The best ever version of Mac OS X, 10.3 Panther, is now available. Panther includes more than 150 new features, enhancements and optimizations. However, anything that’s ‘great’ can become ‘near-perfect’ with a bit more effort, right? Read our 10.4 wish list and then use the comment section to post your own wish list for the next version of OSX. Apple engineers and product managers, take notice!
Expose’ Enhancement
Yes, Expose’ is really cool and functional. However, without mouse gestures to activate it or without a small set of buttons either in the notification area or the Dock, it makes it pretty far reaching for me. Call me lazy, but I prefer to use the mouse to do things rather than reaching the Fn keys on the keyboard (no, hot corners won’t cut it for me, they activate Expose accidentally too easily and I want my mouse buttons assigned to their normal actions, not to Expose’). Here is a mockup of what I would like.
Virtual Desktops (workspaces)
As I said above, Expose is really cool, but for some advanced users it does not completely take away the need for virtual desktops. This is because it is very convenient to have a full screen Windows XP desktop on one virtual workspace, and then have another for X11, and another for email and another for casual browsing or chatting, and another for real work. It just helps out organizing better your work with the computer. There are a few third party utilities that enable this function, but they all have their problems, mostly with X11’s window manager. If Apple was to incorporate such a feature on OSX, I am sure they would have all the developer support they needed to make it work properly. I see Expose as a complimentary to workspaces, not as an replacement.
Reach same applications’ windows via Command+TAB and Cursor Keys
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. On BeOS, you could use the cursor keys (Up and Down) and navigate to the open windows of the same app. Sure, Expose can do that even prettier, but if Expose was the answer to everything, this application switcher utility wouldn’t have made its way to Panther in the first place.
Path Navigation
Since I tried Path Finder, I fell in love with its main feature: Path Navigation. You basically get some buttons automatically added to its window every time you navigate inside a new folder. By having the whole way in the form of small buttons, you can navigate to that already walked path, back and forward, extremely quickly. Much faster than the normal “Back” button.
Fast User Switching Icon Item
I have being talking about this in the past as well: I would have preferred the option to have a small 16×16 icon on the menu bar that, by clicking it, would drop down the list of users, instead of displaying my full name on the menu bar. Even on 1280×1024, it does not leave enough screen space for some demanding apps that span across 12-14 menu items. It’s bad enough for my name, but I imagine that someone with a full name like Alejandra Francesca Rodriguez López de Medina won’t be happy at all to see that on her 1024×768 iBook or iMac…
Live Backgrounds
This is mostly a gimmick, but Apple is known for gimmicks, so I am sure I am talking to the right people. The idea is to have “live” backgrounds instead of static pictures. Of course, instead of destracting objects and animations (people with no usability in mind can easily create those, there could just be some “lite” motion Flash or 3D movements, e.g. a waterfall, or a picture of a mountain under the snow which gradually changes depending on the time of day (e.g. it would look different in the morning, different in the night etc). Other more useful applications of this idea would be to have a picture of a rotating Earth with light on the parts of the planet that it is currently day (like XEarth). I am sure Apple could find some great ideas to further enhance the “wow” factor of Mac OS X; they seem to like stuff like that at the Infinite Loop… 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.
Some Theme Support
Please let me make myself clear about this: I don’t like themes too much. I don’t like the user ability to download buggy or butt-ugly themes and install them and then brag how great (==different) his desktop looks like (usually it doesn’t). However, some themability is not a bad idea. Especially if the color and widget themes in question are made all by Apple, are well-designed, have being tested for usability and accessibility, and are consistent across the board with Carbon, Cocoa, X11 and Java apps. Then, in that scenario, I say ‘yes!,’ bring it on. Otherwise, please leave it as is. ‘Less is more’ anyway.
Finder Plugins
This was my all-time-favorite from my BeOS days. Extend the functionality of the file manager with plugins. The possibilities are endless. It works on currently selected files and folders and then, by selecting these plugins, you can act on these selections (with a gui or not). Ideas for little-easy-to-create plugins: bulk renaming, Terminal-Here, ToUpper, ToLower, Unix2Dos, Mac2Unix (end of line formatting for text files), CreateThumbnail (for images), CompressIt, UncompressIt, Create DiskImage, BurnNow, Label-it, RunAsUserName, SecureDelete, SendtoFloppy, EmailThis, ViewAsHex, Diff, ConvertImage, FTPit and many-many-many more. Plugins are a very clever idea to ultimately enhance the functionality of any desktop, and it pretty much comes “for free,” as third party developers would be able to provide these with the use of a simple API.
Sherlock Plugins
This might destroy Karelia (which is a company I have much respect), but if we can get Watson’s full functionality for free, well, I will have to be the selfish consumer and say that I would love to see it all in Sherlock, free of charge. While Sherlock is a good utility, Watson is still far more complete and offers great enhancements, like multiple dictionaries, phonebook search worldwide, recipies, TV search and much more. For now, it is still Watson for me.
