For native apps:

* CLI tools present in my terminal's specified fonts and colours. Near total control. The main exceptions are ANSI escapes, and even those I can limit to black-and-white -- usually normal, bold, and reverse-video.

* Most desktop apps integrate into some desktop enviornment (or environment(s)) for font size(s), colours, etc. OSX is actually something of an exception, which I realised when trying to see how I might set that up for a visually disabled friend.

* Even where desktop apps don't have systemwide configuration tools, you're generally seeing the same toolkit (or limited set of toolkits) in use. Most of the experience is highly uniform.

* Straight-up text presentation is typically quite good. Far superior to Web tools.

A lot of native "apps" have either very flexible configuration, or some sort of scripting/plugin framework. Maybe not iTunes, but things like foobar2000 or conky.

A few do. But most do not offer the incredible user presentation freedom the web does.

In choosing between presentation freedom and a sane GUI programming model, I'd choose the later, especially given that the 'presentation freedom' is problematic when I want my desktop to have a common UI theme. Take into account that modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web without having to do without native widgets, I don't see why anyone would prefer web GUIs from a programming perspective.

> modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web

They let you change colours, typefaces and shapes slightly. You could do that with Windows 1.

That's not the same as what CSS allows (complete reconfiguration).

you're right!

I live in the land of UNIX and commandline, I was not talking about GUI applications. But I see why you interpreted it that way, I apologise.