http://www.osnews.com/story/4964/The_Great_Mac_OS_X_10_4_Wish_List Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:05:23 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I wish they'd given me what I bought: I have TWO copies of "disc 3" and zero copies of "disc 3." I called the local Apple Store and they said "sorry, if you didn't buy it here we can't help you." So I have to deal with Apple -- what CRAPPY customer service! I can't BELIEVE the apple store isn't willing to take it back. What a buch of LOSERS. I love Macs... but I'm so sick of Apple. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? .mac mail accounts are imap-based, not http. hotmail uses a proprietary http mail protocol that they're not likely to share. yahoo provides pop access if you pay for it, so mail.app does support it.

finder plugins: it's already simple for a developer to add to the finder's contextual menu. that's what you want and it's already there. for example, toast will install a menu item that lets you burn any folder to a disc.

windows media plugin: you do realize that microsoft will be the one to provide this? windows media competes with quicktime. two product lines, two companies.

php is installed, but not enabled, by default. this is absolutely the right way to do it, for the sake of security.

you're off the mark on a few other points but that will do for me. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >it's already simple for a developer to add to the finder's contextual menu

I know that there is an API. But the Plugins ARE NOT THERE. People haven't written too many or too useful things. Watson does the job better atm.

>.mac mail accounts are imap-based, not http

Whatever. I don't use .Mac, I use Hotmail and Y!.

>hotmail uses a proprietary http mail protocol

there is this thing called "licensing".

>you do realize that microsoft will be the one to provide this

Again, you fail to understand that corporations LICENSE stuff from each other.

>php is installed, but not enabled, by default

Not MySQL or PostgreSQL though. Read the article more carefully of what I actually ask for. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You can map expose functions to mouse buttons. Read up before you expose yourself as ignorant. PHP is in by default but not turned on. mysql is in the server version of the os, grandma doesnt need fucking sql. Many MANY MANY of your other suggestions are based on ignorance of features that do exist but you haven't read or heard about yet. Your other suggestions are complete power user and minority user suggestions. What is 3% of 3%, i'll give you a clue, NOT MUCH. You don't want an operating system you want a utopia where everything works the way you want it to. Grow up and take a realistic look your wishes and realize that they are mostly unrealistic and self-centered. Yet another person who thinks an operating system should be everything to everyone. 99% of your requests are for more clutter and cruft. I mean jesus h. you made a header "LESS BUGS MORE SECURITY" how much more nebulous a request can one make? Thank you captain obvious for another magnificent jaunt into the mind of an idiot. Basically you want apple to scrape up the trash in other operating systems and make it part of os x. Keep wishing. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Number one: x86 Support.
Did anyone catch Intel recently discussing the fact that they're losing interest in trying to penetrate the Apple market largely due to Apples continually falling market share? If they don't do major price cuts (which would alienate many current Mac users), or support X86 soon, they're out of the ballgame.

You can argue quality, and the integration with the OS all you want, but unless they start targeting 'Joe ComputerUser', they'll soon be relegated to being a niche player (even more so than today), and more than likely, simply a purveyor of media (itunes, quicktime, etc.).

Number two would be theme-ability. I think it's ridiculous that you have more say in how your OS looks with Windows, than you do with OSX (especially considering some of the cool hacks that OS9 supported!).

How can Apple effectively say that their target audiences are more artistic and talented than their technologically challened Windows counterparts, but then lock them into just one look and feel? It's almost a kick in the face that they're saying "If you're richer than the average bear, and intelligent enough to choose our superior technology, then we're going to lock you down as far as what you can and can't change". Talk about paying more for less!

At least ol' Billy G lets 3rd party companies produce literally hundreds of products to customize your working environment the way you see fit. With Apple, they're going after people who do so, arguing that their way's the best, and any variation would damage the Macs "quality".

I'd like a G5, and OSX has some nice features, but I'm not going to shell out twice the money just to be locked into one look and feel which may or may not be the best for my needs! Talk about arrogance!

Number 3: Offer a virtual PC emulator. The fact that MS purchased the only major player in the Mac area, and has subsequently removed any competing products (ie, Linux) from being officially supported means that there's a market here for people who don't want to neccesarily run "just" Windows in an emulated session. Apple should jump on this ASAP, as it will really impact many of the "Joe ComputerUsers" who might have more dollars than sense and are considering a switch. Requiring such switchers to initially invest in a complete replacement of their x86 software is ridiculous, especially considering the cost they'll already be paying for hardware.

Number 4: Allow other Window Managers to run OSX software. This kind of ties in with themability... OSX is basically a *nix variant with OSX running on top as its Window Manager. So it seems logical that you should be able to easily port KDE or Gnome over to run OSX with.

Of course you can't due to Apples arrogance, and the fear that it would "pollute" the Mac gene pool, but it's a given that this kind of choice would interest more than just a few people (some of whom are already buying G5's just to run Linux on anyway!)

So there's my top wishes. I really wish Apple well, and if given one would certainly evaluate it as a replacement for my main machine, but AMD 64's looking to be a much better choice for me amd most current PC users to be quite honest.

Yes, they're right around the Mac price for a comparable machine, but you also can run all of your existing software, get cheaper addons, and tweak it to till you're happy. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, fantastic and comprehensive article.

My addition would be to have Safari recognize all the same pages that IE does. We need full-on ActiveX capability in Sarari! Yes, yes, IE is not W3C standard, blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, I use Safari to hit pages that don't work properly, and have to open IE to work them. What's going to happen when IE for Mac is obselete? Apple needs to step in and address this very serious situation. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "This should be easily done with"

No. Nothing in software that involves a new feature is every "easy". Just shows us that you've never actually developed much. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "A more practical way to do this would be to allow screensavers to run in place of background images (development-wise they are the same thing). This should be easily done with a Finder hack, but unfortunately the vast majority of screensavers available are not suitable for such task as they are all destructing and flashy."

Believe it or not, you just explained to yourself how it's been possible since Jaguar. :-)

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020824082233907 Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >You can map expose functions to mouse buttons. Read up before you expose yourself as ignorant.

YOU read before you spit shit about me over here. Got that??
The article CLEARLY says: "I want my mouse buttons assigned to their normal actions"

Get civilized over here and reply in a good manner, or your comments won't see the light of day. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use the OS X Mail app to check my Yahoo account all the time. The limitation is that Yahoo wants you to pay for that service -- this has been going on for the past few years. If you don't pay for POP access and forwarding, you won't be able to use an external mail program to check Yahoo mail no matter what program/OS you use. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Believe it or not, you just explained to yourself how it's been possible since Jaguar

Problem is, screensavers are NOT suitable for the task. They are destructing the user because they have too much movement and flashy effects. This is why I suggest that there should be special modules about this. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Did anyone catch Intel recently discussing the fact that they're losing interest in trying to penetrate the Apple market largely due to Apples continually falling market share? If they don't do major price cuts (which would alienate many current Mac users), or support X86 soon, they're out of the ballgame.

You can argue quality, and the integration with the OS all you want, but unless they start targeting 'Joe ComputerUser', they'll soon be relegated to being a niche player (even more so than today), and more than likely, simply a purveyor of media (itunes, quicktime, etc.)."

Mind-boggling how well Intel's FUD still works.

Not
going
to
happen.

And thankfully so. x86 is dying. And it should have been dead a decade ago. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I really like most of your suggestions, and I would add tabbing in iChat, though I see less of a need for it with Expose. (The fact that I know have 2 screens also helps)
iChat still has many issues that need to be addressed, especially Groups which are nowhere near as functional as in other cleints. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OK, this may sound silly, but I want it: the virtual desktops should be done KDE style. Meaning that you can have a different background image on each one if desired, unlike the way it is done in Gnome where you are stuck with one (unless there's a trick or setting I am missing). Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I can almost hear Coocachoo angrily typing in response to the .NET on Mac comment;)

.NET, whether you despise Microsoft or not, is good technology. Yeah, yeah, there is nothing extremely innovative about it, but almost all technology is incremental improvements over previous technology. There is nothing particularly innovative about java either. The virtual machine concept has been around for a long time.

Ximian is looking for another Just-In-Time programmer, which I presume means they are serious about the PowerPC platform. It might be that Apple will wait for the Mono to get over "the hump", wherever that is, and then help out. Even if they just assigned one full-time developer, that would help tremendously.

The vast majority of windows programming in the future is going to be done using .NET apis and it can only help Mac if those apis are exposed on the macintosh. For those that will say, when is Microsoft going to write a 'real' application using .NET....well they already are. You don't rewrite millions of lines of code just to try out a new language - you can rewrite parts of an application in .NET. They've already done this with Visual Studio, and the next Office will have substantial chunks of it written in .NET. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Active X support shouldn't be something apple would support. If it was an open standard, then OK. Speaking of Active X, not even IE on the mac supports it, if they can't or don't why would Apple. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Apple will never release supported ports of unix apps with their system. Why would they bundle apps that compete with their own? It would be a bigger headache than anything.

I agree that X11 support should be a little better and they should provide installation of those apps though Software Update. Make Software Update like Red Carpet...maybe they bundle fink for the backend of that.

Besides that, I want a new file system a-la BeFS...I want iChat to slim down like Adium in window size and bulkiness. I want the Mail client to use the Finder-style sidebar instead of a drawer. In fact, get rid of drawers all together.

I want a new version of iTunes that takes up less CPU and a slimmer GUI. I want rid of stripes, rid of brushed metal, and bring in the Final Cut Pro gray look...or at least add it as a theme.

I want the dock to be configurable...bring back docklings. I want an RSS Reader dockling. I want the top menubar to stretch across two monitors.

10.3 is a nice leap forward. We need more customization...slimming down of the GUI, and everything to be faster. We need to beat longhorn in the race to the database driven filesystem. We need to make this look less of an idiots OS and make it a serious OS. I work on Windows 2000 at work and sometimes I feel like I am getting more done and don't play around when everything looks bland and gray. All the GUI widgets are small and don't get in the way. Sort of like Platinum. I want that feeling back in Mac OS. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Not only should Remote Desktop be free, but they should have a Citrix or Terminal Services like application, so that people running Linux/Windows can run MAC server software on their PC! MS and Citrix have done that for Apple. When they can create PC based software that MACS can access remotely it discourages a MAC version of the software! Apple should fight back by doing the same, and it would encourage the use of Apple servers.

By the way, emulators are bad for Apple the same way Terminal Services are, because it discourages a MAC version. Apple should create an Emulator to run OSX on a PC! Apple has to push Apple software onto Windows not encourage Windows software on an Apple. The same thing goes for LINUX. In fact, running LINUX on a WIN machine is possible! Come on Apple, think!

Also, Apple you need to buy Sybase! The first time in the HISTORY of Apple and their is no BUZZ about that.
You have no database on your platform and FileMaker Pro (FMP) is a piece of @#$^%&. FMP is NOT a replacement for Access! In my IT department, they laugh at macs because they don't have a
real D A T A B A S E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't say MySQL et cetra, because that is not the same. It has to be better than FREE software otherwise people will choose LINUX!

Focus on some buisness applications. Apple, why are you not running your SAP emplimentation on a MAC? Even MS can, even though it stinks compared to a 64 Bit UNIX implementation.

OS X serve sould run on X86!!! Just pick a few HIGH end machines to support! There is no reason for not doing it for the servers!! They don't need photoshope et cetra!


Another thing (the last I promise), why does Apple not make any educational software?!?!? HELLO!!!!


Dan Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >you do realize that microsoft will be the one to provide this

>Again, you fail to understand that corporations LICENSE stuff from each other.

Umm, Apple can't license something that doesn't exist. But Microsoft is working ont he new Media Player. So just drop it. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You can keystroke through all active windows with (Command + ~). Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would like to see only a few simple enhancements to the windowing environment.

