I feel like this kind of thing extends the platform rather than fighting it. I don't use Slate (yet), but currently use a modified version of ShiftIt (I added

I feel like this kind of thing extends the platform rather than fighting it. I don't use Slate (yet), but currently use a modified version of ShiftIt (I added resizing to percents) which does some window management. OS X lacks a way to resize/arrange windows without the mouse and this kind of software fills in the gap. I don't feel like this is fighting the platform (especially since Apple does not provide an alternative to this), but rather it is building on top of the platform. I also use Butler for another option for app switching/launching (Spotlight doesn't do this how I want it) and also to make Emacs PGUP/PGDN keys (Alt-V/Ctrl-V) work in every app. I also configured Cocoa for more Emacs-like functionality to extend the existing Emacs keyboard shortcuts it already supports. And I use BetterTouchTool to add volume up/down/mute to my mouse buttons. That's a lot of changes to the way the default platform works, and I have grown to depend on all these modifications, but it makes OS X work more like how I want it to work, and I think that is absolutely worth doing. I wasn't really completely happy with OS X until I had these things in place. That these changes are made through 3rd party software without any horrible hacks (that I know of) makes me feel like this is extending rather than fighting. On the otherhand, I do occasionally jailbreak my iPhone, and generally end up reverting back to stock, because that is fighting the platform.