25 Great Ideas!

[chigye]

I'd like to see the following:

(While I hate Windows, there are a few niceties it has that has been lacking in OS 9 and OS X - I don't see why Apple doesn't take these few good features and implement them in OS X - MS always steals Mac features!)

1. Have 'Hide' included on the pop-ups when clicking on the dock icon. (Yes I know there are keyboard options but why use two hands?)

2. Be able to tab through buttons on dialogue boxes (like Windows has had for years). It's good to be mouse free sometimes (or at least have the option for it). There have been too many times that I DON'T want the default option presented and it seems a pain to grab the mouse and choose when your hands are already on the keyboard and could tab to the right one!

3. Have keyboard shortcuts for buttons on dialogue boxes (like Windows has had for years). All Apple has ever supported is a few unique cases like 's' for save, 'd' for don't save, 'r' for restart etc...

4. Enable in the OS directly, 3 (or 4) docks, one in each position (left, right, bottom - and maybe the top).

5. Support menu item movements (clicking and holding on an menu item you can drag it up or down in the list). Windows supports this in many apps (like IE) but not on the Mac.

6. Have a way of releasing your IP address - currently you have to call your ISP to do this since there is no native way (to my knowledge). It's a pain when you try to switch you cable modem's connection from one computer to another.

7. The good old OS 9 Apple menu functionality (built-in, not through shareware).

8. Spring loaded folders.

9. "Click, there it is" (OS 9 extension) functionality. There are so many times I have a window open that I would love to save in or choose a folder an installer is requesting and it would be SO nice to be able to click on that open window and have that become the current folder in an open/save/choose box.

10. To be able to log out (switch user) and keep all my current apps running (like XP allows).

11. To have multiple dividers allowed in the Dock and allow anything in most of them.

12. One of the few things I don't like about the dock is that it acts as a Windows Taskbar AND a launcher. This means if I have my 10 or 20 favourite apps in the Dock and some are running and some aren't, the active apps are intermixed with the inactive ones - which I HATE with a passion. There should be a separate divider for active apps from ones just stored in the dock. If there are stored apps that become active they should move from the 'stored' section to the active section (so you don't see their icon twice) and when quit, they go back to the 'stored' section. Apps that aren't stored in the dock would just disappear when quit (like now). This would help when you Cmd+Tab that your eyes are looking in one spot rather than see the current app jump all over the dock!

13. Most apps when you close their last window, still remain active (though a few utilities quit when this happens). I would like to see some system wide (or chose by app) preference that when I close my last window for an app it automatically quits. It is quite natural for one to think this and I think we should have the OS have the option of behaving like this. I can't tell you the number of times I've done this and only later looking at the dock I realize I have 12 apps still open that I'm no longer using that I thought I had gotten rid of. Another option would be to add another button on the window for quitting (though I think this might be confusing to some, unless we had it on the right side).

14. X-Assist functionality in the OS (A list of currently running tasks like OS 9).

15. Option for the DATE and time to be shown in the menu bar (not just the clock).

16. While I love the column view in the Finder for viewing/finding files, the one draw back it has over Windows Explorer is that you can't have multiple 'paths' open at the same time, which is REALLY great for copying files. I'm not sure how to accomplish this, but one idea would be to have a button for copying/moving files that would turn the column view into a 'double decker' version on basically two column views, one on top of the other (but act as one window). This way the top one you can navigate to the source and the bottom one you can navigate to the destination and make copying/moving a breeze! Having two separate windows is messy often overlapping and needing resizing and to be consistent with 'sheets' philosophy, we should keep it all together (since both windows are associated for one task)

17. Improve OpenGL speed/support. There are just too many games that run 10x faster under OS 9 than OS X and even iTunes visualizer is much smoother under OS 9.

18. Improve core support for scanners, fax software, and printing (which I think they are doing). Many of the programs/drivers for these devices are crippled/lacking features do to inherent OS X limitations that don't exist is OS 9.

19. Improve Firewire plug and play support. I don't know how many times I've plugged in my Firewire HD and/or CD-Burner and have them NOT be recognized. Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not so there is obviously work to do here.

