Customize the gray Apple logo on your startup screen

Every Mac user is familiar with the generic gray Apple logo that appears when you boot up OS X. However, if you’re sick of the sight of it, the good news is that BootXChanger lets you change it.

BootXChanger allows you to transform the boot image in Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 to a logo or picture of your choosing. Note though that BootXChanger will not change the background color of the boot screen, so you have to make sure that your image won’t merge into the generic background. As a result, there are a limited number of colors your image can use and if you don’t, BootXChanger will reduce it to something that doesn’t look very good.

The developer suggests trying to save the images in GIF or PNG-8 format in Photoshop first, making sure it uses 100 colors or less. On Intel Macs, the images also need to be compressed to fit into the boot file, although BootXChanger will warn you when this is the case.

Using BootXChanger is very simple. To set an image as a boot image, open BootXChanger and simply drag it to the image well and click ‘Apply’. You have to enter your admin password and then you’re done. If you’re thinking of updating to Snow Leopard at the moment, you’re best to do that first before using BootXChanger because any changes you make will be erased by the update.

It’s a shame that BootXChanger is so fussy with the amount of colors you use but overall, it’s one of the easiest and best ways to change your boot image.

No more limitations for imagesCan change background colorIntel only, PowerPC users stay on 1.0.4

Changes

• No more limitations for imagesCan change background colorIntel only, PowerPC users stay on 1.0.4