Scheduled Tasks
Currently, Mac OS X has two ways of scheduling tasks: 1) with the Unix ‘cron’ command and 2) Via AppleScript. None of the two are elegant solutions for Mac users though. The first one requires Unix knowledge and the second one requires some “programming,” which can be daunting for the 35-year old secretary in a small business office without an IT department, typing letters all day with her 2-inch wine-red fingernails. An easy-to-use GUI, I believe, is required and could help a lot of people automate some of their work without too much effort. WindowsXP does it, so…
Better Speech Synthesis and Speech Recognition
And speaking of natural language, what I would like to see in a future Mac OS X is some “intelligent” built-in speech recognition, so you can control your Mac via voice without the mess and restrictions of the current speech recognition system. Also, the current speech synthesis is below par, although better than Jaguar’s. I saw a demo from a company which specializes in speech synthesis and I could not distinguish if it was a person speaking or the computer (running on a Transmeta 600 Mhz CPU no less). There is still lots of optimizations and enhancements in this specific area in OSX.
WMV/ASF Safari plugin
This is a must-have for me. I need full plugin support for both QT, Real and MS Media Player formats. Very often I find myself at launch.yahoo.com and wanting to view music video clips, in WMV format. This is one thing I can not do with a Mac, and I am sure it is one less reason for any Windows user to switch. Oh, and MPlayer OSX doesn’t do the job in this particular situation; I require a browser plugin, not just a standalone player.
Undo on Safari
How many times you find yourself typing something in a text area and suddenly the text disappears because of a combination of keys you might have hit accidentally? Unfortunately, Safari doesn’t support CMD+Z to Undo the mistake. Poof, all your text is gone!
Tabs in Terminal.app
I am an SDI person generally speaking, but sometimes I do like the handiness of tabs in applications. Terminals and browsers are the only apps where I endorse them so far.
More IM Protocol support and USB cameras
I personally use Fire and/or Proteus because I need support for all four popular IM protocols: MSN, Y!, AIM and ICQ. While Fire does the job adequately, iChat does it more elegantly. I would love to see support on iChat for all four protocols, including camera and audio support for MSN and Y!. And speaking of cameras, enabling USB cameras to work wouldn’t be a bad idea for users, even if it would cripple iSight’s sales. Apple should give us the choice to be able to purchase a $30 Creative USB camera and work out of the box, we users should not be forced into the monopoly of the $150 iSight (and yes, I do own an iSight). There are some hacks to enable USB cameras to work with iChat, but these are just hacks that break from one OSX version to another.
Better X11 Integration, KDE/Gnome consistency
Not every OSX user requires X11. In fact, most will never need it. However, for us geeks, X11 is important. I use it all the time with either Fink or by displaying my Slackware’s Gnome 2.4 from my AthlonXP on my OSX’s desktop. It would have being great if X11 was tied and integrated to Quartz instead of just running “on top.” If integrated, we would be able to put our X apps in the Dock and use them as regular OSX apps. Additionally, I would like to see Apple to work on clipboard support with popular X toolkits and also create Qt and GTK+ themes that resemble the default Mac OS X widget set and coloring theme. I like consistency on all my desktops; it makes things simpler and cleaner. Additionally, I wouldn’t mind Apple shipping a CD or providing via DarwinPorts an “official” port of KDE and Gnome libraries and some related apps (e.g. KOffice, Kontact, Evolution, Mr. Project, AbiWord, Gnumeric etc). Amusingly, DarwinPorts was part of the betas in 10.3, but was removed in the final. To recap, I am not interested at all in running the Gnome or KDE desktop on top of my Finder’s, but I am interested in running some of their bundled or third party apps, to all blend perfectly in the rest of the guest OS, OSX.
Hotmail and Yahoo! email integration to Mail.app
Mail.app already supports .Mac IMAP mail accounts and while .Mac is good business for Apple, most computer users are using Hotmail and Yahoo! when it comes to web mail. I would like to see support for these protocols on Mail.app via some sort of licensing. Currently, there is a third party Hotmail plugin for Mail.app, but it ain’t stable and crashes Mail.app randomly when used.
1-client Remote Desktop
Windows XP Pro does it, X11 does it too. But Apple is charging $300+ bucks for the ability to connect to another of your Macs with Apple Remote Desktop. Currently, that price is for 10-clients and I agree with companies need to make money. However, a free, bundled version of Apple Remote Desktop with only 1-client license would be Godsend for many users! It is very important for people who want to work from home. My husband does it all the time with his Win2k laptop connecting from home to his work’s VPN and his XP Pro machine. He didn’t have to pay a dime for it and it has made his and my life much easier. And yes, I did try VNC and TightVNC on OSX. They immensely suck stability-wise and they are extremely slow compared to a real, native solution.