1) sloppy focus

2) turn off click-to-front. this should be configurable, click title bar, click in window, double click in window, etc.

3) windows can be lowered to the back of the stack. again make it configurable, click title bar, right click in title bar, left-right click in window, etc.

I find systems with enforced click-to-front windowing almost unusable in a multitasking environment. I don't want the windows to move unless I move them, otherwise they start getting in my way. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I can do that with Command+TAB even nicer. What I need is a mouse-driven way to navigate through open windows of the same app. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The author suggests that Mail.app supports Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. Obviously, he doesn't understand that these use proprietary methods that Apple couldn't use without an agreement with Yahoo or Microsoft. C'mon. He want's IMAP/POP mail from Hotmail and Yahoo without having to pay for it. These services make you pay for POP/IMAP access because they con't get ad $$$ if you access the service that way. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Obviously, he doesn't understand that these use proprietary methods that Apple couldn't use without an agreement with Yahoo or Microsoft.

No, YOU don't understand. For me, this is perfectly fine and I mention this many times on the article. I endorse licensing agreements between corporations!

>He want's IMAP/POP mail from Hotmail and Yahoo without having to pay for it.

Outlook Express does it for hotmail, and no, I haven't paid for it. Even if OE is an MS app that doesn't mean that Hotmail department doesn't lose money on it. But they do it nonetheless. Yes, it would require an agreement with MS and Y! for Apple, and I am perfectly fine with it. I pay $130 for Panther, EVERY year. Sorry, but such stuff should be included in that price. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Anyone knows how to share my scanner connected to an OSX machine, over the network to other Macs?"

Yes!

Launch "Image Capture", open up the Preferences and under the "Sharing" tab, select "Share my devices".

Saweet. I've already shared my scanner with another Mac. Not sure if it works with Windows though? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Too bad that I have to not launch ImageCapture though (as I explained in the article), because it blocks the official Epson driver and SilverFast (which is what my husband NEEDS to use with Photoshop in order to do what he needs). I wish "hardware sharing" was an item in the prefernce panel instead. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? To solve the instant message problem I think apple should go for a Jabber solution.

They should make ichat a strait jabber app. They could then run a jabber server for ichat users. This server can still talk to the rest of the jabber network. To talk to the other networks like aim, icq, yahoo and so on they could install bridges on their server. These bridges actually work pretty well, it is just that most jabber servers get their IP's banned from connecting to the other networks. Apple would not have this problem since they could deal with the other companies to get permission. Apple already has a deal with aol for aim support, they should try to get something like that for yahoo, gadu-gadu and the others.

Advantages:
1. This solution would be simple for the users since there would only be one IM service to set up.
2. Connecting to the other networks would be transparent to users since they would not have to deal with 5 different IM accounts.
3. Users are already used to the jabber style names from using email (being user1@ichat.com sending am IM to user2@yahoo.com makes sense).
4. Open protocals help Apple. Supporting something open like jabber is in their best long term interests.
5. Supporting and maintaining connectivity to other networks would be easier for apple because everything is done on the server. No need to get everyone to update their clients.

Disadvantages:
1. Migrating users contacts and such from other networks. Apple could make this pretty easy. Automatically create a jabber account and migrate the buddy list from their present ichat aim account. Have a nice import legacy IM account wizard for the others that allows user to just enter their name, network, and password and the program will do the rest.
2. Bandwidth costs of operating an IM server. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? * UFS2 (snapshots, quotas, extended attr, 64bits, acl)
* fully 64 bit option
* (multiusers) Conference option for iChat AV (in audio or video mode) and support of audio/video in AOL Clients (Mac AND PC, AOM AND ICQ; would be a great next step

don't know if some opendarwin stuff has made its way in stack tree: like systrace Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Outlook Express does it for hotmail, and no, I haven't paid for it. Even if OE is an MS app that doesn't mean that Hotmail department doesn't lose money on it. But they do it nonetheless. Yes, it would require an agreement with MS and Y! for Apple, and I am perfectly fine with it. I pay $130 for Panther, EVERY year. Sorry, but such stuff should be included in that price.

? Sorry, but it's not. Apple has said so and if you don't agree with it then you shouldn't buy their upgrade until they do include it. The fee that Yahoo charges for their service is nominal.

Cry all you want, but I would rather that Apple spend the money that you want spent on getting yahoo access for FREE on more testers, programmers and other things..

Not to mention that yahoo, Hotmail,etc.. all compete with .Mac which Apple also pushes heavily throughout their OS. Why do you HAVE to use their servers for an iDisk? Why is there no personal iDisk server? Oh yeah, because it's Apple. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Expose Enhancement

Enable the blob then. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031010141631859 has instructions, or just use the app to do it thats on versiontracker. Seriosly - Apple gave you the options of hotkeys, corners, mouse buttons, or (undocumented) a blob floating button. Asking for menu bar button(s) or a dock icon seems to miss the point of the menu bar and the dock. But if you want them, I suppose it's fair to have them on your list.

Virtual Desktops (workspaces)

This would be nice for us unix or beos geeks. Codetek has a quite good implementation on their site, but it would be nice to have it built in... though it could cause confusion for newbies, which is something apple strives to avoid. Maybe have it as a desktop option (number of desktops) with the default being 1.

Reach same applications' windows via Command+TAB and Cursor Keys

cmd-TAB cycles apps. cmd-~ toggles through the windows in a single app. Someone else told you this before, but you shot him down as if he was an idiot instead of trying it. MAybe it doesnt work on your box, but it works on mine. YMMV.

Path Navigation

Customize your finder toolbar. There is a "path" button which will show you a dropdown. Or you can ctrl-click the title in the titlebar for the same thing. Not quite the same layout as the back button, as it requires two clicks instead of one, but it helps, and isnt as confusing for newbies. I wouldnt mind seeing the path buttons as an option though, to be honest.

Fast User Switching Icon Item

This should definately have a "small" version, with the names only showing in the drop down.

Live Backgrounds

This is generally pretty ugly when using screensavers, to your point. But it's already doable, if not officially sanctioned. Sounds to me like you just want them to write some screensavers that are slower and don't suck as backgrounds. I dont think you need apple for that.

Some Theme Support

Apple is anti-theme at the moment. I like that, because it keeps things classy looking. But there are good third party theme things out there already, and when there is a legitimate reason for it other than flash, apple come through (i.e. graphite vs. blue).

Finder Plugins

I think finder can do this already, but it isnt an official thingy. Wouldnt hurt to have, but it could definately start to divide user interfaces, which i believe apple tries to avoid.

Sherlock Plugins

Sherlock already has plugins. All sherlock channels are server based using a public api. Sherlock in 10.3 actually searches out plugins from third parties for you. hit the channels button and look. Maybe you mean that you just want more standard channels from apple? or higher quality plugins? Apple has made the functionality 100% available since 10.2 came out. In 10.3 its made even more obvious to the end user.

Scheduled Tasks

Third party apps do this already. I suppose it wouldnt hurt to have it integrated into the os.

Better Speech Synthesis and Speech Recognition

AT&T is probably the synthesis demo you saw - they make a GREAT product called Natural Voices.. i believe its the leader in the field. It would be cool if apple integrated something like that. I am not entirely sure it's usage justifies that kind of licensing fee though, considering they have servable synthesis atm. Recognition would be nice, but thats a black hole for money... they could spend billions and never get it right. Not sure it should be their focus for 10.4.

WMV/ASF Safari plugin

This is not Apple's task. This is microsoft's. Hopefully since they have killed i.e. mac, they will look at creating a plugin for apple. They already promised the latest media player for os x, so it's a waiting game.

Undo on Safari

Fair enough. I dont think i have often lost stuff in text fields in safari, but i can see how annoying it would be.

Tabs in Terminal.app

Amen. I wouldnt mind them as an option in iChat either.

More IM Protocol support and USB cameras

More iChat protocol support would be good, but i suspect their license from AOL limits what they can do in that regard. (thats how these companies seem to do things) - USB camera support would be great... i can only hope that htis is just a dev resources issue for apple and not a "sell iSights" one - at least they should make there be some kind of driver api so usb camera makers can add support for their device themselves.

Better X11 Integration, KDE/Gnome consistency

I think it would be cool if X11 were transparent as well... sorta like classic, but even more integrated. Toggleable in system prefs. I DONT think that Apple should expend money to make kde and gnome integrate better. They aren't about building some other GUI. They are about building Aqua. If Apple decides to bundle QT and GTK/GTK2 with their X11 implementation, then maybe they should add some aqua like themes - but until then, it's up to the fink or darwinports guys.

Hotmail and Yahoo! Email integration to Mail.app

It would be nice, but I don't think apple should pay microsoft money to license support for setting mac users up to use microsofts email service. It isnt strategically sound. Would be nice if they had protocol plugins via a published api though. Does entorague support hotmail? Maybe you are just using the wrong email app.

I know Outlook Express on windows does this. This is because Microsoft want's to own peoples email account, and giving them access to microsoft hotmail from microsoft outlook express makes sense. By that logic there may be hope for mail.app - but microsoft probably wants people to see that as a weakness of apples, and apple probably sees it as not wanting to give their customers to microsoft. You get stuck in the middle of their battles. Such is life. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Remember the Mac clone fiasco and how much that damaged Apple's business? OS X on x86 would be much, much worse.

As for my wishes for 10.4? Better integration with the kqueue mechanism... I would like to see live monitoring of all displayed file information. If you request info on a file, and its size changes, it should be dynamically updated. If you create a file in your Desktop directory from the command line, it should appear instantly on your desktop. Hopefully we'll see this sort of thing in PathFinder or one of the other Finder replacements. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree, it should be in the system preference panel instead of buried within Image Capture. While we are putting stuff in the preference panel, why not put the "Printer setup" and "Audio MIDI Setup" NOT in the preference panel too? er? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1-client Remote Desktop

This would be cool. I presume you mean 1 client at a time, and not 1 client total. Just a direct connect instead of the 10 screen dashboard, right? That would be cool for sure.

Database Integration between Local and Networked Apps

So to clarify, what you want is for apple to define a standard based on XML that allows apps to share information via rendevous? Presumably multiple standards - audio, photo, document, text, etc? That would be a very very difficult thing to standardize, considering how many different apps do things differently. It wouldnt hurt to add sharing to iphoto, and if it isnt there, finder, but i am not sure how much benefit the rest could have. But i am not 100% clear on what you want.

Scanner sharing

In image capture you can go into preferances and share supported scanners across a local network. I suspect it uses rendevous. This feature is in 10.3.

Modern Web Presence

Apple includes apache and php by default. Apache is the default web server on OS X client AND server. PHP has to be enabled in apache, which if you develop web apps, is not that difficult to figure out.. and if you dont, why add the security risk. MySQL isnt distributed because of licensing iirc. It would be nice if apple did, but i am not sure its worth their money since you can just download the package and click install, thus saving everyone involved some cash (except mysql of course, who dont make a cent that way)

Included Virtual PC

Would be cool. But it would also erode the market for mac native apps when people just started running windows apps and such - the goal is to build a seperate ecosystem. Besides, with Microsoft owning it now, it will never happen. Though I agree that apple shouldnt have let microsoft buy the one good pc emulator out there.

Office Solution

the second apple does a complete office solution, microsoft backs out, and apple is doomed in the enterprise. This would be BAD. Especially with the office 2003 Drm crap coming up.

This is a strategic thing for apple, and they should definatley have one in the works (as a non-part-of-the-os product) - but i dont think they should release it. It would be nice if OO.o got native though.

Support for the .NET Platform

Isn't mono being ported? Either way, .NET is way over hyped. It's cool, but unless it conquers the whole market, they should be careful not to give it credit. Apple and Microsoft fight over standards and formats now - not applications.

