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Comment by kcplate | Hacker News Reader

> If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round.

This attitude always cracks me up. Only with tech products and among techies do we hear these demands of infinite customization of the products and tools we use.

Can you imagine any other vocation or industry making such demands of infinite customization of their tools and products that they use? I know I can’t.

The real analogy here isn’t landlords and homes. It’s a carpenter demanding that Stanley ship moldable handles with their hammers so that it fits their hand one millimeter better giving them the ability to maybe hammer one extra nail a day.

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Customizing tools is extremely common, and many manufacturers do ship moldable handled tools—they’re made of wood.

But wood is not aesthetically pleasing for me, I demand fiberglass.

Custom made tooling was the norm the vast majority of human history, the whole mass production thing as a very recent fad.

People will decorate their workplace. Imagine working in an office and not being allowed any personal items on your table, no family photos nothing, empty clean table. It would seem draconian.

It isn't just about efficiency and accessibility but also about individuality. Tech is already dehumanizing enough.

Plus accepting the same feature that Windows, Linux, literally any operating system ever had isn't exactly outrageous. It wouldn't be a big deal to implement for apple. They don't because they are pretentious wankers. Simple as that. If you had themes, everyone would deactivate that liquid glass shite and that would hurt their egos.

> If you had themes, everyone would deactivate that liquid glass shite

I’ve been using iOS 26, iPad 26, and MacOs 26 since the initial developer betas and it’s perfectly fine and perfectly usable for me. I like it well enough that I would prefer not going back at this point. I downloaded the 26.1 beta today, flipped off all the standard settings to minimize the Liquid Glass effects. It’s not exactly the iOS 18 experience, buts close enough. After 15 minutes I put them all back, I prefer the Liquid Glass. Everything is subjective.

Frankly, every time there is any sort of UI change on any public platform be it OS, site, or popular app, there are always detractors until they get used to it. Then they complain a few years later when the UI they complained about and ultimately adopted gets changed again.

> Then they complain a few years later when the UI they complained about and ultimately adopted gets changed again.

1) A few years later and you (or at least I) can't remember what the previous UI looked like. So if I don't complain about the change, it's only because I don't remember enough to recall what it used to be.

2) Exception: Windows 8. Nobody complained when Windows 9 came out, because they remembered what Windows 7 looked like (indeed, many of us were still using 7). (Of course some did complain that 9 didn't look exactly like 7, but since 9 was such an improvement over 8, their voices were muted.)

Noone complains about Windows 9 because Windows 9 does not exist.

Oops...you got me!

A few years later and you (or at least I) can't remember what the previous UI looked like. So if I don't complain about the change, it's only because I don't remember enough to recall what it used to be.

There was a similar amount of hate around the iOS 7 design. Apple toned it a bit down (like they are doing with Liquid Glass now), but you can compare the screenshots before and after and iOS 7 was certainly better in hindsight.

One day my dad dug up his old iPhone that was still running pre-7 and the UI was kind of meh.

All the non-techies in my family don’t seem to care about Liquid Glass? They went ‘oh it looks slightly different’ and went on with their lives.

By the way, I don’t think Windows 9 exists. They went 8 -> 8.1 -> 10.

Whenever I move a piece of furniture in the house, even slightly, my dog barks at it. After about 10 mins, he shrugs and moves on.

Our brains might rebel a bit for a short period at the change, then we adapt.

What you call "demands of infinite customization" is a basic thing on Windows and Android since forever.

Users can change the theme however they want.

Windows isn't a mobile operating system, unless you're referring to Windows phone, and from what little knowledge I have of what it's like to use an Android device, you can install custom "launchers" but you cannot change the user interface too drastically.

And they are available to use if that’s a requirement for the user.

I don’t think that every OS needs to adopt every feature of every other OS that’s out there.

>Users can change the theme however they want.

Windows has extremely limited customizability compared to what is available on Android and Linux.

The key feature of both Linux and Android is that the main interface "Desktop Environment" or "Launcher" can be replaced by the user.

Any physical item can be customized with the proper tools, and they often are. Software should be the same way!

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