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Comment by wayneftw | Hacker News Reader

I responded to someone here the other day who couldn't fathom how macOS is restricted compared to other desktop OSes.

Given that you can't install it on anything but one brand of hardware and you can't even change the color of the mouse pointer/cursor from black to any other color that you desire (as you can on just about every other major desktop OS)... I think some of these people are just victims of marketing and a small but loud minority.

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> you can't even change the color of the mouse pointer/cursor from black to any other color that you desire

Is... is this really true? (disclaimer: I've never used a mac in my life)

At the same time... why would you want to? It never even occurred to me to try until I read this today.

For one thing, it helps people with vision/color perception problems.

Apple is probably one of the better companies w.r.t. accessibility. You can make the cursor big and a bunch of other things.

Isn't the world more fun if people can customize their computers? Weird and zany cursors add some flavor. Let people be people. In other words, should everyone live in an IKEA catalog house?

Well sure, I hear you. Just amused that it hasn't crossed my mind yet, and I've been around.

Yes, it's black.

Also, you can't change any of the UI colours. The major feature of the last release was that you could change the UI from grey to black.

So, now 2 colours to choose from. One day we'll get 3 or more!

You can change the accent color and the highlight color, but it’s still pretty barebones.

https://imgur.com/a/H0sfavk

> Also, you can't change any of the UI colours. The major feature of the last release was that you could change the UI from grey to black. So, now 2 colours to choose from.

None of this is true.

How is the current state of GUI customization in Windows? Last time I checked, you couldn't even set a custom wallpaper without paying money.

Did you check 50 years in the future? What are you talking about? When did you have to pay to change wallpaper?

If you have an unregistered version of Windows, they impose some restrictions. One of them is that you can't change your wallpaper.

'Unregistered' as in pirated? I think they embed a warning message into the background for pirated Windows and that is probably why you can't change it.

Microsoft is saying 'Hey, we know you pirated this copy. Instead of locking it down, we're just going to put this un-dismissable nag message here.'

What is not true? macOS gives you two options for general UI appearance: Light (Grey/White) and Dark (Black), with Dark being a recent addition. There are more subtle changes like folder color and, but overall customized options are minimal.

Given that you need to buy an Apple computer to run macOS in the first place, this is a pretty pointless argument. Windows licenses come with prebuild PCs, too.

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