Full MIME support
Amen. BeOS had this down to an art, and Apple should copy it down to the pixel.

DB-based 64-bit Filesystem & ML Parsing

64 bit yes. DB Based / Metadata yes. Natural Language Parsing? That seems like it should be the next layer up... maybe as part of finders search box. Could be cool, but i think it's too soon to be truly useful.

Application Management

It would be nice if the installer "reciepts" acted as uninstallers. And then .apps were self contained.

Support for more DVD-+RW/R devices
Hardware support is good, but only as long as it doesnt break the "just works" factor.

Better Unicode Support

Ok. I thought Apple was pretty much in the lead on this already. but if there are holes, yeah, fill em.

Better Backwards Compatibility

I respectfully disagree. I hope apple continues to be willing to scrap things and get it right. Thats how you make yourself great. Backwards compatibility is just a set of handcuffs - though i could see it being something they should keep in mind more before they scrap something.

Better Hardware Resource Management

um.. isnt there a prefs pane that lets you designate what various things do? I am pretty sure you can turn off the image captuer auto thingy and then your problem would be solved. Seems odd to complain about official apple support of your hardware being added.

Share a FireWire Drive without Rebooting

Set up TCP/IP over firewire and share the drive. The boot to firewire turns the computer into an external firewire harddisk - all commands just control the drive. There is 0 reason to implement the incredibly complex syncing and error checking code that would be needed to do this while the drive was acting as an existing volume. Plus i think the hardware wont allow it. But when you are running an os on a system, you can share the drive a myriad of other wasy (NFS, Samba, etc) - so you dont need the firewire.

Less bugs, more security
OS X is one of the least buggy, most secure consumer operating systems available. But sure, less bugs more security would be nice. While we are stating the obvious, So would free money in the box, free upgrades for life, and bundled 2tb harddisks.

Speed, speed, speed
I'm sure most of us were hoping they would slow it down.

Seriously though, i think you can tack this on the end of just about any wishlist safely.

Subscription-based, Live Support

AppleCare. Apple Store.

The iSight/AppleRemoteDesktop would be interesting, but I am certain I dont want to see (or be seen by) most of the customer service reps I have spoken with. And I am not sure I want to give them access to my machine either... especially since most of them just advice "reboot" ;P

Anyway - a lot of what you want is already doable in 10.3 very easily. Or it's just picky. But there are some good ideas buried in there. ;P

please note- written in a text editor, and osnews has no preview button. please forgive any formatting errors. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Someone else told you this before, but you shot him down as if he was an idiot instead of trying it.

I shot it down because he said "active apps", not "windows of the same app". He wansn't clear. Besides, I could not try it, as I am on XP at this very moment, plus I explained that I need a mouse-driven way for it. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? UFS2 (snapshots, quotas, extended attr, 64bits, acl)

It would be interested to see if they could properly implement resource forks with UFS2 (unlike the current hack utilized by UFS1) and add support for background fsck to the kernel (shouldn't be too hard as XNU and FreeBSD have the same VFS)

fully 64 bit option

Aah yes, this should be my #1 wish. I would like to see two builds of XNU, one 32-bit and one 64-bit, selected at boot time by the bootloader automatically depending on the underlying CPU architecture.

I would also like to see Apple implement a *fully optimized* 64-bit ABI for OS X. Many may remember analysis showing that the current 32-bit ABI is not well optimized (and consequently Apple enforced prebinding systemwide)

This should be coupled with a release of the IBM XL C/C++ compiler for OS X supporting this new 64-bit ABI. Obviously the old 32-bit ABI would remain for backwards compatibility.

The C++ ABI should be the gcc 3.3 one, and Apple should ship 64-bit versions of all frameworks utilizing this ABI. This is what Sun does with Solaris. It would also be nice to see Apple move to DVD-ROMs for installation media.

I'm certain some are worried about how much bloat this would add to the base installation. Well keep in mind 64-bit userland support would be G5 only, and those G5s will likely have, at a minimum, an 80GB hard drive, so 5-10GB of underlying operating system and applications really isn't that bad in comparison.

Applications could then be compiled with both 32-bit and 64-bit support, thanks to the Mach-O binary format. Provided Apple does implement an optimized, 64-bit ABI, this should result in a significant performance boost for applications utilizing the new ABI, due to inefficiencies of the old design. I believe it's quite likely Apple has been working on this for quite some time internally, and didn't manage to get the base frameworks 64-bit clean or the development tools modified in time for the release of Panther. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry, I guess I didn't clarify. Command + Tab scrolls through active applications... Command + ~ scrolls through active WINDOWS of that application. They don't do that same thing there Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's cool, but unless it conquers the whole market...t

Since Microsoft has 93%-95% of the market already and the vast majority of new windows apps will be written in .NET(look at the Longhorn SDK info) it's pretty much inevitable that it will conquer the market. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Fair enough. Sorry for being harsh. Hopefully I was able to clarify - its a bit of an odd keycombo, but it's great when it works. It is NOT a mouse option of course. then again, neither is the cmd-tab in the first place. You should look into ASM. It's an oldschool os 9 style switcher for the menu bar.. brings all app windows to the front for the chosen app.. then just click one or use the window menu.

And arent you a powerbook user? are you suggesting you dont carry your laptop everywhere you go? ;P (this is a joke...mostly) Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > And arent you a powerbook user? are you suggesting you dont carry your laptop everywhere you go? ;P

I have 13 computers here (3 Macs, 1 NeXTStation, 1 BeBox, 1 Pegasos, 7 PCs). Pick and choose. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? First of all, lots of really great points made in your article. Just a little rant:

Virtual Desktops (workspaces):

Honestly I've never understood why anyone would use this feature... If you need more desktop space just use a higher resolution (most trinitron 19" monitors, including mine, support 2048x1536 at 75hz or higher). Add two (dual head) and you've got 4096x1536 to play with

Live Backgrounds:

This isn't quite what you were requesting, but there are several programs/haxies that allow you to use a screensaver as your desktop background, heres a few:
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?plt%5B%5D=maco...

Hotmail and Yahoo! email integration to Mail.app

Seems weird that you've been having problems with the httpmail plugin, I've been using it since the first release and I've yet to have any stablity issues. As for yahoo support, I'm sure it would be simply a matter of changing the parsing code for the httpmail plugin since its open source (http://sourceforge.net/projects/httpmail-plugin/) As for apple including support, I doubt that will happen any time soon... then again they did add outlook support...

More IM Protocol support and USB cameras

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/

Better Backwards Compatibility

Maybe its just me but I kind of like this, since it forces developers to optimize their programs. Don't get me wrong though... stupid name changes and relocations of core system frameworks that seems to happen between each major revision is pretty ridiculous. I've downloaded source code to several programs that haven't been updated since 10.1 and many of them won't even compile without changes to the source. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's good to see the author's enthusiasm for Panther, but I think that Apple should not get too zealous with features, as it adds needless complexity and feature bloat, which leads to a buggier environment.

Much of what Eugenia said was prefaced with "I love the feature in the _____ 3rd party app...". Much of what she suggested, I considered fluff, as do most people, I reckon. I don't mind using hot corners for Expose. I don't have any need for live backgrounds, or virtual desktops. I HAD a need for virtual desktops before Expose, but now it works just fine.

Much of this stuff would be better left to 3rd party developers. One of the main reasons I hate using the Windows interface is this sort of bloat. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >If you need more desktop space just use a higher resolution

I am sorry, but my 12" Powerbook can not do more than 1024x768 and none of the iBooks can either (when on the go, I can't get with me a 30kg monitor). I DO have a 1600x1200 SONY monitor here and that's what I am going to use with my new PowerMac G4 I am getting soon, but this isn't the panakeia for all cases. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Database Integration between Local and Networked Apps" - This is done already. OS X has OpenLDAP on db4. As in any repository system you have to do some work on your own. No biggie.
PostgerSQL and mySQL are avalable for OS X - is it so difficult to download them? If you are thinking of Web then you should have internet connection. This is really not a serious wish. Hitachi just released DNAStar for OS X - that is the tool I use a lot: can Apple add it too to the next OS release? In other words, one can not ask Apple to include everything. Beside, in no time users will criticize Apple for bloated install DVD (as in case of some linux distros)

Speed, speed, speed - very good but you contradict yourself:
DB-based 64-bit Filesystem & ML Parsing - this is slowdown, not speed increase although usefull, same goes with idea to allow screensavers to run in place of background images.

I have few wishes too:
- heavy duty OpenLDAP support, stop modification of unix servers: for example OS X version of samba has problems with other samba implementations (BSD/linux - try to keep high network load for hour or so),
- tune networking (for example past problems with mtu discovery)
- Make possible to completely strip down all eyecandy stuff.
- Make priority from Implementation of new and COMMON technologies as an example mentioned above DVD formats.
- moving to x86 makes not much sense but if Apple at some point would go back to the idea of clones, then linux would not be a treat and "Bevare Windows!"
- Help OpenOffice to make great office suite. Starting from scratch will demand more time but enhancing what is already available would be much easier. Better Apple should buy WPO the only real competition for MS office. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @ the M$ Access comment:
Access is a piece of junk. It uses the windows file system (thus cannot be used by any other platform), it can get corrupted very easily (data and hard work goes down teh drain) and it doesn't scale well. I do not like FMP THAT much, but I believe that it is better than access.

@ the Y! and Hotmail comments:
I have been subscribing to yahoo for 2 years now (since they started requiring a subscription to POP). I can use entourage and any mail application (including mail.app) to get my yahoo mail. In terms of hotmail and getting licensing... this is murky. M$ is the only one at the moment who has access to hotmail (via outlook, express, and entourage) and they want to keep it that way. Is it really worth it for apple to lisence it?

@ Greek
RIGHT ON! Either make it all unicode (unlikely) or better support all languages in carbon mode too! Also while we are at it, give us a QWERTY russian keyboard layout for OS X just like you did on OS 9! Typing in a russian-typewriter keyboard is so cumbersome


@ VPC
Now that M$ has it... forget about it Besides VPC is aging technology! It only goes up to a Pentium MMX! That is ancient! Apple might want to invest some money in making an emulator for this century, not the last one. I would be on-board with an apple x86 emulator because this means that it wil be better integrated with the OS and the hardware, it can tap into more resources and run faster and more efficiently.

@ Remote desktop
I agree! Lets make it standard! We have a lot of sharing options in the sharing control pane, so why not this???

@ More bundled apps
They included apache...so why not include MySQL and other development/deployment apps with they XTools package?

@ Integrated IM
I would like an iChat to support Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Jabber on top of AIM. Yahoo and other file sharing apps have dropped the ball when it comes to the mac. Bad file sharing/transfer abilty, no video/voice conference or chat...so apple needs to step in and kick some derriere ;-)

@ Office package.
I agree that when apple makes such a complete package, M$ backs out, bad for apple. Appel could do this had they a bigger marketshare and the ability to reverse engineer M$ products faster, that way they could add compatibility right away. For now it is just up to us to do so. The nice thing is that panther's TextEdit can open and save in the M$ Word format (it is not compelte though - no graphics, tables and such)


@ backwards compatibility
Right on! In terms of classic thought, I have not used classic in 2 years I finally got rid of it when I installed panther. In the future though it would be nice to have a classic-like solution to run older apps without the need for a macos 9 folder (which was 1Gb on my HD!)

@ .NET
hmmmm.... how would that work? M$ is trying to keep people locked into the M$ platform. if others try to get such support in their systems what is there to keep users locked into M$ and not go elsewhere?


MY WISH LIST
@ Improve the addressbook! I like it but make it more modular like the newton! I do not like the 5 e-mail limit, or the 2 mailing address limit Also add bdays and anniversaries to the addressbook!

