I've noticed a further manifestation of this compulsive behavior as regards installing software on my machines, and I've called it the Critical Customisation Cost (CCC, henceforth) of software. Put simply, there's a cost (not just financial, but rather psychological and emotional) associated with installing third-party software on a computing device, and there's an associated threshold above which the CCC is so high that it outweighs the benefit of the functionality offered by the software.
His list of symptoms fits me to a T, among them:
- Balking at an app because its menubar (status bar) icon isn't monochrome, or generally homogeneous with the system-supplied icons (or, even worse, is confusingly similar to one of the standard ones).
- Returning to one of the factory-installed desktop wallpapers after only briefly trying a custom one, and repeating this process every two months.