Chapter 14. Customizing Mac OS X

IN THIS CHAPTER:

102 Change General Color and Appearance Settings

103 Change Your Desktop Picture

104 Select a Screensaver

105 Customize a Folder Window

106 Change the Dock's Position and Behavior

107 Adjust the Format of Numbers and Other Notations

108 Change the System's Language

109 Set Applications to Launch Automatically at Login

Any good operating system exists to be customized. To provide a comfortable operating environment for the user, the system must be flexible enough so that the user can tailor its behavior to suit not just his needs, but his tastes and fancies as well.

Apple has made a business out of the art of user-interface consistencydesigning an operating environment in which every application behaves more or less the same way, where (for example) pressing always invokes the Print command no matter what you're doing when you press it. This kind of consistency is the cornerstone of Apple's vaunted ease of use, but it also means that the Mac OS is a user environment that's harder to customize than a system that imposes no restrictions on the behaviors of component utilities and third-party applications. Windows is supremely customizable, for instanceyou can apply skins and complete interface overhauls to virtually the entire systembut that's as much a side effect of Windows's flexibility, and therefore its potential to be confusing and unstable, as a virtue in itself.

Mac OS X is not anywhere near as customizable as Windows is. Tiger comes with only a single theme , or color and decoration scheme. Apple tightly controls the rules that dictate which applications should use the "brushed metal" look, and which ones should opt for the traditional white-with-pinstripes or smooth gray color schemes. Every Mac application window has the same shape, with the rounded top corners and the consistent drop shadow. Some third-party tools exist to let you tinker with the interface elements, but such tools are "hacks" at bestusually not comprehensive in what they do, and they often pose the risk of destabilizing your system. For most Mac users, the reality is that customizing Mac OS X is limited to what Apple explicitly allows you to do.

KEY TERMS

Skin A comprehensive alteration in an application's appearance, created by swapping out the default component images that make up the system's visual style for new ones. Applications such as web browsers and audio players are frequently "skinnable."

Theme Another kind of appearance alteration, featuring customized icons, cursors , window colors, fonts, sounds, and interface elements. Themes are often fully supported by the operating system or application being customized, and can be selected by name .

Aqua The code name for the user interface style in Mac OS X. Aqua refers to the "watery" theme that pervades the system, with the blue scroll bars and progress meters with their " flowing " effects, the candy -colored buttons , the transparency in menus and icons, and other such elements.

The good news is that what features Apple does permit you to customize are very highly developed. You can do things to your Mac that Windows users can't; if you can't apply a Lord of the Rings skin to the Aqua interface, so what? You can have your desktop background change smoothly and randomly every five minutes.

Customizing the Mac involves some tradeoffs from what you might be used to in Windows; but you can have plenty of fun with what you can do.