The Mac community is aghast at some of the cosmetic changes in iTunes 5. Apple in general seems to be encouraging its own developers to do whatever feels good. The resulting interfaces are sometimes pretty slick, and sometimes gruesome.

I’m in the “brushed metal sucks” camp. So at home, I use Sagefire’s Iridium theme. Here’s a screen grab of iTunes 5, Mail and Finder, after the theme is applied:

It’s not for everybody, doesn’t even out all the usability quirks, doesn’t mask absolutely everything (see the white in menu bar volume control, for example), and it only runs on OS X 10.4. But when the alternative is brushed metal finder, I can deal with these minor inconveniences.