Unsanity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unsanity is a Mac OS X shareware software developer founded in May of 2000, notable for coining the term "haxie".

Their most popular software includes ShapeShifter and WindowShade, utilising their freeware Application Enhancer module. On February 24, 2008, beta versions of some of their major products were introduced which were compatible with Leopard, bringing Leopard compatibility to their product line for the first time after a long wait of over three months since the introduction of Leopard.

The introduction of Leopard initially lead to negative publicity for Unsanity, as many users with old versions of Application Enhancer installed suffered system crashes upon upgrading to Leopard [1]. Many also believe that Apple actively tries to prevent third party applications from modifying the user interface in order to maintain control over the consistency of the product's appearance [2], and that Leopard may have finally achieved this goal.

Some criticisms of Unsanity's Application Enhancer technology, which is the basis for their product line of "haxies" include the assertion that the technology opens glaring security holes in OS X [3]. Nonetheless, there remains a large quite loyal user base who feel that the user interface choices which are made possible by Unsanity's product line justify the purely theoretical risk that security holes are opened by their product (as no actual exploits are known to date).