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Appearance & Themes, Basic

This comparison has been updated for Windows Vista and moved to our new website Mac vs. Windows

Overview

Both operating systems support customizing the user interface to some degree. While some users might consider this merely cosmetic, others will feel more comfortable (and therefore will be more productive) if they can tune the interface to their liking. As such, Mac OS X and Windows XP ship with "default" interfaces which are meant to appeal to the average user, but they still allow more advanced users some control over various aspects of the interface.

XP's interface supports visual styles, which change the look of the UI as a whole. However, visual styles must be digitally signed by Microsoft in order to be used, so there are few choices in this area. Workarounds, however, allow one to apply their choice of literally thousands of different visual styles to the interface. While visual styles are limiting to a degree (XP's default "Luna" only lets you choose between three different main colors), Microsoft also lets you use a "classic" look which resembles earlier versions of Windows, which has more user-configurable options.

Apple supplies a mere two options for OS X's user interface (Aqua and Graphite), both of which simply change the color of certain UI elements and do nothing further. Changing other aspects of the UI lies within third-party software. Third-party themes are available for OS X as well, though there is a considerably lower number compared to what you can find for XP.

XP allows the user to change "sound sets" or suites of interface sounds used when performing certain actions. XP ships with multiple sound sets, and you can turn the sound for any particular action on or off as you wish (as well as mix and match effects from different sound sets). It's also relatively easy to use third-party sound sets. OS X ships with one sound set, which can only be turned on or off as a whole ("Play user interface sound effects" is its only configurable option), and using third-party sounds is slightly more difficult since OS X does not provide an interface for switching sound sets. OS X users can extend the number of interface sounds through Xounds, $10.

Mac OS X

All of OS X's user-configurable appearance options are located in the Appearance pane of System Preferences:

The Appearance and Highlight Color drop-down menus contain the only system-wide color options. Appearance lets you toggle between Aqua and Graphite (which will change normally multi-colored UI elements to the same shade of grey for a more professional look, such as the close/minimize/zoom buttons, Apple menu and Spotlight menu icons, etc.), and Highlight Color provides a few presets or lets you choose your own.

The Place Scroll Arrows option lets you switch between having the arrows on scrollbars located at the top and bottom, or together at the bottom of the scrollbar.

Oddly, the rest of this preference pane actually focuses more on the behavior of the interface rather than its appearance, until the bottom section which lets you adjust font smoothing (discussed in another section).

Other UI options are set in their respective preference panes. For example, the Dock preference pane lets you adjust the size of the dock, the effect used when minimizing (Genie or Scale), dock magnification, etc. Likewise, desktop images and screensavers are set in their corresponding preference pane.

Windows XP

XP's appearance options are located under the Appearance tab of Display Properties:

The Windows and Buttons drop-down menu controls the overall look of the system, while the Color Scheme drop-down lets you pick color options within that visual style. For example, the default XP visual style ("Windows XP style" in the menu) has three color options - blue, olive green, and silver. There are also three choices for font size (independent of the visual style) - normal, large, and extra large.

A nice aspect of this design is that Microsoft can release new visual styles at will, and they will be easily selectable from this window. For example, all of the screenshots of XP in this section are using "Media Center style" (also known as "Royale"), a visual style that Microsoft released for free download long after XP's initial release. Users are free to download this visual style and update the look of their system from the initial look that shipped with XP in 2001.

The Effects button brings up a window which lets you control options pertaining to visual effects, such as menu animations (fade or scroll), font smoothing type (standard or ClearType), a toggle for menu shadows, etc.

The Advanced button brings up another window that gives you near-total control over the appearance of your system. The list of UI elements that can be customized is rather lengthy:

Conclusion

Mac OS X is arguably limited in this area, with only two options for main UI element colors, no built-in support for themes, and one included sound set with almost no configurable options. Windows XP gives the user considerably more freedom in its ability to customize the look and feel of the operating system. Three color schemes for XP's default look are included, and you can customize the "classic" look to a great extent. XP's built-in support for visual styles lets Microsoft update the look and feel through a simple download, as they did with the Media Center style. XP includes multiple sound sets, and you can customize the sound for each event individually. Visual effects can be fine-tuned to a greater degree than OS X allows.

Mac OS X: 4
Windows XP: 9

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