Yeah, OS X is great. It’s stable. Its UI is quite possibly the most intuitive (well, once you get used to different things being in different places than you’re used to). But it always struck me as odd that the OS used most by designers allows the least amount of customization. Sure you can manually change each icon by hand (Select icon you want to use cmd-c to copy, select app/file you want to use it on, cmd-i to bring up the info pane, select the icon, cmd-v to paste), but that can get very, very tiring when wanting to theme out your entire desktop.
And then I found CandyBar (Shareware, $29). Candybar lets you customize not just any icon on your computer, but also your dock’s appearance.
And for those of you without the time or patience to make your own, there are many icon sets available for free at Iconfactory (You’ll want to download the iContainers)
Also check out some of these creative themes.
When I switched to mac, I did so with equal amounts excitement and reluctance. I’ve grown familiar with my windows-only software, and as a web designer, it would be irresponsible to completely ditch Windows and IE (as much as I wish I could). Inevitably, I made a Windows XP partition, and came to hate the added clutter on my desktop due to the (NTFS formatted) XP drive showing on my desktop. I have no reason for it to be there, so why would I want it to mount? Sure, you could just unmount it on startup, but that’s just an extra step on startup, and I don’t know about you, but that just makes me feel like I’m back to Windows. Knowing that OS X was based on BSD/UNIX, I knew I had a tool available to me to help clear my desktop: fstab.