@ Better iCal/addressbook integration. I would like (if the addressbook suppoted birthdates) for birthdays to go into iCal automatically once I enter then in the addressbook.

@ iSync improvements. I would like for iSync to support the Windows Mobile, Linux PDA, EPOC and other PDA and Phone platforms (Bluetooth, Ir, Serial, net- connection) -- How about the Apple newton ? I realize it is not sold anymore but I still use mine and I would like to install apps and sync it without resorting to third party apps (even if they are free )

@ Defrag and Cleanup utilities (kinda like the ones windows NT has). I realize that when you install something it "optimizes" your HD (probably defrags) but I would like to do so without the need for and installation or buying Norton.

@ A better CD-Burning utility? I do not want anything fancy, just a simple user interface, drag and drop, then burn ... kinda like Toast

@ VCD and SVCD support in the DVD player

@ More digital cameras (still and video) supported by the OS!!!! please!!! I have a digital camera by sony and I cant get my vids into my mac!

@ Can you give us a scientific/graphing calculator like you used to do in MacOS 7,8.9 ????

@ I like the fact that you have given us many japanese and chinese typefaces...but what about other non-roman and non-kana scripts like greek, hebrew, cyrillic, etc, etc etc ???? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As a UNIX-administrator (FreeBSD and Linux) I'm used to edit text-files for NFS, apache-configuration, firewall-rules etc. As much as I love the shiny look of OS X, I dislike the (from a UNIX-admins point of view) akward Netinfo-tool.

Why? Because I don't feel that I have complete control.

I don't mind people want GUI's for everyday-tasks. But the text-files aren't where they usually are on most UNIX systems. So my wish for 10.4 is a closer integration between the traditional locations for text-files and a revamped GUI-tool (but _not_ Netinfo). Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There are actually plugins for Opera/Mozilla of MPlayer. So if Safari uses the standard for Mozilla plugins, everything should be ok. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1. KEY COMMANDS. We should have a unified language of key commands, like in Windows. Key commands should be everywhere, in all programs, and there should be consistency in what the different commands do in all the programs.
2. MAXIMIZING. The green maximize button should maximize the windows all the way to the screens edges, like in Windows. Now some program does this, some program does not, there is no consistency. And of course there should be an omnipresent key command for this function. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? comments:

@ ability to strip down eye candy:
I like the idea. - perhaps theming and the ability to get simpler themes that require less CPU/graphics card power

@ virtual desktops
most unices have them, so why not? but I would prefer if it were an option at install time rather than something that gets installed mo matter what. I had a 3rd party virtual desktop app installed and did not use it much (from 10 to 10.2 --- used it 2 times and those were for testing purposes, in day-to-day life I did not use em at all) Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? For a PC person myself I have looked at the Mac and have seen pros and cons;

Here are some cons that need to be remedied(correct me if I'm wrong).

1: Demetalization; Place in the preferences section in each app that uses the Metalized interface the ability to turn it off(this is my #1 excuse not to purchase a Mac), hacks are unacceptable work arounds(my #2 is price but that is a different topic).

2: Theme system; You shouldn't have to purchase additional software to make changes are go into the CLI.

3: Icon Manager; Once again you shouldn't have to purchase additional software to manage your icons.

4: Create additional iLife apps like a labeling program(iLabel) and audio editor/mixer(iSound).

5: An Office Suite; Create a better suite than appleworks and cheaper than Office. Apple can make a really different Office suite by going out and buying OmniGroup to get OmniGraffle Pro and OmniOutliner and combine it with Keynote plus develop a new word processor and spreadsheet. Each app except Outliner would cost 100$. Then sell a suite for 200-250$(containing a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Diagramming, and a PIM that leverages existing OS X software).

6: Solid disk utilities, Anti-Virus and Backup Software should also be built into OS X(it should be in Windows as well). If you build in CD burning and included a DVD creating app you should included these.

Many other features have already been posted.


If this improvements are made there would be so many apps that it would give end users a better value. This could also make a subscription method more viable since Apple would be updating many apps throughout the year. The possibility of OS X, iLife, Symantec level utilities, and an Office suite plus a years worth of customer support say 150-200$ a year could be viable and cheap for the user long-term. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? last item on my wish-list before I leave

@ I want keyboard shortcuts for launching apps! I used to use this feature extensivelly in OS 9 and now it is gone

@ Folder tabs, like in macos 9. please bring them back! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? very good article about 10.4 on osnews ! hope apple reads some bits....

my special wishlist:

-theming, but i fear apple is too proud of trashed metal etc.pp.

-option to kill all zooms, fades, blendings, fx in the gui... annoying and slows down the workflow. esp.on slower machines.

-open choice of fonts for finder, menus etc.

reason: x wastes a lot of screen-space, you can't choose tighter bitmap-fonts for menus. annoying!
i still use 9 because it uses my ibook screen way more effective. plus, small aa-fonts are really hard to read. This is a scientific fact.

(ok, and my os9 is an etablished workhorse, all my tools are sharpened, trained and available with no hassle, working in design, dtp, pre-press, music)

-remove the static menu-bar ( :-)ooh, thats like demanding an apple 3-button mouse)
instead: a pop-up menu system located at the mousepointer, nothing's more annoying than rolling to the menubar...

all in all i'm always concerned about effectiveness, less clicks, less mouserolling, more speed speed speed :-) it's sad beos didn't make it. it was smooth and fast on my lousy powermac 7500 with 200mhz. now i got os-x which is slow on my 600mhz ibook. but i'm 100% sure you've heard this story a 1000 times.

best, andi Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The (+) zoom button never seems to do what I want it to do. I need a way to maximize the window to full screen. Clicking (+) and having the window shrink is never what I want. Safari and iTunes are good examples of how (+) fails to serve my needs. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Dev focused
1) Include Enterprise Objects Framework for Obj-C. (Java version is part of Web Objects)
2) Restructure all Apple Apps to allow 3rd party service instead of .mac
3) Enable all Apple Apps to allow for 3rd party plugins to extend functionality. Create open and documented plugin apis
4) Make all Apple Apps file formats open and documented

User focused
1) Allow for higher screen resolutions than 72 DPI Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't think Microsoft is willing to license all these things to Apple, they will give them a hard time!

about the Safari Browser, it does not have to support Active X, i thought that ActiveX had to be removed because of the latest trial about plug-ins in Internet Explorer.
They will remove these plug-ins and probably accept W3C standards. So webpages will get w3c approved since everyone is browsing with Explorer and plug-ins are being removed in the future Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The green button is the ZOOM button, not the MAXIMIZE button. It doesn't maximize the window by *design*. It's a feature that it only enlarges the window as big as needed for the data being viewed.

See the Apple Human Interface Guidelines for MacOS X at: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/...
if you don't understand. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Check out http://www.screentime.com/swf_desktop/swf_desktop_main.html

I'm using other products of ScreenTime Media and they're quite good :-) Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? .NET is good technology. I like using it when I have to work on Windows.

If .NET ever gets loose on Mac, in a decent quality way, Cocoa (and Carbon too, for that matter) is probably dead. Cocoa is better than .NET, but no one except a few hobbyists would ever touch it again if .NET gives them a Windows version without a full port. (The development environment would most likely BE Windows in this case, BTW.)

Of course, there's the conspiracy theory that MS is quietly hoping for Mono to succeed on Linux, planning to buy a few judges/politicians/etc and use them to slam their rival in a few years. Who knows?

If Apple released Cocoa for Windows (in a decent quality way), they might not take much share away from .NET but they'd help themselves enormously. That 99% of the commercial developers that won't even look at Cocoa now just might. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I understand the green button is a zoom button. I am asking Apple to implement a Maximize feature for applications that need it. With expose and alt-tab in place, it is easy to multitask between applications that occupy the full screen. In addition, when using applications such as photoshop or BBEdit, having windows clutter the background can be very distracting. 10.4 needs to bring the user interface guidelines up to date.

How many times have you wanted Safari and iTunes to occupy the full screen, and found yourself clicking the zoom button a couple of times, watching in astonishment as clicking (+) minimizes the interface - and finally you settle into moving the window to the top left corner of the screen and dragging it out to fill up the entire window as best possible. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use pop access to my Yahoo account everyday without paying anything.
Yahoo offers two options : Pay or allow Yahoo to send some advertisement mails.

I have chosen the second option and have never received any advertisement on my mailbox ! There's no need to pay Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This happens to me quite a bit... I agree that the + button should maximize the window.

"How many times have you wanted Safari and iTunes to occupy the full screen, and found yourself clicking the zoom button a couple of times, watching in astonishment as clicking (+) minimizes the interface - and finally you settle into moving the window to the top left corner of the screen and dragging it out to fill up the entire window as best possible." Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? they are crap, expose is a much better solution, feels natural, and doesn't feel as flaky and unnatural as virtual DTs; i'm sure there's a million 3rd-party apps for this if it's so dear to you, but to me it screams bad KDE UI Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? To each his or her own. I don't have this problem personally. Probably an individual preference...


"How many times have you wanted Safari and iTunes to occupy the full screen, and found yourself clicking the zoom button a couple of times, watching in astonishment as clicking (+) minimizes the interface - and finally you settle into moving the window to the top left corner of the screen and dragging it out to fill up the entire window as best possible." Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? expose does a much better job at it (of course it's not a VD, but a more natural workaround for cluttered screens). IMO virtual desktops are very sketchy and dont work Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? For the jackass that can't understand why anyone would use virtual desktops....and who thinks that using higher resolutions is actually a solution

1) If you've got 15 applications open at one time, as many developers and sysadmins do, you often want selected subsets of them on the desktop at a time. That is, 1 or MORE, but not ALL of them. And you want those groupings to remain constant.There is no other way to accomplish this without a lot of window management.

2) some of us don't have eyesight that can cope with things being that small. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Virtual desktops and expose do not solve the same problem.

Virtual desktops are for GROUPING applications. Expose is for selecting a single applications.

Anyone who thinks that virtual desktops are "flaky, unnatural, or don't work" has never used a real unix implementation of VD. If VD is integrated into the windowmanager like it should be (rather than a third-party hack) they are not flaky at all.

An who is to say what is natural? Some of us are GLAD that our computer doesn't have to mirrow a real desk. And some of us don't have desks piled high with disorganized clutter. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? MY WISH LIST
@ Improve the addressbook! I like it but make it more modular like the newton! I do not like the 5 e-mail limit, or the 2 mailing address limit Also add bdays and anniversaries to the addressbook!

Done! If you're on 10.3! ;-)

@ Better iCal/addressbook integration. I would like (if the addressbook suppoted birthdates) for birthdays to go into iCal automatically once I enter then in the addressbook.


Almost there - they have dates but no hotlink to iCal - yet!

Cheers Daniel Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I updated the article with a mockup to explain my request:
http://img.osnews.com/img/4931/visual_expose.jpg

It is true that I am mouse girl, a visual person. I don't learn shortcuts. Except copy/paste/cut, ctrol+z, alt-tab and cntrl+S, I don't use any other shortcut on my OSes, be it Mac or Windows or Linux. I am sure there are others like me, "visual" people. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Bad KDE UI?

If only mac os x had the comprehensive window management that KDE has! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Expose Enhancement:
I don't think many people would need this. As you say, there are already quite a few ways to activate Expose. Shouldn't be a problem to create what you want as a 3'rd party app though!

Virtual Desktops:
No, this is not KDE or Gnome. Learn how to use cmd-H cmd-alt-H, alt-clicking, cmd-whatever-your-localization-uses-to switch windows etc.

Reach same applications' windows
Maybe...

Path Navigation
Sounds cool!

Fast User Switching Icon Item
I've got that iMac your're talking about...

