[Macworld]

Post your comments for My Living Desktop uses video for your Mac's desktop here

[tln1ltj2]

Can you make it be your screen saver?

[Raymondo17]

>Can you make it be your screen saver?<

Yes, it can be used as a screensaver. I enjoy the random setting--I never know whether a sunset beach or a windy mountaintop will appear next. The scenes are gorgeous, many accompanied by soothing sounds of waves crashing or wind in the trees. I highly recommend it. I wasn't aware you could import your own videos, so that might be fun to explore.

[chrisozman]

Raymondo17, on 16 February 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

>Can you make it be your screen saver?<

Yes, it can be used as a screensaver. I enjoy the random setting--I never know whether a sunset beach or a windy mountaintop will appear next. The scenes are gorgeous, many accompanied by soothing sounds of waves crashing or wind in the trees. I highly recommend it. I wasn't aware you could import your own videos, so that might be fun to explore.

The "submit" button wasn't working so I thought I'd go in this way. Presumably this is a download. I know Americans aren't generally too worried about how big files are (especially Apple!) but in many other countries we have limited monthly data. So how big is the download file if you buy it?

[MyLivingDesktop]

I'm the developer of My Living Desktop and I'm very grateful to MacWorld for such a wonderful review. I want to clear up a misunderstanding however. Brendan the reviewer mentioned that he thought My Living Desktop perhaps used too much CPU resource. In practice this is not the case. The reason for this is that all recent Macs of the last several years have multiple CPU cores in them - 2 to 4, and even 8 sometimes. This means that the numbers he mentioned above, 16% to 25% should actually be halved or quartered because of the many simultaneous CPU cores in a Mac. So in the case of a 4 core Mac, these numbers would be quartered or about 4% to 6% of the TOTAL aggregate CPU usage. That would be a more accurate and fair way to evaluate the CPU usage for any application, not just My Living Desktop, instead of just looking at the numbers the Activity Monitor tool reports at face value.

Further I always recommend people to just try My Living Desktop themselves for free and see what they think. From the tens of thousands of users out there, and from my own experience, I am certain that you will not experience a slow down in your daily computer usage (excepting perhaps if you have a very old Mac or are doing very computationally intensive work like rendering 3D graphics or the like). This is why I offer a 10 day free trial and even a 30 day Money Back Guarantee. You get to try it for yourself.

I hope that clears up Brendan's CPU usage thoughts about My Living Desktop. And thanks again to him and the MacWorld team for such a nice review.

[Slurpy2k12]

This is one of those things that' cool for exactly 10 seconds, after which you disable it forever and ask yourself what you were thinking.

[astein]

Have to agree wIth the developer (who is wonderfully responsive by the way): He's right that reported CPU usage gets quartered in newer machines that have quad core processors. But I think it's even better than thy. My early 2011 15 inch MacBook pro shows eight processors because (I think) hyper threading sees each core as two. I may have the details wrong but the point is that CPU usage isn't too big of a deal because 1) amuse has spent years ensuring that playing a continuous video loop
Full screen doesn't slow down your machine (a nice feat), and 2) multi core processors.

But ALSO, he's had a checkbox in the preferences for a few years now that toggles My Living Desktop off when you switch to battery power and back on when you plug in again, automatically. An acknowledgement that most of us would be concerned this would drain battery life.

Bottom line... I've used this for several years and loved it all the time. Not only that, but I've impressed countless people with it. They're blown away every time.
The scenes are truly beautiful. (and the recent update finally allows me to show scenes on multiple screens!)

[naturelover]

I think this is wonderful software. Check out my user review on the other tab.

[blakerowe]

I got this years ago when it was called Serenity Saver. I was always surprised when dedicated Mac users saw the gently moving nature scene on the desktop and said, "That is so cool! What is that?". It seemed to me like everyone should know about it already and would have it on their own computers because it's such a nice enhancement. And now I'm surprised that Apple hasn't acquired the license for a million dollars and integrated it into the OS.

In the early years, you never knew when, one day you'd sit down at the computer, and a new scene would greet you; a tropical beach at sunset, or a mountain lake on a summer afternoon, whatever. That was a nice bonus. Now the software comes with over 40 scenes and you can download more via the Scene Store.
Over the years I had a few times when an OS upgrade or some plugin would cause an issue with the program, but the developer was always right on it and resolved it easily.
I especially like the gentle sounds that accompany MLD. As I'm working it has a very calming effect; a lightly bubbling brook, leaves rustling, distant chimes, nice stuff! It all stops if I play music or get a Skype phone call so I never have to do a command in order to have silence when I need it.

[Marcos63vg]

I love this application. Really, I bought a Canon 5D Mark II just o make my movies ( scenes taken through Central Brazil : ) ) and than, run them as background. Amazing!