If you’re looking for a cool fire screensaver for your Mac look no further. Aurora Screensaver allows you to start fires all over your Mac desktop by the use of your multitouch trackpad! Each finger burns it’s own fire, it’s really quite fun to play around with. Since multitouch input is used, you just have to hit a key to exit the screensaver. This is Snow Leopard only and requires a trackpad.

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I found this digging around on Apple.com and am quite pleased with my new ability to have a fire on my Mac desktop! Surprisingly entertaining!

We have discussed SnowFall just about every holiday season for the past few years because it’s really that great of a screensaver for the winter and holiday season. It is so great that Apple has featured it in their Apple Stores around the holidays on numerous occasions, so if it has Apple’s seal of approval, it has ours.

SnowFall is delightfully simple but absolutely beautiful with it’s 3d rotating snow flakes, you can customize the screen saver in regards to how many snowflakes are falling, how fast they are going, the background color, the background image, and whether you want stripes or no stripes on the background. Here are some screenshots showing the customization and diversity of the screensaver, but I assure you screenshots do this screen saver absolutely no justice, you just need to install it yourself to see how beautiful it really is.

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Installing SnowFall ScreenSaver in Mac OS X:
* Drag the SnowFall.qtz file into ~/Library/Screen Savers/
* Launch System Preferences and under “Desktop & ScreenSavers” you’ll be able select SnowFall
* Adjust settings as you see fit
* Enjoy falling snow on your Mac screen saver!

Have you ever wanted to have your mac require a password on waking from system sleep, but not ask for a password when the screensaver is on? Well, me neither, but someone out there might and it’s kind of a nifty customization tip. I came across this nice trick on TUAW that I thought it was worth reposting here to our readers.

Launch the Terminal and type the following command:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 0

reversing this should just be a matter of changing the 0 to a 1

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 1

Little is dreaded more in the Mac world than the kernel panic, the Mac OS X equivalent of the Windows Blue Screen of Death. Mac software developer DoomLaser has released a great prank to play on any Mac using friends or colleagues in the form of a screen saver that emulates a kernel panic. The effect is very realistic, complete with the slow screen draw and the multilingual kernel panic text. Thankfully, real kernel panics are rare, but that won’t stop you from having some fun with this sneaky replica of Mac computing disaster.

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