Live Backgrounds
Sure, why not, if the people at Apple feel that they have nothing better to do.

Some Theme Support
Tried Duality? Works just like you want to. (Except X11. But you reallt mean GTK+,GTK+2 & QT, don't you?)

Finder Plugins
As others have said, they already exists. Tried StuffIt Deluxe? It has most of the things you're asking for.

Sherlock Plugins
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/sherlock/
You wrote OSNews? You could fix it!

Scheduled Tasks
Tried searching versiontracker.com for "Cron"?

Better Speech Synthesis and Speech Recognition
Yeah, it's been like that since they introduced it in the System 7.5 era.

WMV/ASF Safari plugin
Coming Soon! Windows Media Player 9 Series for Mac OS X will deliver compatibility with 9 Series audio and video content.
I bet they will include a new plugin!

Undo on Safari
That would mean adding undo to the NSTextField. Would be quite nice!

Tabs in Terminal.app
...yeah, maybe? I like to display the cmd-number and process name in the title bar. Works quite well.

More IM Protocol support and USB cameras
Agree!

Better X11 Integration, KDE/Gnome consistency
Are you asking Apple to write a new X11 implementation, rewrite QT and GTK and rewrite all X11 apps to work like OSX programs? I wouldn't want that...

Hotmail and Yahoo! email integration to Mail.app
I wouldn't use Hotmail if someone paid me. (Most of my friends with Hotmail get 300 spam emails per day!!) There are lots of other free alternatives.

1-client Remote Desktop
Yes!

Database Integration between Local and Networked Apps
Most professionals do these kinds of things with fileservers, don't they?

Scanner sharing
Would be nice.

Modern Web Presence
Seriously? With the OSX Client? Maybe as downloadable packages from Apple.

Included Virtual PC
Microsoft owns VirtualPC. A Virtual PC is.. a PC. Microsoft does not allow people who have agreements with it to sell PC's without an OS. So, it's never going to happen..

Office Solution
Yes, yes, yes!

Support for the .NET Platform
Sure.

Full MIME support
Works good for me. Better than on any other OS.

DB-based 64-bit Filesystem & NL Parsing
Sherlock?

Application Management
Yes! Tried DesInstaller?

Better Unicode Support
But the worst thing is the lousy support for Unicode in the Terminal and BSD layer!

Better Backwards Compatibility
I never feel that I have any problems with this...

Share a FireWire Drive without Rebooting
The ability to share any folder/disk on the computer would be nice!

Speed, speed, speed
Yes, yes, yes! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The http Hotmail protocol is plain XML format and works on an open standard called WebDAV. It is easy to create an application that uses the Hotmail server.

Here is one place where you can find the exact details of their format:
http://jhttpmail.sourceforge.net/httpmail.html Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why does Apple care what MY desktop looks like?

If I want a flashing purple background, that's my business, not Apple's.

Frankly, I think looking at a mac is like staring at a lightbulb. All I want is to get rid of those damned white screen backgrounds....on EVERYTHING...not just on the applications that let me.

Why can't I design my own color scheme like KDE? And why can't they be them implemented system wide?

And while we're at it, why can I only change the background color in the icon view of the finder? Why not the in the other views as well? And why not alternating colors for the rows of the list view (like pathfinder)? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? YOU STILL DON"T GET IT!

Virtual desktops are NOT merely application switchers.

They are for GROUPING applications. Get it???? GROUPING is not SWITCHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Switching application with mice or keyboards or expose is beside the point. I'm not talking about SWITCHING applications....I'm talking about GROUPING applications ......

Or can't you fathom why someone would need to have multiple, but not all, applications visible at one time? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I need OpenOffice!!!!!! It is an essential part of my PC usage (and my wife's too). The current version is not likely to be tried here, sorry. Come on Apple, put some weight in behind it! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BrazenRegent:
"...plus develop a new word processor and spreadsheet."

If Apple was going to implement its own spreadsheet, then it should repackage and shine-up its own version of Gnumeric, just like it put KHTML into Safari. Gnumeric is the only spreadsheet I've seen in recent years that can pretty much replace Excel in virtually all spreadsheet tasks. And, they wouldn't have to charge much more than they're charging for Appleworks, since Gnumeric is already written. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? VDs are god's gift to men. Expose is fine as a visual way of organizing windows, but they are not a replacement for true VDs. By the time you hit F9, find the window you want, and click on it, I could have swapped through all of my VDs. I use them so much that the CTRL+Fx hotkeys KDE assigns by default are too slow, so I assign them to WIN+Q, WIN+W, WIN+A, etc. That way, I don't even have to move my hands to get to the VD I want. When you're a code monkey, you want something that allows you to switch between your dozen xterms without breaking your concentration. A reflexive mechanism like hotkeys + VDs allows you to do this, while a visual one like Expose does not. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would like Mail to be like Opera's M2, with access points, etc. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Path navigation has been built in since OS Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Command-click on the proxy icon at the top of any finder window.

that's a drop-down menu. That's two clicks, plus the time for the brain to look for the right thing. With Path Navigation you only do ONE click, and it is much easier to the brain to realize what is where. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think, Apple do really need to start to extra a button of mouse in their product by default.. :-P Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Better Mp3 player support in iTunes both windows and mac. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? well, I have a samsung video camera, and it works fine with iMovie, and there are not even any official listings of ANY samsung video cameras. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Virtual desktops are for GROUPING applications. Expose is for selecting a single applications.

Another solution for grouping applications is suggested by PWM (http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/pwm) For people who don't like to follow links, PWM allows you to group windows arbitrarily by "docking" their titlebars in a tabbed fashion. The entire group can then be manipulated by dragging the tab bar around. Admittedly, this isn't ideal in some circumstances--where you need to see at least two of the windows you want to group at the same time--but perhaps then expose could be used for each group to display them all.

KOMPRESSOR Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What OS X needs is robust, bulletproof printing. This has been sorely lacking since OS 9. Too many graphics professionals depend on Macs for OS X printing to be anything less. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? All three of these just pull back in some features from the past:

1) Put a Next button in Mail, just like every other email reader.

2) When emptying the Trash folder, provide info on how many files and how much space they take up. This has been a lifesaver on several occasions when the wrong stuff found its way into the trash.

3) In Safari, do like Netscape/Mozilla and provide a popup menu with just a mouse button press (specifically to provide the easily-accessed Back button. Using the Ctrl key or navigating to a menu is a pain.

Little things, but they'd really polish up the experience of using Mac OS X. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1. an ability of Finder to sort ALL folders BEFORE files, not to mix them together alfabetically in column view.

2. office suite - Apple should take existing OpenOffice (because it's great!) and add Cocoa GUI and native OSX integration and sell it for lets say max $100.

3. themes

4. option to adjust GUI eye-candies to your preferences (to turn off some them, etc.)

5. virtual desktops

6. more speed... at startup! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? great article, hopefully this can be maintained and Apple can keep an eye on it.

A couple of other suggestions:

Better Proxy Support

We run a novell border manager firewall on our M$-dominated network and both Mail and Safari choke on it. The only reason I use entourage for mail is that it can tunnel over the proxy, while Mail can't. Safari chokes on secure connections over the proxy, forcing me to use Internet Explorer. Hate them both! Can't believe this is still not fixed!

SyncML on .Mac

All the synchronisation servers for mobile phones using SyncML (like my Sony Ericsson P800) are windows only. Why not upgrade .Mac to allow syncing of your phone's contacts/calendar over GPRS? I'd pay for that. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I do not know what poessessed Apple to a) permit MS to buy VPC from Connectix and b) allow IBM to deliver G5 chips that broke VPC. Mac OS X was a wonderful emulation platform: Stable, immune to PC hazards (virii, Trojans, Windows in general), easy to use and good looking, too. Besides, people who run emulations need powerful hardware - lots of G5 buyers.

So, what now? With RealPC gone up in smoke (or should I say "vapor"?), VPC in the hands of MS and MacBochs real slow, what option so we have?

Once, there was Orange PC with their hardware card. Imagine this: I small box, no bigger than many MP3 players that connects to your firewire port. It carries a PC chip with low power requirement and some RAM. The rest of the hardware (HD, RAM, Video) is emulated on the Mac. The little thingo works just as well in notebooks. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice one! I've been waiting to write my wish list and now you provided the incentive.

Draws:

Get rid of draws. The window size should stay the same and options should happen internally.

Mail:

Need to be able to hide folders. Especially, ".mailboxlist" that gets created by my IMAP server.

There really needs to be a status bar that shows the URL you are just about to click to unregister you from the mailing list that keeps sending you those huge HTML emails! ;-)

Window resizing:

Be able to alter window size from any corner or any edge not just limited to bottom right. A la windows.

Enable double clicking the top bar of an app window to maximise it - just like windows.

Full keyboard access (TAB-ing):

"Full keyboard access" should be a consistent experience in all apps. Needs a lot more work to get it to work pervasively. Need to be able to TAB through icons and list boxes within a given app.

Safari does not do proper "full keyboard access" within the HTML pages. You can't TAB through URLs and then hit space to take you there.

Safari:

Just keep working on it. Need much more options in the prefs like pop-up exclude/include server list.

GUI:

Choice of metal or white (at least). Problem with metal is that grey writing on a grey background does not an ideal viewing experience maketh. Also, more flexible font sizing pervasive within apps and os - sometimes fonts are just too small.

Application management:

Apple should open up software update so that ALL third party apps can use it - I heard this as a rumour but not sure what happened. It would be lovely. Install and uninstall (when created) should be opened up to third parties too. Although it's simple, we really shouldn't have to drag apps into the Applications folder. "Seamless" is the word and that means no seams! ;-)

Auto complete:

The new "Complete F5" option in the Edit menu of Mail and some other text markup apps is great. But it needs more work so that you can just switch on the "auto complete as you type mode". That'll be fun!

Address Book enhancements:

Have you had a look? Couple of things are very interesting. From one card you can make reference to another card using the "Names" item. You can say someone is the father of someone else. It doesn't do reverse logic - yet.

Also, need the dates item to link to iCal.

Also, you can now set up lists and email your updated contact details with them. But this is kludgy and you really need the sharing protocol that you talk about. Which leads me too...

Database Integration between Local and Networked Apps:

You used that magic word: interoperate. Someone said "database driven filesystem" and you cited [url=www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/]Storage[/url] but once you're sharing data from one app to another across networks then you're into territory more like peer to peer/server systems like [url=www.osafoundation.org]Chandler[/url].

Then if you really want any app to share any data with any other app with permissions and trust then you're really going into the semantic area and you should be building on top of [url=www.w3.org/RDF/]RDF[/url].

So, my wish list ends with wanting to see Apple adopt a semantic file and sharing system along the lines of [url=www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraToolsProjectPlan]KendraBase[ /url]. I want it so much that I've hired a developer to build a prototype. I can't wait! ;-)

Cheers Daniel Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Even Windows XP can still run most apps written for Windows 3.1 12 years ago, and don't forget how Microsoft took the sales by storm with Windows 95 because of their very good Win3.1 and DOS compatibility that allowed businesses to run apps dated back to 1981."

Windows XP also has bugs in it that date back all the way to Win95 codebase. Sometimes fixing the OS means changing the way that various subsystems interact. This does tend to break older applications, but the other alternative is vulnerabilities like Blaster which effected every 32 bit version of windows ever made.

You also asked for a more modern filesystem. I agree with your there but there's a cost for that. If you want a better FS, you're going to have to give up Classic. I personally never use Classic (I hated Mac OS 9 and all of it's predecessors, terrible system design despite the pretty interface) so I could lose it without missing it. But something tells me most Mac users aren't ready to cut the cord just yet. So pick one or the other. Backward compatibility or a better file system. Quite frankly, you can't have both. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Rayiner Hashem,
To me the best implementation of hot keys for virtual desktops is in XFce. Mouse wheel. Probably there are other wm that do it exactly the same way.


