I\'d like to create statusbar with text effect like in Safari or iTunes, i.e. recessed text.
However,
There is a built-in way to do this:
[[yourTextField cell] setBackgroundStyle:NSBackgroundStyleRaised];
It's a cheap old trick: You draw the text in white at an offset and then draw the black text on top of it.
There is a hook for shadows in the text-drawing system, NSAttributedString's NSShadowAttributeName. But testing this out, it appears to kill the subpixel antialiasing as well.