The original iMac debuted sporting a radically different design that decided the floppy drive was obsolete. It also created a nice market for accessory makers who came out with a flood of USB floppy drives sporting the iMac’s same color cues. When all was said and done though, Apple was right; floppys limited to 1.44 megabytes were quickly being supplemented by USB memory drives.

That little history recap aside, I liked floppys; they were, unlike USB drives, disposable — it’s only in the last few years that USB drives have dropped enough in price that I could buy one, load something onto it, and give it to someone else and not need the drive returned. If I were to do that though, I would definitely use the Floppy icon released by G-Force as the “USB drives” icon. It’s a nice little throw back to when the floppy was still king.

Who will bring the potato salad? Picnic, created by Mattrich, was released one week ago today and it has been a major success. From the WIP thread of 24 pages to a release thread of 48, Matt and the community have put together a very awesome theme.

Picnic was created to be different. “I wanted to do something different, i thought it would be cool if each icon was represented more literally with characters,” Mattrich in his WIP thread’s first post. Inspired by the creativeness of David Lanham, Matt continued to work and improve on the theme until it was time to release.

So if you feel like going on a Picnic, then drop by the growing thread to pick up the little characters and some extras for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

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.