Anyway I see that in all this excitement about expose people got confused. With virtual desktop one could arrange windows using expose in each of VD. How this two things can be mixed? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1) Built in Tk to go with the built-in Tcl (and Perl, and Python, all of which will happily use it if appropriately built). I know this is a free download, but if it were preinstalled it would make explaining how to install apps that use it a lot easier.

2) A more functional Python with libraries like Tkinter, wxWindows, gdb, etc. built-in.

3) A Mail.app that is clever enough to handle mh formatted mailboxes and can recognize X-faces and PIcons in addition to .Mac icons.

4) More formats should be handled natively by QuickTime; in particular formats like MOD that are widespread but don't seem to have easy-to-find-and-download plug-ins available.

5) XCode should directly support more languages.

6) The really annoying HTML acronym tag behavior of Safari (being rendered in italics without the non-abbreviated form available anywhere) should be fixed.

7) Safari should have more capabilities with regards to choosing helper applications for various file types.

8) OS X shouldn't be so dependent upon filename extensions. MIME types are much more reliable and should be used in preference to them whenever available.

9) The older Apple apps Newton Press and NCU should really be carbonized; honestly, this is something that should take a single experienced engineer with access to the source code just a day or two.

10) FTP & WebDAV support should be improved, particularly with regard to SSL and not leaving garbage files around on non-native volumes.

That's all that comes to mind right now, but I'm still exploring... Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, you state in your article that BeBochs is in poor condition compared to VPC, however BeBochs is just one branch of the Bochs tree.

Apple have done great things with OpenSource software and could again, there is already a working PC emulator* for OSX based on Bochs, I fail to see why apple couldnt make a better one yet. Especially since they could offer Linux and older MS OS support that will likely be axed in MS VPC

*I forget the name.... sorry Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Eugenia, you state in your article that BeBochs is in poor condition compared to VPC, however BeBochs is just one branch of the Bochs tree.

That was just a typo. I meant "Bochs". Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I know this isn't the same as what you suggested, Eugenia, but this is a pretty cool feature of Panther (playing a movie on the desktop with Expose):

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031024200346697 Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://swizcore.com/SS/macOSX.php
ok, these are third party themes, but seems that they're using the macosx engine and not a crap-application like windowblind on windows
i'm not sure because i don't have a mac :-( but maybe it's an hidden feature but an existing feature Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OK, now that my gears are turning, here are a few more:

4) Virtual desktops! Despite some prior comments that don't seem to understand their utility, they are extremely useful. I've used them for years on SGIs and Linux boxes and they've provided much-needed order and speed on my busy desktop. "Ernst Persson" clearly doesn't get it, but virtual desktops are a vast improvement over single ones.

5) Focus-follows-mouse. Not as the default, but definitely as an option. Of course, there should also be an option to also pop the window to the top (or not) when the focus changes.

6) Themes. OK, they're usually ugly--but it sure would be nice to be able to modify the UI a bit (especially the location and appearance of window icons).

7) Unflatten metal icons! 10.2 saw the icons on the metal apps get flattened (such as the Play/Pause button in iTunes). Why? The blobbier versions looked better and were more consistent with the other UI elements. Pump 'em back up! Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Virtual desktops and Focus-follows-mouse both are part of the shareware utility "Virtual Desktops" from CodeTek. It would be nice for OSX to support them natively, but at least there is an alternative.

http://www.codetek.com Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My girl is making on a set of Kanji learning cards in Adobe Illustrator. She cannot name the files by their Kanji because this doesn't work in Adobe Illustrator's file save panel. If she changes them after save, they just get messed up again if she happens to resave. Maybe this is a problem with Adobe, but it seems to me that it is a side effect of carbonizing classic OS apps. Most of the new OS X software (stuff coming from classic origins) are carbonized classic apps and most of them have inconsistent behaviors compared to their native counterparts. This is just one of them.

Honestly, language support is a basic issue. Half way doesn't cut it. Also, there's not much use in using a non-Kanji file name to identify and organize sets of Kanji learners cards in folders. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? GUI: Choice of metal or white (at least). Problem with metal is that grey writing on a grey background does not an ideal viewing experience maketh. Also, more flexible font sizing pervasive within apps and os - sometimes fonts are just too small.

---

... yes, small fonts in x burn in the eyes, the current anti-aliasing code at those sizes doesn't cut it! it's obvious, instead of anti-aliasing a charset first and then use this, apple chooses to render char by char.

result: each time different anti-aliasing on same chars within a text. e.g. sometimes an "i" is a quite ok char, next "i" could be a blurred POS. that looks horrible at small sizes.

there are many great bitmap-fonts out there, ironically these are used most of the time in flash-based websites. it's sad: websites get crisp small fonts, os'es went to blurry small fonts.

i have to admit, that i am NOT against anti-aliasing - but at small sizes it simply doesn't work. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The problem with OS X's font rendering is that it is too simplistic. It does a straight-forward AA pass with very little hinting. Thus, glyph shapes are accurately preserved, but often letters end up fuzzy and unevenly weighted. OS X's rendering would look great on a very high res (200+ dpi) display, but looks poor on the average displays we have today. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Just to let other know my bitter experience...

I decided to pay the 30$ a year based on the promise that it will work with my mail application.

This proved to be only a half truth. Yes, you can read your e-mail (unless you leave it open in another place), but It's a really painfull experience to send a message using their SMTP server with Mail.app due to the fact that it's very erratic, sometimes it works, sometime it doesn't.

And if you are thinking about contacting customer service, I can only tell you two things:

1) No phone number listed.
2) No e-mail address listed, only a web form to ask a question to their "staff" (and at the end, they just send you a copy of the same thing that is on the website).

Please, if someone knows a workaround of this problem let me know!

Note: I'm trying to use entourage and it's also a little bit erratic, sometimes you need to authenticate the server and later you need to de-authorize it. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Also, there's not much use in using a non-Kanji file name to identify and organize sets of Kanji learners cards in folders.

What's wrong with labeling them by their kun-yomi written in roomaji? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As a Windows user (previously a Mac user), I'd have to say that the only thing that would encourage me to switch back at this point is value. The thing is that I'm plenty comfortable with the Windows UI, so right now, so value and compatibility amongst a large number of products is more important to me than the HW or SW exterior design of one product. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Feature:

Ability for the Operating System to dynamically reload itself when updated, without requiring a restart, and leaving all applications running (paused while the invisible reload of the OS happens).

Or atleast, give the ability for most of the services to reload themselves upon update, w/ out taking down the whole OS. You should not have to restart a system as often as you have to currently. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This is plain rediculous -- first, Eugenia is NOT connecting from osnews.com, she's connecting from attbi.com...it was changed because it seemed that a troll connected from her domain, and people thought it was her.

Also lame is the inability to submit her comments for review, some of which are horribly flamebait...

Eugenia, since you are the moderator, please put the word MODERATOR by your name so that newcomers will know that you can say whatever you want. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? on option to make the trackpad click a leftbutton and the trackpad button on the bottom of the trackpad a rightbutton click. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I disagree with almost all of you. THE GUI IS NOT THE ISSUE!

This is the problem that Apple had with the original MAC. They spend WAY too much time with the GUI. They need fundamental services, like an Enterprise Database (SYBASE) and more programming tools and support from more third party vendors. The vendors is what made MS Windows succeed. When I asked a windows user why they use it (even when they complain) they almost always say "It is because of the applications, and third party hardware support".

Apple, you need a real database, Lisence E-Directory from NOVELL! Purchase/Merge or partner with Word Perfect Office and Sybase! Appleworks and Filemaker is too Wimpy. People make fun of the MAC OS because it doenst have Enterprise worthy applications. People can use Photoshop on Windows, you have to have Windows like software running on the MAC. I am about to Switch back to WIndows because I am having such a hard time with the LACK of buisness software. FORGET ABOUT THE GUI! Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Isn't Oracle a 'real' database?

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY...

Az Jim Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://www.sybase.com/mac/

There is an ASE to allow Mac's to connect to Sybase (you don't need to host the DB on a Mac after all) as well as developer tools so you can develop Sybase Enterprise apps on the Mac.

Mac OS X does have an ODBC connection tool. Any DB developer can provide a driver for their products.

Oracle and Sybase already have. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Agree with article.Think that OSX should definitely be more customisable. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? everybody has another point of view...

i won't forget about the gui, unless it's perfect - i don't care about some unix-database-dev-stuff...

what about perfection in gui AND internal stuff ? it's no problem... Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Such irritant drivel! Practically everything that Eugenia commented on, sounded more like, make it do this, and make it do that, the focus shouldnt be on making the OS a jack of all trades and a master of none, lets fine tune what we have in OS X 1st and then as later iterations appear .4, .5, .6, etc introduce new features, i gotta blast you on the active waterfall desktop, there's no functionality gained there, people bitched enough that the genie effect in OS X was a cpu hog unless you had a machine that could truley quartz enable the OS, so lets take it light on the guys in Cupertino, yes they upgrade every year, but i'd rather see yearly updates that add functionlaity and stability, than patch the OS 78 times in a year to control bugs and we arent even at SP2 yet. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Cmd + ~ seems to do it for me. If you do it after having his Cmd + Tab it shifts back but if you just do it by itself it goes through the windows of the current app. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? isn't Oracle a 'real' database?
Not yet Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >On Panther, by doing Command+TAB (equivalent to ALT+TAB >on most PC Oses), you get a nice-looking transparent >window with the icons of the applications currently open. >It allows you to select and focus on another open >application. However, what it does not do is let you >select individual windows that belong to the currently >selected app in that application-switcher window.

you CAN switch between open windows of one application. You can do it with Command+` Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What some people with cash will do....

Here you go:

www.hotpop.com

shhh! Thu, 30 Oct 2003 02:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I meant on OS X ^ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia is clearly a half-baked geek wannabe.

What's this talk about "protocol" and "licensing"? HotMail is a web-based mail service. It'd be extremely easy for them to provide POP or IMAP access if they wanted to. But they don't because they want to be able to feed you ads. A plug-in that works with HotMail can only be a hack and work so long as HotMail doesn't change the HTML presentation. It is a hack because you are trying to write a program to parse information that is already in presentation form. It is highly inefficient and is only necessary because HotMail doesn't want you to do it in the first place.

Yahoo on the other hand provides POP for a very reasonable price. I have been using Yahoo POP before they started charging for it and have been paying for the last couple of years.

If you want email with POP or IMAP, don't use HotMail. It's as easy as that. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think the idea that you have for me is just utterly stupid.

Thank you Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If Apple was going to implement its own spreadsheet, then it should repackage and shine-up its own version of Gnumeric, just like it put KHTML into Safari. Gnumeric is the only spreadsheet I've seen in recent years that can pretty much replace Excel in virtually all spreadsheet tasks. And, they wouldn't have to charge much more than they're charging for Appleworks, since Gnumeric is already written.

Apple is extremely unlikely to use open source software for a word processor and spreadsheet. One reason is they would need to change the existing Open Source interface to match up with the one in found in Keynote and they are not going to open source Keynote interface(you don't create a office package that doesn't use the same interface structure). The 2nd reason is the current state of affairs with Open Source word processors and spreadsheets on the Mac. AbiWord is still stuck at 1.0.3 and Open Office is still X11 dependent and there is no support from Apple for these projects. The 3rd reason is Apple is out to make a profit, imagine an Office suite made by Apple selling for 200$ each and selling 1-2 million units a year(200-400 million dollars).