20. Develop some Virtual PC equivalent of "Saved State" for working with Classic that way you wouldn't have to wait for Classic to load you could just resume your saved state in seconds and shave a huge amount of time waiting for Classic to load (Though ideally I would love to never have to run OS 9 period!)

21. While OS X has many great powerful features, I do like XP's task oriented approach with wizards that guide you through the steps required for many common tasks: import pics, which ones, attach to an email, compress or not etc...I think this would be more practical and user friendly and one can always bypass these wizards and do what you like with images (for example). Maybe even a system wide preference to activate/deactivate wizards depending on the user's needs/wants.

22. Include the features of "Transparent Dock" into the OS.

23. Making an easy way for OS X to 'span' multiple hard drives. I have twin 20GB SCSI drives. OS 9 on one, OS X on the other. Soon I will have nothing left to run in OS 9 and I would love OS X to span both drives without splitting up folders/directories.

24. RAID support in OS X. Currently the RAID tools Apple provides only work in OS 9.

25. Being able to turn permissions off OS X drives (this existed before and was removed in later versions). A great reason for this is me and my spouse want separate logins (different desktops, dock prefs etc...) but we WANT to share all the same data (pictures, music, Word documents etc...). But with the current permission issues, if we create a common documents folder, anything I create, she can't modify and vice versa. Multiple logins is great for two or more people doing their own thing, and one login is great for us to share everything. In our case with us fighting over desktop images, magnification on/off in the dock etc, we want (need) separate logins but than it makes it near impossible to use the same files in any sort of convenient way. We turned permissions off and this solved the issue but Apple removed this at some point and we don't know why!

Comments on any of these?

Is there a way for me to send my ideas to Apple for feature requests?

[JayBee]

Good points, all of 'em!

While I don't necessarily agree with all the crits, I think this post highlights what Apple really should be addressing in 10.2 : OPTIONS

Okay, I might not implement a stack of the options you're talking about, but Apple should at least provide its users with a few choices about how to use its system.

On a side note, though, I think the ability to turn "off" permissions seems a bad idea. Newbies coming in from OS 9 would possibly use this straight away to make their drives more like their OS 9 drives, and hence leave their system wide open for attacks and mistakes.

To share stuff between users, use the "Shared" folder in /Users. That's what it's there for. If you want, you could set up "Music", "Pictures", "Documents" etc in "Shared", then create aliases to them in the individual users' folders. That way, you're working with OS X, instead of against it.

Or am I missing the point of what you want to do?

[chigye]

Yes your idea for permission work around sounds good - yes you understood what I was aiming to achieve.

Well I'm on the topic I thought of another wish:

26. I would like the ability in column view to change the sort default from 'name' to any other type - for me it would be by 'kind'.

27. When you have a folder in the dock and you click on the icon, the finder seems to suppress leading spaces when showing an alphabetical listing of items. I don't understand why this happens since it doesn't happen in the Finder itself. This should be fixed. I think this happens else where to (maybe save dialogues) but I can't recall.

Example:

Finder: " ABC", " XYZ", "DEF"
Pop-up: " ABC", "DEF", " XYZ"

[fireproof]

Quote: Originally posted by JayBee Good points, all of 'em! On a side note, though, I think the ability to turn "off" permissions seems a bad idea. Newbies coming in from OS 9 would possibly use this straight away to make their drives more like their OS 9 drives, and hence leave their system wide open for attacks and mistakes. To share stuff between users, use the "Shared" folder in /Users. That's what it's there for. If you want, you could set up "Music", "Pictures", "Documents" etc in "Shared", then create aliases to them in the individual users' folders. That way, you're working with OS X, instead of against it. Or am I missing the point of what you want to do?

Actually, I think you could accomplish what he's talking about (two people accessing one file) by setting the default umask settings to 022, which would give any new files created permissions like this rwxrwxr-x ; then just put both people in a group together.

Of course, I'd prefer that these options were controlled through some handy GUI...

[mervTormel]

fireproof, umask does not apply to Aqua created files; only shell knows of the umask idiom. Aqua apps save files as owner:rw, group:r, world:r