Database Integration between Local and Networked Apps
Note how you can share iTunes’ playlist using Rendezvous or an IP-based authentication? Wouldn’t be great if such data exchange could be achieved by more applications on the Mac, using the same secure protocol based on XML and maybe a back-end database (that could be tied to the filesystem for all that I care). This way you could share your photos, your music, etc., by using not only proprietary Apple apps, but any other third party app could make use of the protocol. Suddenly, all apps would interoperate, because they would be built upon the same structure and architecture.
Scanner sharing
Anyone knows how to share my scanner connected to an OSX machine, over the network to other PCs or Macs? I can’t use Image Capture’s preferences because it blocks the official Epson and SilverFast driver, so I would need this option on the main Preference panel (read the next page where I explain the problem).
Modern Web Presence
It would be lovely if Apple could bundle Apache, mySQL or PostgreSQL and PHP by default. For me, this is a development platform and I find it unfair that C/C++/Java/ObjC developers get their tools for free and easily-installed, while web developers will have to either buy the Server OSX edition or go through the pain of installing the software and the Apache addons manually through trial and error.
Included Virtual PC
This would be a killer feature: the ability to run Windows or Linux inside Mac OS X, for free (Windows OS installed manually by the user, not included in the OSX package of course). I can already imagine the TV ad: “Two worlds come together! Run Windows. But with the elegance of your Mac. Think Different!” A free Windows/PC emulator can solve a lot of problems for people who want to do the switch and they are set back for one reason or other other. And I believe that Apple could purchase the source of Virtual PC off Microsoft, because MS bought it off Connectix mostly for their Windows reasons (running them inside future Windows versions as emulated or grid-like). MS said that they are committed to doing more Mac versions, however, if Apple could incorporate this as an OS feature, it is a big win to guarantee more switchers. And with Apple’s marketshare declining towards 2%, this feature could help a lot. Unfortunately, RealPC was a hoax, Bochs is ranging from unusable-to-very-slow, and VMWare is not available for non-x86s (neither it can become, as it relies on x86). The only viable solution today would be to somehow license or purchase the Mac version of Virtual PC off MS. Strategically-speaking, Apple should have done this years ago already, purchasing it from Connectix. Letting someone else purchase Connectix’s IP was a huge strategic mistake.
Office Solution
Except the dated and seemingly abandoned AppleWorks and the overpriced MS Office, there are no modern and cheap office solutions today on the Mac. Only latest addition is X11-based OpenOffice.org, but until X11 becomes more integrated to OSX, I don’t see OOo taking off with the regular Mac crowd (see: no geeks). KOffice, Gnome Office and OOo can greatly help the situation here if released as easy-to-install bundles, however, X11 integration to the OSX system is imperative beforehand. Some say that Keynote is just one part of a larger, new, office solution developed by Apple, but this is just a rumor that I can’t hold on to. In the meantime, there is a “market hole” here.
Support for the .NET Platform
Personally, I believe that it would be great if Apple started working on a .NET implementation, either based on Mono, or on a licensed codebase by Microsoft. Many would think that engaging on .NET would strength Microsoft’s position and weaken Apple’s, but I don’t believe so. Apple is already ‘weak’ at 2.2% market share, and supporting the technologies of the big competitor with the 95% of marketshare would only strengthen Apple at this point. Besides, .NET is actually a good technology and, if this is what it takes to get more apps or more developer switchers, then this is what has to be done, politicalities and zealotry aside. Business is business.
DB-based 64-bit Filesystem & NL Parsing
In the file system area we see many innovations from SGI’s XFS and Be’s BFS in 64-bit and metadata-enabled fs, while ReiserFS and WinFS will soon bring database support on their backend. And there is always more exotic stuff, like Seth Nickel’s Storage concept, which allows users to search and use the file system using natural language. Also, ability to search on content rather than just metadata or filename would be good.
Application Management
I absolutely love the simplicity of uncompressing an archive and drag-n-drop the binary to your /Applications or your ~/ folder. However, there are cases where applications install preferences, plugins or drivers to the system and, when you later delete the app, these files remain to your system. This renders your system “unclean” and maybe even unstable after a while, as most of these apps come without an “uninstall” facility. I would like to see a smart way for the system to “connect” these apps with these files and, upon deletion, to clean up the system for me. Or force the developers to provide visual uninstallation methods. More users are too lazy to hunt down such files in directories they don’t normally view.
Full MIME support
ArsTechnica editors have complained about this feature for years, and Mac OS X still lacks full MIME support. Hopefully Apple will see the light soon.
Support for more DVD-+RW/R devices
Support for more DVD-+RW/R devices in iDVD than only Apple’s devices.