We all saw how fast Safari was adopted by OS X users. If there willing to pay 129$ for a point release, then they will be willing to pay for a Office Suite from Apple. Apple could follow the lead from other companies and offer a upgrade for Appleworks users and offer a competative upgrade for Microsoft Office users all at reduced prices for a more rapid adoption. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...tell me how is " overpriced MS Office"
Compared to a Photoshop upgrade its downright cheap!

For the price of a Photoshop upgrade I get Word,Excel,Outlook and
Powerpoint!!! Thu, 30 Oct 2003 04:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd like to see transmeta chips running code morphing technology, to emulate both x86 and G3/4/5 opcodes concurrently ;-)

I don't know if that is technically possible (for transmeta's chips/software to emulate more than one chip at a time) but it sure would be cool! Thu, 30 Oct 2003 04:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? just as a test, i created an account on my TiBook called "Demo" with the short user name (for the home folder) being "demo".

i changed the "Real Name" from "Demo" to "Demo is a test account to see what happens when your name is really long does it take up the entire menu bar"

upon logging out and back in the Fast User Switching Menu item displayed my account, my full name (12 letters, not too long) and "demo" that is to say the short home folder name. so, while i put my feedback in to apple to give us an icon like every other menu extra, the menu item is indeed smart enough to NOT use the long "real name" if it's too big.

i did not however test a super long "real name" and a super long home folder name. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 05:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The user switching menu should have three display modes:

1. The current default of the active user's full name.
2. The current user's login window picture.
3. The user's account name (i.e., jsmith, jdoe).

The first two could be switched between by dragging a vertical bar like that used in OS 8.5-9 to switch the application menu between displaying names or just icons. The third might be a preference under the Login Items -> Fast User Switching section and would take the place of the first option.

Breadcrumb navigation as found in the iTunes Music Store and PathFinder would be a nice addition to the Finder. From what I've seen, Microsoft has implemented this sort of horizontal hierarchy navigation in Longhorn.

If you would like a terminal application with tabs, try out the free iTerm:

http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

There is a contextual menu item to open the working Finder directory in a new iTerm tab available at

http://www.tco.net/~dscott/software/itermhere/

AOL has bridged the AIM and ICQ networks, so you can already chat with ICQ buddies in iChat. See

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2003062517051677&q...

for details. Something tells me that Apple was given access to the full AIM protocol only because they signed a deal not to implement competitor's protocols.

Apple shipping themes for KDE or GNOME would do little towards making Qt or Gtk apps anything like OS X applications. As everyone knows, there is a hell of a lot more to an interface than the appearance.

Virtual desktops are indeed useful, but I don't think it is a feature that Apple should add. Effectively integrating it into the UI would require substantial redesign of the existing application interaction model and UI elements. Should the Dock show all applications or just those of the current desktop? How would drag and drop work? Should applications open consistently on the active desktop or on that which they were last displayed? Would minimized windows be displayed in all Docks?

As long as Apple is moving more and more towards the MPEG standards and away from proprietary things like Sorenson, they will not license any of Microsoft's proprietary media technologies. If Microsoft wants such content to be playable in OS X browsers, it is up to them to produce a plug-in. Apple didn't do this for Real, so why should they for Microsoft?

The green Zoom button should not act as a maximize button. Developers whose applications behave this way have chosen to ignore the Aqua HIG. I sigh when I see Windows users bouncing back and forth between the taskbar and application windows because they have ALL of their applications maximized, regardless of whether or not the content requires that much space. If an application is well designed, you can manually maximize your main application window once and the application should remember that setting. The Zoom widget will then toggle between your setting and the application's default.

The fixed menubar is one of the things that makes the Macintosh UI efficient - it is a constant, stable target which allows for muscle memory. The menus in Gnome/KDE/Windows move with the application, placing the menubar in very different positions depending on what application you are using. Of course, this changes if you maximize all your windows. :-)

OS X's UI is far from perfect, but implementing the lousy designs of other operating environments is not the answer. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 05:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would like to add some comments because it seems that there are some mistakes in this article reflecting some lackes in the knowledge of this system.

- First about expose. As it is described in the Apple documentation, its already possible to assign the mouse buttons to activate expose. Here is what we can read:

"Using mouse buttons.
And those of you who use a multi-button mouse can also assign Exposé actions to the extra buttons on your favorite rodent."

- Now about live backround. Basically so far it is a hidden feature. A command line option allow MaCOsX to use the screen saver as a live backround. This is possible since jaguar, and Apple doesn't use it officially because its a CPU heavy task on computers that do not support quartzextrem. For sure its fun (not usefull), maybe for a next version, but just to say that MacOsX can already do it.

- Sherlock already has a plug-ins architecture.

- I don't think that the speech recognition system is a mess. Its so far the most advanced one available and built in a os. Of course it can always be better, but it is already quite nice system, which works very well. But i would agree to say that it would be nice to have it for other languages.

- The problem of the WMV format. Safari can not read because Microsoft did not port their windows media codec 9 on mac yet. That's why Safari can not read contents when they are encoded in this format. The Real codec works fine. Its not the fault of Apple, and as far as i know, Microsoft has said that they are working on a mac version of their codec.

-X11 is already integrated into quartz. That's why the Apple x11 version is much faster than for example xdarwin. x11 is hardware accelerated because of quartz extrem, and every x11 windows behave as an aqua window. You can put it in the dock, minimize it and so on....The theme of the x11 windows will be either Motif, or KDE, or GNOME, depending on what you have installed in your machine.

-Apache and php are already bundled with MacOsX as a default installation. Check your terminal. But yes it would be nice to have MySql and PostgreSQL as well.

-MacOsX search engine (VTwin) can already do a search on content!! Hey did you really use MacOs?

-Applications preferences or plugins do not make the system unstable at all!!!!!They are stored in the user library folder, you can leave them as long as you want.

-Unicode support on MacOsX is maybe the best around. Some applications (like Office or adobe's ones) have problemes with language because they are not built in a bundle, as modern osx applications should do, but still use the same package as mac classic. This prevents a easy localization of the applications, because they need to compile an application version for each different language, which is not nice. Instead the modern architecture of osx and its great support of unicode allows the developppers to translate their application in many languages as they want, and build it in the bundle technology. It allows for the developper to have only one executable that can work with many languages without recompiling. And the user can switch between languages with a mouse click. Do you know any other os that can do so?
I don't think so....Most of the osx applications work like this now (check for exemple Keynote), carbon and cocoa applications support the bundle architecture. Osx is a great international os, because this the same os wherever you are. I am now in Japan, i bought osx here, and i can use it in French, .....isn't great.

But i am agree that some languages need a better support like Greek, Arabic.....So its not a probleme of Unicode support but of language support. And i hope that Adobe and Microsoft will use the osx bundle for their futur applications.

-Speed, speed, speed. I am little bit disappointed that you don't talk about the very important optimization that has been done in Panther. Panther is really fast, faster than windowsxp, as the multithreading is much better. Even uhe Ui is now very fast, and in the recent computers, there is even nothing to say, ...its fast. Even on old computers its much than just usuable.
And you say that on a dual G5, the resize of Itunes is not good enough, ......sorry its really to much to say so!!!! Maybe Imovie yes, but i think that it is a problem related to the application optimization, rather than because of the os.

Ok so i finished, and i would like to say that i agree as well to a lot of your proposals, which are interesting. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Okay, so the wishlist for 10.4 is a bunch of features linux users love and that are things the traditional mac userbase has little to no need or use for.

Gestures? Please, I'm an artist. The last thing I need is for expose to hatch open in the midst of shading a photoshop layer. Theme support? I know ONE mac user- ONE! - who uses Kaleidescope in OS 9. JUST ONE. Out of SCORES. Funny, the default UI is more than good enough for damned near all of us... this need for themes must come from windows/linux, with most of the WMs having offensive defaults...


Virts? Yes, they'd be nice. So would a gui for the FS tab. So would WINDOW SHADING DEAR GODS.

This wishlist made comparisons to Be a few times. That's all fine and dandy. But Apple bought NeXT, they didn't buy Be. And if there's anything I liked at ALL about Be, it was how Be did WINDOWSHADING.


If you're going to nitpick, nitpick about fundamental UI design calls that affect ALL users. Basically all of the griping in this article can be solved by installing linux, so the question is.... why the hell are you running OS X in the first place, if you want it to do all of these things other operating systems already do? Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >some mistakes in this article reflecting some lackes in the knowledge of this system.

Please read my article carefully before you reply like this, ok?

>And those of you who use a multi-button mouse can also assign Exposé actions to the extra buttons on your favorite rodent."

For the 10000th time, I don't want to put that on the mouse. My mouse has 3 buttons (as most mice have), and I need all 3 of them to do what they were meant to do (see: not expose)

>Sherlock already has a plug-ins architecture.

We know that, thank you very much. What we don't like is the fact that there are no usable third party plugins to utilize it. Watson STILL does the job better.

> Its not the fault of Apple, and as far as i know, Microsoft has said that they are working on a mac version of their codec.

I don't care whose fault it is. Me, as a consumer, I want WMV on my browser. End of story. I don't care if it is Bill's or Steve's fault.

>X11 is already integrated into quartz

We know that too. How about some APPLICATION integration though??? X11 apps are all very seperate and different on the way they work with the rest of the OSX apps.

>Panther is really fast, faster than windowsxp, as the multithreading is much better.

Sorry, but this is not the case here. Resising and scrolling apps is way faster on XP. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? With all these new features Eugenia the price will probably go up about $20, since that is how they determine how much they will charge. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hey!!! come down please, i did not want to upset you.

I mean, that there are some mistakes in your article, or maybe its not clear, that's all..... Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Open the System Preferences -> Exposé and choose a corner of the screen for activation... Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? PLEASE read the previous replies and the article more carefully before you reply the same thing as others, for 1000th time. I DON'T WANT to use the mouse for Expose! Aaah... it is so tiring to reply the same thing over and over! Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So you want gestures that don't use a mouse then :-)

Me I just use command - right mouse button. What does that normally do? Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hello,

@Eugenia
"(even the fastest dual G5 can't resize iTunes or iMovie without 'losing frames' during the process)."

I agree, but even BeOS or WinXP lose frames during the process (particularly for windows with complex UI, even on very fast PCs). But they are cheating so you don't notice it (well in fact you do, but it's less disturbing). In fact when they don't achieve to refresh the window content fast enough to not lose frames, they replace it by solid color content and the border and window still look in sync with the mouse pointer and as it take maybe only 1 sec to resynchronize the refresh you don't really take care of the trick.

I agree it'd be fine if it can be the same in OS X. I find that it look better with this trick than without

Regards Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There is already a virtual desktop app for Jaguar which does things like this:

http://img.osnews.com/img/4931/visual_expose.jpg

Its called Desktop Manager and is available at

http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/

(see screenie at http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/desktopshot.png ) Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Fluff! Who needs clutter with virtual desktops? Who needs fluff with flying toasters behind your desktop documents?

Please. Apple need to get faster machines out and a faster OS. And Apple need to support the one industry that got them their meager 5 % market share: the graphics users.

The screen fonts are horrible (screw Anti-aliasing! Who has the bad eye(i)sight at Apple? We've got LCDs now. Give us crips, pixel'd text!!! My PC LCD is crisp with WindBlows XP.
So make that a feature to OPT-Out of.

Separate Disk Copy from the disk utility. That was just dumb.

Buy a company and absorb their font manager (hint-extensis) and allow the NATIVE management od Postscript, TT and OpenType faces.

Hey, where is the low-level format feature??? Thu, 30 Oct 2003 13:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1) I would like to see shortcut keys to start and stop speaking text. Victoria reads me slashdot articles every day. :-D

2) There is a shortcut to minimize, but there is no shortcut to zoom/maximize/whatever. That seems off-balance to me.

