[Analyss14]

Okay, so I finally decided to buy a MacBook Air after attempting to use my iPad as a mobile work station. It just wasn't working. I sold a perfect almost new 2013 MacBook Pro with a wireless keyboard, rain stand, and world travel adapter for $1000 even though I probably should have held out for a bit more but now circumstance has forced me to buy a new laptop and I decided to journey along with the MacBook Air. I'm returning to school to take classes towards my doctorate but I've been out of school for so long that I forgot about student discounts so I feel a bit cheated because I paid $950 after taxes : (

I love this thing thou and by the time I realized I could have saved an extra $150, I'd already had it for two weeks and set it up perfectly. Which brings me to my topic: Customization.

I have a habit or over customizing my devices with things that end up unused in the long run. For example, I spent a solid week creating multiple custom (and I mean fully themed) home screens for my Nexus 5 and 7 only to end to end up using the same one for the last 5-8 months. Hell, I have well over 2000 wallpapers on my MBA already but I've only changed it twice in two weeks. Let's not even talk about how long I spent online gathering and creating custom icons to replace my standard app icons. I have a ridiculous 4GB customization folder on my hard drive. I guess I just like to know the choice is there but honestly after about a month (after the honeymoon haze has lifted) I just stop customizing my devices.

Now, I'm just curious because I know some people that have had their devices for years and the only wallpaper they've ever had were the ones that came with their devices brand new. So where do you guys fall in line?

[Analyss14]

Oops, first poll and I spell a word wrong

Go figure.

[Beyond Fire]

I usually just customize my devices in the beginning until I get them to where I like it. So my layout will usually stay the same once I get it to where I like it, and usually I will just change the wallpaper around. Over the years I've spent way too much time customizing my gadgets and I've learned to just keep things simple.

[Analyss14]

I still treat my new devices like newborns

You know, you're so careful with them and treat them like glass and over dress them and always want them looking their best at all times...and then you realize they're very resilient little buggers and not spun glass. That no matter how nice or new the outfit is it'll all look like the same mess at the end of the day. lol

That's the stage when I stop customizing my devices. Walk into the house and throw it down on the table or fling it across the room onto my bed and watch it bounce off onto the rug where before I might gently place it down on a safe surface where no one will bump it . I get there in about a month but before then I have collected more wallpapers and customization tools than I could logically enjoy even if I had them changing every day. Haven't gotten out of the habit yet.

[Highrisedrifter]

Once I get the apps in the order, on the page and in the folder I want and the background changed to what I want, I pretty much leave it at that forever. I actually think that having less customisation options makes the iPhone easier to use, less confusing for a newbie when they pick it up and generally more stable. Of course, this is purely my opinion.

On my Android devices, I fell into the trap of the endless customisations, downloading this launcher or that icon theme and then realised that if something upset my delicate little ecosystem, I would spend ages trying to fix it. If I couldn't fix it, I would get annoyed, like if one icon was not conforming to the theme I had, for instance.

After a while, I realised that all this customisation choice led to my device being less stable, so I pared it back to the absolutely bare minimums, which was usually removing the horrible TouchWiz and SenseUI by running with a launcher on minimal settings. I disliked the fact that both TouchWiz and SenseUI would only allow a certain number of rows, usually leaving huge amounts of wasted screen space. The launcher I used (Nova Prime) was mainly used to allow me to scroll screens infinitely and to add extra rows or columns to my homescreens.

[TurboTiger]

Once I set it up initially, I usually stick with it.
Good Luck

[Bazza1]

Beyond making my desktop black and selecting my most used apps and shortcuts (and removing the rest) for the Dock, can't say I've done any customization on my MacBook Air. On my iDevice, I added a personal pic to the lock screen, found the most bland background for my other screens and have otherwise sorted my apps by type on individual screens (rather than nesting) - Daily Use, Office, Media, Games, etc.

Bland 'R Us.

Plus, of course, the more cr*p you stick in your devices, the more storage is being used of its limited supply. And generally the devices need to work harder.

[Flow39]

On my iPad Mini with Retina, I have downloaded a lot of wallpapers, but still use the stock iOS 7 wallpaper. I do switch between the same 3 wallpapers though, even though I have 20+ To choose from.

[Analyss14]

Yes, I was expecting to find that on iDevices and Macs the average user is less prone to customize their device. I've always attributed this to the fact that you basically have to jailbreak your iDevice to customize it beyond changing the wallpapers and ringtones whereas on Android you have a plethero of customization options that don't require root accessibility.

Though I have to say that I've always customized my android devices and I've never taken a hit performance wise, at least no more than jailbreaking and customizing my iDevices. you know the usual restarts or Android or constant resprings to safe mode on iOS. It's annoying but it's never really degraded the performance of the device.

[Analyss14]

Plus, of course, the more cr*p you stick in your devices, the more storage is being used of its limited supply. And generally the devices need to work harder.

That's generally true but I would hope adding an extra 2GB or 4GB of wallpapers and icons wouldn't tax my computer any more or less than 2GB or 4GB of any other type of files ; )

The last laptop I used, a Zenbook, had a similar capacity SSD and for the couple of months I kept it, I stored all my customization folders on a separate flash drive. I would try something similar with my MBA but I've noticed that making an image my wallpaper doesn't work quite the same as in Windows.

Meaning in Windows I can make any image my wallpaper and delete it from my computer or move it to another location without a problem. But in OS X if I make an image my background and then alter the location of that file in anyway, the next time I open up my system preferences to browse my wallpapers, even if i have no intention of changing it, the wallpaper reverts to a blank background. I bit annoying but I've learned how to use my space efficiently and I've never found myself overtaxing my computer or running out of space.

[mikeo007]

On my Mac, iPad and iPhone, I change my wallpapers to match the current season. Other than that, I don't do much. Used to customize a lot more, with custom icons and the whole bit, but it got tedious. Since the wallpaper makes the biggest overall impact, I can scratch my customization itch by just changing that.