has ridiculously large close, minimize and maximize buttons, Vitae shrinks them down to small, sleek ones that get out of the way of work whilst giving off an air of professionalism. And while the window control widgets are perhaps the most obvious deviations from standard Aqua to be found in Vitae, they’re hardly the only change Dan has made in the name of style. Obviously, brushed metal went on the chopping block, as did the dreaded stripes.

What didn’t get axed at least was given a new sheen. Vitae’s scrollbars have more shine, and don’t jump out of their tracks quite as much. The chief color is no longer Aqua itself, a slightly deeper blue predominates. This might be a good thing for some, but I kind of miss that old shade of blue. Besides the new blue, the buttons and tabs are now prominently outlined in black and have lost a lot of their definition (which isn’t a bad thing). Like the scrollbars, improvpastence has flattened Aqua’s rounded buttons, creating a much less blatantly showy interface. The difference is subtle, until you see the old buttons and new buttons side by side.

Like the best and most complete themes, Vitae is full of little surprises every time you open a new app. Nice touches, like finding out Dashboard is themed, or when you see the very nice new RSS icon in Safari, really show the effort on improvpastence’s part. And it’s very apparent how much time and energy Dan spent perfecting each widget, button, and bevel. There’s only one I have an issue with — one thing that didn’t really need changing — the progress spinner. To change it felt forced — change for the sake of change. The rest, though, is change for the better.

Usability

Every improvement in Vitae is clearly done for style and usability. Aqua is a pretty usable environment, seeing as its had countless revisions to improve on ease of use. Vitae only aids Aqua in this area, working to get rid of the most distracting elements. Vitae’s elements tastefully blend in and get out of your way when you don’t need them, and jump out just enough for you to find them easily when you do need them.

Vitae’s usability mostly stems from the uniformity it strives for. By redrawing every element himself, improvpastence had the ability to make things a bit more uniform. Inset control buttons (Large Segment Buttons for you ThemePark whizzes) and tabs (Segment Tabs) are still not the same, but are definitely more similar than regular Aqua allows them to be. The tabs are no longer popping out of the window and the inset buttons are not quite as monstrous in size. And all buttons now have the same reflection; no more “squiggly” reflection on the inset buttons. Glyphs have been touched up, too, to allow for less showy excess in glyph size. They are now a reasonable size and are much less distracting because of it.

Extras

Improvpastence did not disappoint with this theme. He packed a plethora of appskins into Vitae, and all are complete and well thought-out. I have yet to find an appskin that isn’t completely redrawn, down to the last glyph. It’s not as if improvpastence needs to do this, as Vitae is based so heavily off of Aqua, a custom Aqua control employed by, say, NewsFire would hardly be out of place. Yet improvpastence still redraws and improves every piece of the apps he chooses to skin. For instance, the iTunes skin features a redrawn store navigation bar (that seems more than a little inspired by Cats, but who am I to complain?) and even a redrawn bottom bar for the podcasts pane (which was pretty sorely needed, in my opinion).

And holy crap, there’s custom iChat bubbles, too!

But appskins alone do not complete this package. Improvpastence also has the Vitae icon set for download. 106 sweet icons that improvpastence obviously took time to perfect at each size. He even includes some great app replacements in the set as well. The Vitae folders are the obvious stars of the set, and they blend in beautifully with the theme. It is another case of an unnecessary (in a world chock full of Aqua icon sets) but very welcome addition that just makes you smile.

Wallpapers are also available for download, but they aren’t very different from any other Aqua wallpaper out there. I see little reason to use them over the many carefully crafted Aqua walls released here over the years. But for the people who want the whole package when they load up a new theme, there they are.

Conclusion

Clearly, Vitae is much more than just another SmoothStripes. SmoothStripes was a touch-up, while Vitae is a full-blown makeover. That said, Vitae is a theme for people who can at least stand Aqua in its current incarnation. If you’ve always hated the excess gloss and the bright scrollbars, Vitae doesn’t do away with that. Vitae is where we’d expect Aqua to go next if Apple hadn’t all but scrapped it: a sexy, usable, and stylish theme that stands up to the rigors of daily use. And now that Leopard is on the horizon, and Aqua’s time here is slowly coming to a close, it’s a great time to enjoy improvpastence’s beautiful version of Aqua.

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