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Comment by roadnottaken | Hacker News Reader

I think #7 is the kicker.

To be fair Windows isn't that much better. My reason for moving to OS X was the continual drip drip drip of reinstallation, update, tweak. It all works on day one but keeping it working and performant is work.

Better now that it was a couple of years back (I still use Windows at work) but still some way to go.

Strangely, this is one of the things I don't really like about OS X. There's nothing to do to it. It just works and doesn't require any real tweaking or customization to be sleek and effective.

It's a point of pride to me that my Win7 box at work is so slick and well-tuned, compared to other peoples' Windows machines. But for the life of me I can't make my MacBook look any better than my Mom's. Nothing makes me happier than being able to be brutally effective on my cool-looking Ubuntu box at home that uses customized window managers and a dozen productivity hacks. But you don't even have to be nerdy to use a Mac well. Where's the fun in that?

This comment is only half tongue-in-cheek.

I used to be the same and I think a lot of self respecting geeks see the configuration as a challenge rather than a chore. I used to have pride in being able to make my PC spin on it's head and knowing it was safe and secure (or at least as safe as XP could be).

But as I got older and my free time shrank it just felt like an overhead and time I'd rather spend doing other stuff.

Same here, configuring my KDE desktop used to be a hobby for me. With OS X, besides setting the desktop background, the only customization I do is hiding the dock and mapping caps lock to control.

I also prefer built-in software to 3rd-party alternatives – Safari over Chrome/FF, Terminal over iTerm, Spotlight over Quicksilver, etc. It took a while to adopt Apple's way of thinking, but it has made my life easier in the long run and saved tons of time to do more important things (eg. spend time with my kid^H^H^H^H^H^HHacker News).

Interesting perspective, customization and optimization is fun. On that note there are a few UI customization programs that I find useful on OSX:

nocturne - invert or dim the screen, helps your eyes stay relaxed in different lighting situations: http://http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-nocturne/

divvy - quick window management, surprisingly handy, spaces becomes more useful with this as well: http://www.mizage.com/divvy/

visor - system-wide terminal via a hotkey: http://visor.binaryage.com/

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