Measles

Measles 2.2 is a Classic Mac desktop toy from Ben Haller's Stick Software that scatters little bouncy spheres across your desktop. The spheres are decorative by default but can be configured as live CPU monitors, changing colour according to how busy the machine is, and they ship with a wide range of colour schemes, fill patterns, sound effects and transparency options.

What it does

The bundled ReadMe describes Measles as little bouncy spheres on your desktop which are fun and colourful. Each sphere can be styled independently with colour schemes, fill patterns and sounds, and the population can be tuned to taste. They are designed to coexist with whatever else you have open rather than to take over the screen.

System monitor mode

The optional CPU-monitor mode shifts each sphere's colour in response to how hard your Mac is working, so a glance at the desktop tells you whether the machine is idle or pinned. Stick Software's later Mac OS X release of Measles extended this idea to memory, disk and idle-time monitoring, but the Classic 2.2 build documented here is built specifically around CPU activity.

Distribution and author

Measles was written by Ben Haller and released through his company Stick Software. The Info-Mac ReadMe lists the official home page at www.sticksoftware.com/software/Measles.html, the company page at www.sticksoftware.com, and the support address support@sticksoftware.com. The author also explicitly grants permission for Measles to be included on CD-ROMs.

Version note

This entry is version 2.2 of the Classic Mac OS build, distributed as measles-22.hqx on Info-Mac. Macintosh Garden's main Measles page documents a later Mac OS X PowerPC release from Stick Software; the screenshots there show the OS X build, so they are not used here.