[rootbear]

I completely disagree with the second sentence. There must be a way for power users to get the flexibility they want, while making the product usable by the masses. MacOS does this to an extent, with "Advanced" buttons on some control panels that most users ignore. Why couldn't Gnome do that? Why must it seek to emulate Windows' lack of flexibility?

[glhaynes]

Some OS X apps and system services go even a step further — or at least have in the past; I feel like one sees less of it these days — with options in GUI apps that are exposed through the command line (usually via the defaults command) only.

That to me feels like a very nice hierarchy:

A few basic, common options available in the main UI.

A few more-advanced/less-commonly-desired options available in a part of the UI that's labeled "Advanced". Things that mortals-but-not-noobs would be interested in. Novices actively don't want to hit Advanced but the sort of user that would be interested in these options goes right for it.

Then really exotic options are available through an interface that takes up absolutely no UI space but is easily accessible by most of the kind of people that would want such things.

[comex]

For the record, OS X actually doesn't have a lot of buttons called "Advanced", though there are some. In fact, in general, as an OS X user and former user of Gnome 2 applications, my unscientific impression has always been that Gnome 2 had significantly fewer (user-visible) preferences. YMMV...

[glhaynes]

OS X apps don't use a lot of "Advanced…" buttons but they certainly have lots of "Advanced" tabs (usually rightmost, having a gear icon) in their Preference panels: iTunes, Finder, Safari, and Calendar all do.

Where you do see lots of "Advanced…" buttons is in System Preferences…

[comex]

Well, I quickly went through all of the default preference panes and here are all the Advanced buttons:

    Security & Privacy
    (Displays - Calibrate has an "expert mode")
    Mail, Contacts & Calendars - for manual mail accounts
    Network - big advanced section
    Bluetooth
    (Zoom in Accessibility has "More Options...")

So there's a few of them, but I wouldn't say lots.

[UnFleshedOne]

Funny thing about windows' lack of flexibility is amount of "WTF, I can't do that either?!" exclamations I had when I started working om mac. I still can't find a way to change default text background across the board on mac (from white to pleasing greenish color).

[Tloewald]

In general the kind of thing you are talking about on the Mac is app specific if the app developer thinks it should be an option. From way back Apple's design philoshy has been "don't provide the user with too many pointless choices" and Microsoft's has been "allow the user or, more likely, the sysadmin to choose".

By the same token there's no way to do this for the web. (you can override style sheets willy nilly but don't expect a lot of stuff to work).

I suggest you might need to get used to reading text on backgrounds that aren't a "pleasing greenish" color, write all your own software, or learn to live in a world of pain.

Instead of allowing people to set the default edit field background to magenta (which windows does) Apple spent engineering effort on, say, universal access.