“While Apple pioneered the fully customizable system, they are now going in the other direction, trying to close most of the APIs that deal with the interface,” Gutiérrez said. “Apple appears to be backing away when it comes to control over the look and feel of OS X.”
In the late 1980s, there were all kinds of improvements to the Mac GUI that users could make through shareware and commercial programs: hierarchical menus, pull-out menus, improvements to open/save dialog boxes, pattern sets. Interchangeable backgrounds and improvements to navigation aids such as scrolling. gate.
Apple took the best ideas and added them to the Mac operating system. Slowly but surely, dialog boxes were improved, menus were improved, and windows were customized. The result was a mature, complete and flexible operating system that became the most influential in the industry.
In 1998, Apple showed off its own software for customizing the window system called Appearance Manager. The Appearance Manager even had a “scheme-to-theme” feature, which translated Kaleidoscope schemes into Mac “themes.” Aqua, OS X’s highly praised skin, is essentially an updated OS 9 theme.
But shortly after Appearance Manager was introduced, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and finished it. Jobs was asked several times about the possibility of reviving themes, but always responded: “Themes are dead.”
That philosophy has persisted in OS X. The APIs in Mac OS X that control the location, function, and appearance of windows and menus are closed. Third-party software developers are busy reverse engineering the system and have had some success, but the ability to fundamentally alter the look and feel of OS X has yet to be cracked.
Interestingly, Apple allows some parts of the Mac OS X system to have themes. The appearance of QuickTime Player, for example, can be modified, but only through means with a theme embedded in the QuickTime file. This allows corporations to create themes for the media player, but excludes the small one.
Much to the chagrin of users, OS X is missing many features that were standard in previous versions of Mac OS and other platforms. Even basic things like changing the system font or turning off on-screen font smoothing. -a resource eater on older machines- cannot be done.
When Apple was publicly testing OS X, many users found the transition to its radical new interface jarring. Users were clamoring for old interface features like collapsible windows and auto-folders. The operating system was, and remains, a work in progress.
