OS X Customization

Great in-depth post in the multitude of ways to customize Mac OS X over at Creative Guy.

As a designer, I like things to look good. This includes my desk, my computer, and of course, the operating system. That’s just one of the reasons I choose to use the Mac operating system.

But Mac OSX isn’t perfect for me by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll skip over the commentary about OSX 10.1 through 10.3 and the ugly pinstripes we had to put up with. And when Apple introduced the brushed metal look of the Finder and many applications, I liked it… for a very short while. Now it just annoys the crap out of me. I probably wouldn’t mind quite as much if the ENTIRE GUI was brushed metal, but this mix of Aqua white, gray and brushed metal is horribly annoying to me. I just want to stand in Steve Jobs’ office door and scream “PICK ONE ALREADY!”

Thankfully, I don’t have to put up with it. There are plenty of GUI hacks available for Mac OSX. And I’m not talking just about the overall theme, but functionality hacks and add-ons as well. The following are just some of the GUI goodies I love and use. If I left out your application or add-on, or one that you love to use, please feel free to add a link and description in the comments for this article.

The one thing he didn’t mention is a favorite little addon of mine - MenuShade.

This simply fades your menu bar to any color you want (defaults to black) or (as in the screenshot) to your wallpaper. When you hover the the mouse over it simply fades back in.  It’s something that doesn’t seem like it would be all that neat but I find that without it the menubar starts to annoy me.

Maybe I’m just weird.

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