When I was younger, I gravitated to software platforms that promised me a maximal degree of customizability. The more choice, the better. I naturally became a bit of Android fan; I never hated on Apple per se, but I was a touch smug about my preference.

I could customize everything. The app launcher. The icons. I could root my phone and even tinker with the Operating System. Tweaking my set up became a sort of avocation; I spent hours experimenting with different layouts and combinations of animations, icons, gestures.

Behind this joy was also an anxiety. I believed that since some user interfaces were clearly better than others, I could slowly work towards the perfect UI by trial and error. This was a thrilling prospect; with enough time and testing, I could achieve perfection.

In reality, the fiddling I did only marginally improved my experience, and often actively degraded it. I was subjecting myself to a self-induced regime of change, and I began to experience a sort of "configuration fatigue." With every revision of my layout, I always felt that something was off, and the part of me that loved tweaking systems was never sated.

After a few years of this, I returned to Apple (in the mobile space; I've owned Macbooks for over a decade) and bought an iPhone 7 Plus. One of the most surprising aspects of this switch was that I found that I appreciated the constraints it imposed over the UI. It wasn't infinitely customizable; aside from the location of certain apps, one's wallpaper and a few other choices, you took what Apple gave you. And that proved to be a relief.

This didn't mean I loved all of the UI choices Apple made. I certainly wanted to make some changes. I seriously debated jailbreaking my phone just to theme my icons. But I ultimately decided against it. By denying me the ability to customize everything, I felt myself free to stop thinking about the possibility of those choices at all. I became content with the constrained options given to me. I spent more time *using* my phone to be productive than tweaking the phone itself. It's been almost two years and I still have my iPhone 7 plus, and I don't see myself going back to Android.

I'm not trying to sell anyone on a particular platform. I'm glad Android exists. And I still scratch an itch to configure and tweak via pc building and Linux ricing. I bounce between Linux Desktop Environments with regularity. But I have to say that while I value platforms that give users choice, I equally value platforms that deny users choice. Sometimes choice is orthogonal to our objectives and purposes in using software. Sometimes less is very much more.