design you own mac os x
 

If apple came to you and said because your a good customer of something like that how would you like to design our next mac os x what would you do? what would you change or what would you bring back from other versions of mac os x please tell me what would you do?????

There is nothing I can think of that I would change to the OS, I simply already love it.

As for the hardware, all I'd ask for is a Mac Laptop, with dedicated graphics, and a ton of RAM, in a thin aluminium enclosure, that doesn't cost the world.

a classic type of environment for boot camp, widows in anther window.

The ability to customise the visuals:

• The ability to use third-party window managers (a la Linux) so you didn't have to use the Aqua theme if you didn't want to. Could even let Windows switchers feel a little less lost.
• The ability to turn off any of the 'eye-candy' features, since for some people, they are simply annoying.
• An option for the OS to look like any previous OS (including Classic?) so people could have a functionally better system that looked identical to the one they upgraded from.

Of course, this may detract from the 'Mac look' that the guys over in Cupertino are trying so hard to sell...

Just to be clear though, I like the look of the various OS incarnations, but just feel that some of the new eye-candy introduced in Leopard is unnecessary.

I think, I would make it possible to run Mac OS on PCs. It would be of great use to many people who can't afford Macs, or just need to use PC heavily (in cases when Parallels/Boot Camp is not an option).

I like to have option to install only system OS X and not every "nice" thingy like Dashboard and the like. I love OS X, but hate to drag along the world of stuff I never use.

These are very good suggestions. I agree with all of them..

Well, Windows is even worsу than that. When I bought a brand new Sony Vaio laptop for my girlfriend I got tired removing useless apps and other stuff included

i brought my girl friend a mac mini and she loves it.

Undo accidental drag-deletes from the Dock or sidebar.
Don't delete a shortcut from the sidebar just because the network volume is not mounted.
Always have the fastest implementations of Firewire and USB 2.0.

Customized GUI. Where I can change my menu bar options, or create a small stack or pop up window instead of a menu bar, or ever have my drop menus. Move the desktop around, if I want the menu bar on the bottom let me, or on the side, or have it auto hide.

Virtual machines of OS X, with the ability to convert a virtual machine into a deployable OS image

Easier way to make Launchd items, and a lauchd overhaul.

more third party support, video games, etc

oh and a mid range mid tower Mac that you can toss any video card and hard drive you want in it. A Mac Pro is overkill for most users and not everyone wants an all-in-one

I agree with EatsWithFingers. I would also go for an extensions-based system that advanced users can go in and create custom profiles of what is on and what is off. The average person would run it as-is, the advanced user would customize it to run only those things that are essential to their particular needs. These settings are saved via a System Preference utility with ability to save various setups.

I would also have a utility that can customize almost ANY kind of preference. In FinalCut, there is this great Keyboard assignment utility where you can assign control keys to any part of the keyboard. I would make this be available to any application in order to trigger any menu operation.

I would stop making new operating systems that are not backwards compatible. Going from Tiger to Leopard, I am still having issues with Automator 2 and other applications because of Apple futzing of the OS structure.

Only problem I see with this is that when a user has some process or application disabled that another one requires to run. Unix memory management is well built enough to only allocate resources to things that are currently in use.

As for the non backwards compatibility is because of the new hardware is not supported in older OSes. If you work with a small mac network and have a master base image of OS X 10.4.6 that you use to reimage the computers with and then you add a computer that shipped with 10.4.8 you can't use that image on it.

This is suppose to change with Leopard. I went to a seminar yesterday held by Mike Bombich, and well he should need no introduction on this forum, and he was saying that even in its current state he was not totally pleased with Apple's product and he was going to make it his mission to give the users/admins better management abilities and some backwards compatibility. I think we are even starting to see it, however, macs that ship with Leopard do not really play well with Tiger. If you have an infrastructure of 6000 Tiger clients like I do, you don't want to be forced into upgrading to Leopard until you are ready to do so.

Regarding the disabled applications, I can see your point. Maybe this can be pared down to just being able to disable "goodies" rather than essentials, like what EatsWithFingers mentioned.

Interesting stuff, tlarkin. Seems like there should be some packages of code that would recognize what hardware its on and turn off or on accordingly. At least for a few years. Like for example Automator 2. Several of my most oft-used Actions are worthless now because the group designing the guts of the OS were not talking to the people designing the Application. As a result, some do not work at all. So you put in your feedback and wait months (if anything) for them to repair it. Until then, you are without your beloved Workflow applications without the ability to go back to Automator 1. It shouldn't be that an operating system cripples older applications--that just gives me pause in upgrading to the next kitty cat OS.

Most of this can already be done by raiding the kernel extensions folder. Not that there's much point to doing that; as tlarkin mentioned, most modern OSs and apps do not actually load full code for modules not actually in use.

