When I saw [Icon] Toast posted in the forum threads by Ve I thought, “Perfect! Here’s something to go with that cup of coffee icon he made!”

Sadly, the icon inside wasn’t a toasted piece of bread, but a toaster, toasting discs, in the tradition of Roxio’s Toast icon. On the plus side, this icon is awesome, as the default icon for Toast 9 is a little odd with its blue glow and black chasis. Ve’s icon is retro toaster goodness in his exquisitely detailed style, making its metal look so shiny you want to reach out and fondle it.

Cover Flow sucks.
It is pretty and while it can, on occasion, make my Windows-toting friend jealous, the truth is that I never use it. It’s cumbersome. That being said, inspiration comes from strange places, and clearly forum member Bandar managed to find some inspiration for naming his latest release in the object of my disdain. Colorflow, fortunately, shares little else with Apple’s iTunes and Finder browser. In its bulbous colorful icons is an icon set of whimsical playfulness. I feel things require balance, so for every black or dark metal system replacement set released we now have a beautiful set of icons flowing with color. It also comes with a template that I’m sure will grow this icon set into a much fuller system replacement.

Writers, designers, coders, editors, any college senior, and most self-respecting geeks have a very personal relationship with coffee. Starbucks or French Press. Self Grind or tiny N’espresso pouches. Hell, I once met a bloke who swore by Nescafé instant coffee “when prepared properly”. So it is with a certain tinge of excitement that I always open a forum thread that includes the word “coffee”. The folder for all my current projects is always some sort of coffee mug icon and I may have just come across the most spot-on, perfect “NYC dinner-esque” cup of black coffee icon. CoffeeCon by vegrafik. Enough said. If you take milk with your coffee, now may be the time to switch… for the sake of desktop-to-kitchen top authenticity.

“Vinyl is back!” I couldn’t have said it better than the artist himself, second-time poster MatthewBech; thanks to him, vinyl is back for a long-overdue encore after tapes, CDs and now MP3s stole the stage from the format oh-so long ago. I’m a bit of a young’un, so I missed the era of wax, but that won’t stop me from reminiscing the days when LPs reigned supreme and compact discs were nought but a twinkle in Phillips’ eye. Both MatthewBechs’ black and blue variants of this lovely turntable would make an astounding media player icon for those of you out there who wish more music came on a large plastic disc. Scratch on down to the forum to get two turntables for yourself. (Sorry, no microphone or copy of Odelay included.)

As a fairly proficient OS X user, my usage of Spaces has been binary: often, I don’t even turn it on, but when I do need it, I need complete control over every nook and cranny of each space I get. The lack of such flexibility is one reason I usually just keep it off (but it also depends on the computer at hand; the 20″ iMac in my home office offers plenty of resolution in comparison to my four year-old 15″ PowerBook.) This is where Hyperspaces is interesting: it’s not attempting to be an overhaul of the Spaces feature integrated with Mac OS X, but rather adding simple, useful little features that appeal to control freaks like yours truly.

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Halloween is fast approaching, and icon designers seem to take a particular shine to the holiday. In much the same way a slew of freshmen college girls will use October 31st as an excuse to dress up as a “sexy slut”, so will designers use it as a reason to dip into their cauldron of pixels and scoop out a few delicious concoctions. Witch Hat is a wickedly-brewed icon. It sports a sheen that makes it look like it was plucked from the head of one slimy witch. So whether he used Eye of Newt or Toe of Frog, Mat-U’s first contribution to MacThemes is a dastardly fantastic one.

“Imitation is the sincerest form flattery.” I’ve always felt that this was just one of those things somebody coined to make themselves feel better about either, a) plagiarizing something, or b) finding their work plagiarized. Having just seen, and perhaps drooled a little over, Darren Wong’s 2G Touch Icon, I stand corrected; imitation is so very, very flattering. Jonathan Ive and whomever else designed the just-released 2nd generation iPod Touch should feel immensely adulated.

Anori is both a municipality in Colombia and a sexy new Dock. While I’m not implying climax, I am loving the look of this smooth, black-surfaced Dock. It could be the fabric of a nice tuxedo if it happened to be covered with icons. It’s not the first crack at a black Dock — and I’m sure it won’t be the last — but with each reiteration of a dark Dock we get to sample the nuanced choices of our very classy group of forum members. Have at it.