In case you missed it at Apple’s Back to the Mac event, Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” is getting redesigned scrollbars and a brand new scrolling system. In fact, Apple is taking iOS’ “rubber banding” effect and minimal, fading scrollbars to the Mac with the next major iteration due next year. As demoed by Apple’s Craig Federighi in the Mac App Store app running on Lion, scrollbars will behave similarly to iOS – you won’t any scrollbar if you’re touching the trackpad.
Snow Leopard users won’t, of course, get the new feature via Software Update, but still someone got creative last week and created a theme to bring iOS’ scrollbars to the Mac. The theme is available here and can be applied to the system with one click using ThemePark. There’s also an additional file for iTunes – you’ll have to manually place it inside iTunes’ Resources.
While the theme is pretty nice and the scrollbars look sweet, I don’t like the fact that they’re not “the real thing” we’re going to get with Lions. These scrollbars are still placed inside a “container” (the one with the arrows at the bottom) and they won’t disappear when you’re not touching the trackpad or mouse. They’re just a skin for the current Aqua scrollbars.
If you think this is a compromise you’re willing to accept to have iOS-like scrollbars on a Mac, go download the theme here. [Thanks, Nguyen!]