Ironically, you might destabilize your Mac by "streamlining" it. The way OS X ships is the way it was tested. Removing components may introduce missing dependencies. If OS X supported this, then the test plan expands greatly, and the ship date possibly extended, if they are to account for missing components not causing a problem.

You mean kind of like the current Keyboard Shortcuts system preference that I used to customize a keyboard shortcut for Apple Mail?

You can't have this without having a Vista. This is a problem with every application or operating system that gets popular.
Step 1: App or OS get popular
Step 2: Next version under development
Step 3: Huge new innovations being introduced
Step 4: New innovations not backwards compatible with old OS
Step 5a: Company implements new innovations but drops backwards compatbility to maintain budget and schedule; ships on time. 50% of user base protests loudly at lack of backwards compatibility.
Step 5b. Company implements new innovations and adds 2 more tons of code to preserve backwards compatibility. Testing, budget, and schedule are impacted. Product ships late. Users yell because product ships late. 50% of user base praises backwards compatibility. Other 50% complain about applications that are 2x previous size on disk (hello, Universal Binary), apparent bloat that was not there before (backwards compatibility code), and bugs.
Step 5c: Company drops new innovations. Backwards compatibility is preserved. Users complain there is nothing new in new version (hello, Vista).

If you read the Ars Technica review of Leopard, you'll find that much of this "futzing" by Apple was to lay the groundwork for the future.

Apple is doing just fine on backwards compatibility. The PowerPC (68k), OS X (Classic), and Intel (Rosetta) transitions are three incredibly huge concessions to backwards compatibility that many companies would have deemed too expensive to attempt.

well, I have to say I agree with a lot of these suggestions, but the way things have been going I suspect what you're going to get will be small and pink. :eek:

I disagree, its been done and is currently being done in other OSes. Make it easier, make it package based and give us separate driver support.

That was to the, we'll have another vista comment

Leopard has instilled within me something that has never been there before... wait a long time before upgrading to the next operating system. I endured 10.0, then the switch to Intel, and still always upgraded to the next OS without blinking. Leopard has changed this. I am tired of switching to the next, big OS, only to find the new applications (example :Automator 2) not working properly, and having to wait for all the developers to come out with "Leopard friendly" replacement updates for my current apps.

Thats cool, I had several applications not work in Leopard and I had some compatibility issues, which have since then been fixed but it wasn't 100% smooth. Some of my apps still don't work.

I also talked with the developer of a utility that I used all the time in GarageBand. It too is pretty much broken. I asked the developer when he was going to make an update so that it would work, and he was not really in to it. He said he was tired of recreating the wheel every time Apple decided to make an OS change. I am now unable to use this utility. How long before other developers feel the same way?

This was discussed at Mike Bombich's Seminar the other day. Notice how Leopard is the 'official' release. They are certified unix now and have seem to have found some sort of standard. I agree with what you say and in fact it hurts them in enterprise levels as well. When director of technology looks at the issues long term in upgrading it doesn't make Apple feel or look that attractive. I have to hand it to microsoft, they really do a decent job of keeping things backwards compatible.

A "Backup User Data to CD/DVD" would be very useful for the low end, casual home user.... people who use their Mac to play with the internet, do email, print an occasional letter, maybe iTunes, and pretty much nothing else.

Most will not buy another hard drive for backup, one account only with no login, and most will have all the CD/DVDs that came with their operating system and software (no need to back up). What they don't have is the ability to backup the stuff they created because that is spread all over the place. (Printer drivers in use, documents, iTunes music/videos, Mail (including emails and settings), Address Book, Safari Preferences files, etc.) Yeah, I know iTunes has a burn backup built in, but others do not. Dragging the documents folder to disk doesn't really do the complete job.

An option to one click back up with an easy to restore from CD/DVD function would be nice. Most will already have the software restore disk.

Why can't we have a verify and repair hard drive function without booting from the OS disk? Realize this wouldn't repair the whole disk, but why can't that be done from a small partition that checks the rest of the disk (from ROM maybe?). Is that really impossible? Is there really no other alternative?

Yes, give credit where credit is due on that one. I have some old Education games that STILL run on Windows XP, even though they were made during the Windows 95 and 98 era. I understand that this has issues as well regarding software bloat, but sometimes I wonder as I mourn my SoundEdit Pro application sitting in the corner. :(

i would like to see if i could make my desktop like an OS 9 desktop for a little while just for old times hehe:D

Well, with the release of Leopard we see that Apple may stop "reinventing the wheel" with every OS release. They are now moving towards the certified method of developing their OS, like many other companies of have done. They are now certified Unix where as before they weren't and their hardware is certified to run Unix, OS X and Windows now. So hopefully we will see some standardization come of it.