Better Unicode Support
One of the biggest problems in Mac OS X today is localization. Cocoa seems to have good unicode support, and it gets better with every release, but most applications written in Carbon have major problems with other languages & unicode. DTP applications, Photoshop and MS Office for example don’t work well or not at all with, e.g., Greek. Meanwhile, Rainbow.gr (the Greek Apple reseller) is selling a utility that enables Greek support on Carbon apps, but that’s an additional $200(!) on top of an already expensive machine for Greek standards ($900-$1000 salary per month on average). And that’s only for machines purchased from Rainbow (if you bought your Mac elsewhere, they won’t even sell you their hack!). Many classics and archeology faculties in Universities in Europe and the States as well as print houses and institutions are forced to switch to Windows because of the lack of support for Greek, and other languages in OS X. Greek Mac users have put online more information here and a petition here, but the problem is with other languages as well, not just Greek.
Better Backwards Compatibility
With each OSX release, many applications stop working. Out of the ~7000 OSX applications, about 5-10% of them are rendered useless until their developers recompile their apps for the new OSX. This is annoying and there is a lot of unnecessary inconvenience. Comparatively, Windows includes much better compatibility with its older applications. 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. Mac OS X can’t even run some apps released six months ago, e.g. the Palm Desktop, the non-Safari OmniWeb version, while I also had problems with Lost Marble’s Moho.
Better Hardware Resource Management
It is very annoying when your scanner used to work great with the previous Jaguar version and suddenly it won’t work on Panther because Apple introduced their own driver for the specific scanner and doesn’t share the resources or allow the Epson driver to take control when asked inside Photoshop.(What happens is that ImageCapture sees that the scanner is present, and opens the driver. When Photoshop comes around, the scanner is busy).
Share a FireWire Drive without Rebooting
Ability to be able to share the hard drive via FireWire without rebooting the computer (log out is ok, though, if necessary). Currently, you have to reboot the host computer and hold down ‘T’ until the firewire logo comes up.
Less bugs, more security
Panther came with its own share on bugs (read here and here). Bugs are normal in consumer software, especially when it involves interoperating with hardware created by many different manufacturers. But the fewer bugs, the better. And the more security, the better. For example, better implementation of the Airport security would be welcome: “I can never login to my buddies router by the 128-bit ascii – I can do it with hex. works fine on any other windows machine!” my friend Noviteo told me recently.
Speed, speed, speed
What can I say? I am a speed junkie. I want to be able to resize all windows and scroll in them as fast as I can on BeOS or even on Windows XP. I want to have the “feeling” of ultimate UI responsiveness. I want to feel good about my computer, not feel that it sucks and that I need to get a faster one. And when the faster one is here, is still not good enough (even the fastest dual G5 can’t resize iTunes or iMovie without ‘losing frames’ during the process).
Subscription-based, Live Support
And finally, it would be great if registered customers could get “live” support with an Apple representative via iChat and iSight audio/video conferencing and maybe with the help of the Apple Remote Desktop facility. That would be a first and a real brag for Apple and their support team compared to other OSes’ support. It is probably not a cheap solution for Apple, but if the registered customer had an extra subscription to enable him/her to get Live Support, it might be a good feature for Apple’s business.
Conclusion
So, this was my wish-list for a future Mac OS X. Some of these suggestions are critical, but overall, these wishes are mostly “enhancements,” which means that the current Panther release is already mature and full-featured for most people. And this is a good thing of course! Anyway, enough with my rambling, use the comment’s section and let me know of your wish list!
Isn’t Oracle a ‘real’ database?
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/ww…
Az Jim
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.
Agree with article.Think that OSX should definitely be more customisable.
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…
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.
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.
isn’t Oracle a ‘real’ database?
Not yet
>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+`
What some people with cash will do….
Here you go:
http://www.hotpop.com
shhh!
I meant on OS X ^
I think the idea that you have for me is just utterly stupid.
Thank you
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.
…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!!!
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!
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.
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&query…
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.
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.
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?
>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.
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.
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…..
Open the System Preferences -> Exposé and choose a corner of the screen for activation…
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!
So you want gestures that don’t use a mouse then 🙂
Me I just use command – right mouse button. What does that normally do?
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
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 )
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???
1) I would like to see shortcut keys to start and stop speaking text. Victoria reads me slashdot articles every day. 😀
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.
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
chrish is here… cooooooool
Spatial Finder, and a much faster filesystem.
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.” 😉
YOU CAN HAVE VIRTUAL DESKTOPS
Virtual desktops were demonstrated by david pogue using PANTHER 10.3 on the screesavers the other night.
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
Ever tried holding Command and clicking the title in a window in the finder? I’ve been using that since OS 8.1
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!)
Microsoft has a team internally that is working on a version of .NET for the PPC/Mac platform.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
“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).
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.
“What Apple needs is to make porting a Windows application to Mac OS X as simple as porting a Linux program. <snip>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.