macOS (2025)

Apple’s macOS is in its Windows Vista era.

You’d think that the people in charge of design at Apple would remember the Vista era. After all, the point of the "I’m a Mac" commercials1 was to ridicule Microsoft and their shitty operating system. Oh how the turns tabled.

I’ve observed widespread dissatisaction about the state of computing in my circles and it appears as if the Year of Desktop Linux is upon us. But I’d go so far as to redeclare it as the Era of Desktop Linux. From my friend elle2’s explorations with Linux to Valve announcing the Gabecube3 (an open‑system from a major company btw), and the prevalence of people empowered by 3D printing and increased affordability of components to creating their own cyberdecks, it seems like a great change is afoot.

I’m obsessed with the idea of user choice and customization so I’ve been working on the technical feasability of such for systemSOFT4.

Imagine if (nearly) every component of your operating system could be swapped.

Take time, for instance; the default component would have your standard AM/PM or 24 hour configurability. Maybe you could even toggle adherence to Daylight Saving Time.

Maybe you’re sick of the status quo so you swap it with Swatch/internet time. But then, what would the Date Modified column look like in your directories? Or you could mix and match.

Components would be required to have a CLI and API endpoints. GUI optional.

Anyhoo, more thinking is required to imagine what a "post‑desktop" interface would look like. A personal data lake as the underlying store with epheremal windows optimized for the content within, when you need it, is what I’m trying to envision.

A few weeks ago I was trying to change icons on macOS via IconChamp but it doesn’t work on macOS Tahoe. After doing some digging, I came upon a CLI called fileicon5 that allows for customizing file/folder icons. I then created a script to recursively change all folder icons in a directory:

#!/bin/bash
# brew install fileicon
# chmod +x icons-in-folder.sh

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 /path/to/folder [/path/to/icon.icns]"
exit 1
fi

TARGET_DIR="$1"
ICON_PATH="${2:-/Users/netopwibby/Icons/DESKTOP/Mantia/Forstall Folders/Plain — Folder.icns}"

find "$TARGET_DIR" -type d -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d "" folder; do
fileicon set "$folder" "$ICON_PATH"
done

You’ll have to change ICON_PATH to the absolute path of the default icon you wish to use. I’m using the wonderful Forstall Folders6 by Louie Mantia. Also, this process is slow going but hey, at least I can kinda get the functionality of IconChamp! That being said, you could probably replicate its UI and easily wrap this script in a GUI. Maybe I’ll do that, who knows.

Thanks to damien7, I learned of an app called Mousecape8 that changes your cursors9 on macOS Tahoe!! Never heard of this app before. Unfortunately, the default cursor doesn’t change for me but all the other ones do. YMMV

I would love if there was a way to replace Finder but that’s such an integral part of macOS that it’s not possible. However, I’ve been trying to spend more time inside of Marta10, a native file manager for macOS. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it only has list view and I have to restart the app sometimes (because of Finder operations not reflecting in Marta).

I’m not giving up on MacBook but my Mac Studio is gonna be replaced with a Linux box after I get a NAS to transfer all my stuff off it. The discomfort I feel about using products of tech companies is offset by the work myself and others are doing to make things better, a little bit at a time. I’m looking forward to getting comfortable with Linux and dogfooding my computing hardware concepts. In the meantime I’m just tryna make do with what I got. 🕸️