3) Mac has always attracted artsy folks, but I'm a musical guy and I'd like to see OS X native music notation software. I haven't looked in awhile, but last I knew all such apps either ran in OS 9 or cost $$$.

4) Apparently, there used to be a program that would emulate Sony Playstation hardware so you could use those CD's in your Mac. Sony shut them down, but if Apple were to license that IP, they might attract some gamers. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? YES! Give me .NET support and I'll be doing all kinds of OS X coding... from my Windows system. ;-)

But seriously, this would let me (and maybe the company I work for) solve a bunch of problems...

- chrish Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? chrish is here... cooooooool Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Spatial Finder, and a much faster filesystem. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? a lot of good points, though i disagree on a few, they are all just personal points. the only place you really lost me was on speed.

i mean, yes, we all want every OS/system to be faster, but come on, they just let the G5 out of the gate, in panther most have seen great speed increases, (it made my iBook a whole new machine in many cases) and they are already taking about more increases.

window resizing? i can run several tasks at once, and still do most faster on my iBook than my brothers 3 month old pent whatever at 3.0. and he is running one app? do i care if his windows look nice when he resizes? actually, come to think of it, mine look fine!

10.1 was faster than 10, 10.2 faster than 10.1, 10.3 is ripping fast so far, and you have to ask for speed? what on earth are you doing on that thing?

tell the truth, the day they release a version that clearly outpaces the fastest machines from everyone else, and on G3 hardware, and they ship it on a quad cpu G6 that has twice the speed of the latest x86 by every benchmark, you will say, "yeah, but it could be faster." ;-) Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? YOU CAN HAVE VIRTUAL DESKTOPS Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Virtual desktops were demonstrated by david pogue using PANTHER 10.3 on the screesavers the other night. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? its a shame that this site doesnt have any1 more mac-related to write these articles.
some of the requests on the article are either dumb. or could be introduced in 10.4.3 for example.
the rest are crap...


first of all (i think expose does support mouse clicks) but even if it didnt.. who cares.. hot corners are much more convenient.

second of all comant+tab enhacement ? cummon freakin on. expose takes care of this with the applications window option. command+tab is useless..

fast user ICON ? cummon . a 10 year old can think of somethin better for the next upgrade.


as for some other features .. thats what 3rd party applications exist.. the OS cannot include evertythin...

MAC OS X upgrade is not just eye-candy enhancements. panther includes fast pdf + finder searchin. expose. file vault. easier software update.. etc...

these are the technologies that mac programmers work on. and on on THEMES AND FAST USER SWITCHIN ICONS.

os news. get a new writer Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Ever tried holding Command and clicking the title in a window in the finder? I've been using that since OS 8.1 Thu, 30 Oct 2003 16:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? First of all, to surpass the old FS metaphor, give a transparent SQL FileSystem mit excessive support for meta data, that way:
- realitime queries one more than just the filename are at ease
- way more data can be saved/attached to other atomic data
- improvements on the poor enterprise market
- all apps will automagically benefit from it
- give the users back the control of the data storage mechanism the iApp currently poorly occupy (own file hierarchy, poor file naming conventions, no drag&drop outside the iApps)

This is where user experience fail to a great extend in MacOS (and look for longhorn in this respect!) Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Microsoft has a team internally that is working on a version of .NET for the PPC/Mac platform. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Honestly, I dont care if it has Windows compatibility or the ability to run Windows, nor do I care for theming especially since OSX clearly doesnt need it. I think Apple should associate itself more with the open source community to make itself look like the good guy. Closer ties with linux and the larger projects of linux would be the right path. Then perhaps they could even get Transgaming involved for the gaming-inclined user. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? uhm. mac os x client comes with php and apache by default. as well as python, ruby, perl, etc. mysql is a download away. if you want server apps installed by default with a nice configuration UI, go buy Mac OS X SERVER (comes with mysql too). that's what it's there for. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >There is already a virtual desktop app for Jaguar which does things like this:
>http://img.osnews.com/img/4931/visual_expose.jpg
>Its called Desktop Manager and is available at
>http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/

I am sorry, but you have completely misunderstood what my screenshot shows. These four rectangles are NOT a virtual desktops, they are buttons to trigger the 4 states of Expose.
I already use virtual desktops via CT Virtual Desktop application, but what I asked in that screenshot is Expose' triggering, not virtual desktops. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So that the next PowerBooks can have 2400 * 1500 (approx)
displays and yet still have text which is readable.

You would decide how many dpi you wanted to use for the GUI. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The author has little to no understanding of OS design in general, much less that on the Mac. A grasp of grammar and basic writing skills would also be in order for someone writing for OS News one would think. All she can do is yell and scream at everyone who disagrees with her poorly written article. Most of the technologies she wants to bloat into Mac OS already exist in one form or fashion and really aren't the repsonsiblity of Apple. While I agree with a handful of her suggestions, we already have enough third-party developers yelling at Apple because Apple is slowing encroaching on their territory. Also, most of the technologies that the author wants already exist in her favorite example (Windows), and if she needs those technologies that badly, Microsoft will be happy to help. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice wish list. I'll start with some questions...:
I like that MacOS X has a unix base - but I know very little about how I can take advantage of applications written for it and I'd like to. Maybe that's simply an FAQ - explain window managers to me, how to install a package - or maybe it needs more. BTW - from a Usability perspective, if they add a Gnu window manager and it looks and acts different, it's harder for the mac user - but making it LOOK the same but ACT different is to be avoided!

I like the idea of an Apple Bochs x86 emulator. If they preloaded a Redhat for x86 on it would it give me the ability to easily run anything? Could we even have a full "virtual" Yellow Dog Linux for PPC running? Whichever of those - is it feasible to use the MacGUI for the X11 display?

And then some comments:
I loved the idea of an external x86 box on Firewire - just with memory and processor. Let the Mac provide hard disk, keyboard, mouse, and an emulated graphics card. If mass produced, it would be cheap.

I also like the remote desktop idea, but would go one further. Allow 2 users simultaneously. Allow my really old Mac to become a terminal off my new Mac. Maybe this could be charged for.

Lastly a quicktime issue - on both Windows and Mac. Because our screens are high resolution, a quicktime movie appears small. We can double the size in Quicktime browser, but what about when it's built into a webpage? I want to have that at double size. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://msbetas.net/V6/?postid=74

heres a nice link for our wonderful writer here at osnews...
take a look at this.

i know it hurts u that macs are so good Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am sorry, but you have completely misunderstood what my screenshot shows. These four rectangles are NOT a virtual desktops, they are buttons to trigger the 4 states of Expose.
I already use virtual desktops via CT Virtual Desktop application, but what I asked in that screenshot is Expose' triggering, not virtual desktops.

Aren't hot-corners easier? they are a much easier "target" than some little icon on the top bar. Fri, 31 Oct 2003 06:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Expose' Enhancement: Yes, but not the way you want it. Your method isn't any better than hot corners. What it really needs is the ability to let the user select any hotkey combination. You have to remember that the point of Expose is to not make the user move their mouse around and scrounge for the window they want, which is why its so great for that 4th mouse button. Your solution would just make the user hunt for a small icon on the menubar, in violation of fitts law. Bad interface, no cookie.

Reach same applications' windows via Command+TAB and Cursor Keys: No, this is what expose is for. Having two interfaces to do the exact same thing is silly. One is an application switcher, the other is a window switcher. This would confuse users.

Fast User Switching Icon Item: This one is good.

Sherlock Plugins: The API is there. No reason developers can't make this happen. You seem to be putting on Apple the responsiblity of the entire development community.

Scheduled Tasks: Amen!

WMV/ASF Safari plugin: Don't hold your breath. Microsoft is under no obligation to make such a plugin, and frankly they're probably bitter about being forced out of the OS X browser market by safari, and they'd love nothing more than to have Apple come crawling back begging for a browser that people will use.

More IM Protocol support and USB cameras: More IM Protocols would require Apple to give up the sweetheart deal they have with AOL, losing filesharing via iChat, among other things. USB cameras don't provide the bandwidth for the experience that Apple wants to sell. If Apple can't give you the experience they want to give you, they'd rather you go without. Sucks, but it allows them to advertise a killer experience that's consistent across computers. That's a big one for apple, consistency.

Hotmail and Yahoo! email integration to Mail.app: Sorry, but Apple doesn't need to provide this. You want to use those services, you use the interfaces that they provide. MS isn't going to allow Apple to access it's POP servers, and I wouldn't bet on Yahoo doing it either.

1-client Remote Desktop: God yes! ARD client is built into panther, but its annoying that I can't spy on my tower from my ibook.

Scanner sharing: Already there.

Modern Web Presence: choices 1 and 4 are already there. 2 and 3 aren't free.

Included Virtual PC: DEFINITELY NOT! This is Apple admitting that it needs windows. Apple relies on the belief that mac users can do everything windows users can do (true or not). If Apple bundled windows, it would be admitting defeat. Microsoft controls virtual emulation on the mac, there's no way they'd give that up, despite your belief that Apple could buy it off them.

Support for the .NET Platform: Again, admitting defeat. Microsoft will write their own support for .NET for mac, I'm sure.

Application Management: Wholly agree.

Subscription-based, Live Support: This is a great idea, but it sounds like it would be the end of Apple's profitable quarters.

Overall, not bad. But you really should run your ideas through a reality check. Fri, 31 Oct 2003 06:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Included Virtual PC"

I'm sure Microsoft (the current owners of Virtual PC) would be completely behind this idea because this would allow them the opportunity to sell a copy of Windows to every Macintosh user as well, but this would not be in Apples interest. Apple needs more software developed for the Mac OS, not the ability to run Windows programs directly. Emulating Windows will always be far to inefficient to ever be a long-term solution, much less cost issues.

What Apple needs is to make porting a Windows application to Mac OS X as simple as porting a Linux program. For the most part, a developer should be able to simply recompile to app under Mac OS X, perhaps reconfigure the GUI to match the Quartz GUI standard and then be able to begin debugging. This could be done if Apple were to work with the developers of W.I.N.E. (http://www.winehq.com/) to port Wine to Mac OS X.

In this capacity WINE would not allow Windows software to run right out of the box, but it would allow for developers the ease of porting I wrote about earlier. This is because WINE for Mac OS X would allow for the use of the larger portion of the Windows APIs within Mac OS X. This would allow Windows code-bases to be used both on Windows AND in Mac OS X with little to know changes between, but resulting in programs that looked native to both operating systems (assuming the developer took the time to rework the GUI). Fri, 31 Oct 2003 20:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Would be nice to see Apple complete its implementation of spring-loaded folders on OSX, even with the new Panther finder. By full implementation, I mean being able to drill down through the disk heirarchy without having to be dragging something with you. While the new Finder makes life simple with regard to drilling into the heirarchy, I have not been able to get used to the fact that I can't do the same thing through the click-and-a-half method used in OS9. (Old habits die hard, and this was a good, time-saving habit).) It would also be nice to have spring-loaed function on the Dock...allowing a user to drill into the directory structure in the dock while dragging a file, and then allowing the user to drop that file in the place where he or she navigated to. Sat, 01 Nov 2003 01:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "What Apple needs is to make porting a Windows application to Mac OS X as simple as porting a Linux program. This could be done if Apple were to work with the developers of W.I.N.E. (http://www.winehq.com/) to port Wine to Mac OS X."

Yes, far better than including Windows (which helps MS). Still, I'd rather not have all the developers writing for Windows, then compiling for Mac. Apple took "Classic" APIs and wrote "Carbon", then he made sure Carbon would work on MacOS 9. I'd like to see the same done for Windows (they could base it on WINE)

If Apple made an API that runs on Windows & Mac (& Linux?) maybe they could then add tastes of Cocoa (or all of cocoa) to that API. Sat, 01 Nov 2003 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments