I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.
I think 10.3 will start to move the Mac OS in a different direction entirely. Up to 10.2, it was trying to make Classic upgraders happy. I think Apple will start to incorporate some of the early concepts of Rhapsody, the Developer Previews and even some salvagable Copeland concepts.
If that is right I hope they will do something about services. It has the potential to develop into something really amazing. What excatly? Hell I don´t know, surprise me Apple
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd prefer a greater degree of Dock awareness. The lack of awareness in Finder is seriously annoying.
[quote]<strong>Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just grabbed the desktop icon out of a Finder window (since it's a visible directory now) and dropped it into the Dock. Blam. One-click access to the desktop.
Of course, now that OS X has a nice built-in folder hierarchy and open/save dialogs that take advantage of them quite nicely, I hardly ever use the desktop...
Of the "Quartz Extreme was a good start" variety, I'd assume?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just meant -- and keep in mind here I have absolutely NO information from Apple to back this up, it is purely my speculation -- that I'd expect 10.3's focus to be on speed enhancements.
10.0 was the initial "proof of concept" release -- it had to ship
10.1 was focused on speed
10.2 was focused on additional features/functionality
It makes sense to me that 10.3 would be a regrouping release focused again on speed... there are plenty of things in Mac OS X that can be optimized further...
It makes sense to me that 10.3 would be a regrouping release focused again on speed... there are plenty of things in Mac OS X that can be optimized further...</strong><hr></blockquote>
What happened to the idea that the main thing in 10.3 was going to be optimization for 64 bit processors?
Unless Apple has fallen down on the job, getting OS X to purr on a 64 bit platform should be pretty easy, if not quite as simple as a recompile. There's a whole lot extra that they can - and should - roll into 10.3, if not 10.2.x. A lot of it will be under the hood stuff, but no less important for that.
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wish you could set the dock so that it worked exactly like the top menubar... Fitted all the way across the screen and such that windows of open apps behave in the same way with the dock as they do with the top menubar. And, an option to set the dock to whatever size you wanted.
I also wish Apple would set up a small part of the dock to display system status information that you could turn on or off whenever you wanted.
I hate the way dock sits on the desktop. It leaves gaps at both edges of the screen (if its not filled up) that waste screen space. Looks almost like a band-aid.
That said, I like the dock and don't want it to go away.
Ummm, why don't you just look at the menu bar? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, that's one way to do it, but it would be nice if I could have visual feedback as well. Usually when I look at my dock, I don't associate its name with the icon. I simply burn the icon's graphic in my head and associate that with the app, not the name itself. It would just be nice if there was a little dark background behind the frontmost app, like A-dock. I found that VERY useful.
[quote]
I hate the way dock sits on the desktop. It leaves gaps at both edges of the screen (if its not filled up) that waste screen space. Looks almost like a band-aid.
<hr></blockquote>
Yeah, I always thought a Dock with the width of the entire screen would be the best. Apple should have at least added this as a feature... like an ability to plop a flexible space if you wanted. That way, apps could be anchored on the left and wouldn't move, and same for stored folders/docs on the right.
<strong>What happened to the idea that the main thing in 10.3 was going to be optimization for 64 bit processors?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think that's somwhat of a given, though there is plenty of general optimization that can be done as well.
The way speed enhancements work is this. First, you profile or sample the code, and identify the bottlenecks. You also see where the CPU is spending most of its time (in what routines for various tasks).
You then attempt to reimplement things so that the bottleneck is eliminated. You can also optimize routines that are necessarily called quite often, though the speed gains from this kind of optimization are often less than reimplementation.
I assume there is a crack team at Apple that is analyzing the bottlenecks in the OS, and is working on making things faster.
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What you want is DragThing.... together with Pathfinder it contains improvements that are desperately needed in Finder.
Unfortunately, few of them seem to be of interest to the UI team so we have to rely on 3rd-party coders in the foreseeable future.
The aim of 10.2 was bug-hunting, *nix part upgrades AND speed improvements. Apart from a few specific areas, speed is NOT a major objective in 10.3 - Apple's belief is that hardware improvements will take care of that. Plus, it will be a major incentive for people to finally upgrade (I'm talking post-October here). However, officially raising the minimum hardware requirement to G4s is not scheduled until 10.4...
The reason the OS doesn't make a big deal about what app you're in is because it's supposed to be document-centric instead of application-centric. The menubar, toolbars, palettes and inspectors are supposed to tell you about the current context/tools you're using, but it's not meant to make you feel "locked" into an application. That's why the windows interleave now too.
For the Dock, I'd liie to see some spring-loaded action and the ability to customize it like a toolbar (including flexible spaces for those who want to across the bottom of the screen).
I'm hoping that the whole metadata issue is resolved in 10.3 in some elegant way.
I'm stil holding out hope that the help system is improved. I hope that the addition of WebCore will not only improve Mac Help's performance, but also add features to the system.
I'd like to see saved searches and improved Find/search dialogs, a Finder with more standard behavior, and better handling of image previews mainly in icon view.
I'd like a GUI for regularly-scheduled events (maybe this is more of an iCal 2 function) that plugs into cron functions and can make the computer perform automated tasks -- iTunes alarm clock, backups, scheduled shutdowns, filesystem maintenance, etc.
...speed is NOT a major objective in 10.3 - Apple's belief is that hardware improvements will take care of that...officially raising the minimum hardware requirement to G4s is not scheduled until 10.4...
engpjp</strong><hr></blockquote>
Now do you have some precise info or all this is pure speculation?
Why? Just use Command-C (Copy), then Command-V (Paste). Simple!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Three reasons.
One, I never liked the whole Copy, Cut, and Paste metaphor for files and folders. It seems those commands were just balatantly ripped off from Windows. What happens if you Cut a bunch of Files, then shut your computer down? I wouldn't want to go searching for them, if they haven't been deleted. Those commands should at least be under the File menu, not Edit, when dealing with Files.
Just because there's key commands for doing something, doesn't mean there shouldn't be a GUI element as well. With a drawer, the files would stay there until you moved them, so you'd never lose them if you Copied something else after you Cut some files.
What if you want to take a bunch of files and put them into different directories? cmd-c and cmd-v would be totally useless then.
Comments
<strong>
You might even want to expect something more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ahhh Moki, always so tantalizing!
<strong>
Ummm, why don't you just look at the menu bar? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe he can't read!
[quote]Originally posted by moki:
<strong>
You might even want to expect something more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
OMFG!!! You aren't saying that the much fabled PowerMacSuperPizzaDrive is finally comming, WITH Xtra-cheese support???? :eek:
[Edit:] I also installed 10.2.3 on my mom's Rev A. iMac. She loves it, although she only uses it for email, Word and a bit of internetsurf.
[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: T'hain Esh Kelch ]</p>
<strong>
You might even want to expect something more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And then, like tossing a juicy steak into a marsh full of pirahnas...
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.
<strong>
You might even want to expect something more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Of the "Quartz Extreme was a good start" variety, I'd assume?
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd prefer a greater degree of Dock awareness. The lack of awareness in Finder is seriously annoying.
[quote]<strong>Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just grabbed the desktop icon out of a Finder window (since it's a visible directory now) and dropped it into the Dock. Blam. One-click access to the desktop.
Of course, now that OS X has a nice built-in folder hierarchy and open/save dialogs that take advantage of them quite nicely, I hardly ever use the desktop...
<strong>
Of the "Quartz Extreme was a good start" variety, I'd assume?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just meant -- and keep in mind here I have absolutely NO information from Apple to back this up, it is purely my speculation -- that I'd expect 10.3's focus to be on speed enhancements.
10.0 was the initial "proof of concept" release -- it had to ship
10.1 was focused on speed
10.2 was focused on additional features/functionality
It makes sense to me that 10.3 would be a regrouping release focused again on speed... there are plenty of things in Mac OS X that can be optimized further...
<strong>
It makes sense to me that 10.3 would be a regrouping release focused again on speed... there are plenty of things in Mac OS X that can be optimized further...</strong><hr></blockquote>
What happened to the idea that the main thing in 10.3 was going to be optimization for 64 bit processors?
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wish you could set the dock so that it worked exactly like the top menubar... Fitted all the way across the screen and such that windows of open apps behave in the same way with the dock as they do with the top menubar. And, an option to set the dock to whatever size you wanted.
I also wish Apple would set up a small part of the dock to display system status information that you could turn on or off whenever you wanted.
I hate the way dock sits on the desktop. It leaves gaps at both edges of the screen (if its not filled up) that waste screen space. Looks almost like a band-aid.
That said, I like the dock and don't want it to go away.
<strong>
Ummm, why don't you just look at the menu bar? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, that's one way to do it, but it would be nice if I could have visual feedback as well. Usually when I look at my dock, I don't associate its name with the icon. I simply burn the icon's graphic in my head and associate that with the app, not the name itself. It would just be nice if there was a little dark background behind the frontmost app, like A-dock. I found that VERY useful.
[quote]
I hate the way dock sits on the desktop. It leaves gaps at both edges of the screen (if its not filled up) that waste screen space. Looks almost like a band-aid.
<hr></blockquote>
Yeah, I always thought a Dock with the width of the entire screen would be the best. Apple should have at least added this as a feature... like an ability to plop a flexible space if you wanted. That way, apps could be anchored on the left and wouldn't move, and same for stored folders/docs on the right.
<strong>- a drawer where you can temporarily plop files while you navigate to a different directory and drop them</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why? Just use Command-C (Copy), then Command-V (Paste). Simple!
<strong>What happened to the idea that the main thing in 10.3 was going to be optimization for 64 bit processors?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think that's somwhat of a given, though there is plenty of general optimization that can be done as well.
The way speed enhancements work is this. First, you profile or sample the code, and identify the bottlenecks. You also see where the CPU is spending most of its time (in what routines for various tasks).
You then attempt to reimplement things so that the bottleneck is eliminated. You can also optimize routines that are necessarily called quite often, though the speed gains from this kind of optimization are often less than reimplementation.
I assume there is a crack team at Apple that is analyzing the bottlenecks in the OS, and is working on making things faster.
<strong>I've seen this suggested at <a href="http://www.lowendmac.com"; target="_blank">www.lowendmac.com</a> :
Put a freaking tab on the dock so you can show and hide it whenever you want! I currently have the dock to always be on even though it subtracts from screen area, because the alternative (show/hide) has me constantly setting it off by accident. In fact, it seems to always come up by accident but it never comes up when I want it to. There should be a little tab on the top just like on the control strip in OS 9, complete with a hot key to show and hide it.
Overall I'd like it to become more like the little OS 9 shareware utility A-Dock. It looks a lot like the dock but it has the tab to show and hide it, and it also has a "Reveal Desktop" button next to the trash that instantly hides all applications and finder windows and goes to the desktop. Very, very useful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What you want is DragThing.... together with Pathfinder it contains improvements that are desperately needed in Finder.
Unfortunately, few of them seem to be of interest to the UI team so we have to rely on 3rd-party coders in the foreseeable future.
The aim of 10.2 was bug-hunting, *nix part upgrades AND speed improvements. Apart from a few specific areas, speed is NOT a major objective in 10.3 - Apple's belief is that hardware improvements will take care of that. Plus, it will be a major incentive for people to finally upgrade (I'm talking post-October here). However, officially raising the minimum hardware requirement to G4s is not scheduled until 10.4...
engpjp
For the Dock, I'd liie to see some spring-loaded action and the ability to customize it like a toolbar (including flexible spaces for those who want to across the bottom of the screen).
I'm hoping that the whole metadata issue is resolved in 10.3 in some elegant way.
I'm stil holding out hope that the help system is improved. I hope that the addition of WebCore will not only improve Mac Help's performance, but also add features to the system.
I'd like to see saved searches and improved Find/search dialogs, a Finder with more standard behavior, and better handling of image previews mainly in icon view.
I'd like a GUI for regularly-scheduled events (maybe this is more of an iCal 2 function) that plugs into cron functions and can make the computer perform automated tasks -- iTunes alarm clock, backups, scheduled shutdowns, filesystem maintenance, etc.
I'll think of more later...
<strong>
...speed is NOT a major objective in 10.3 - Apple's belief is that hardware improvements will take care of that...officially raising the minimum hardware requirement to G4s is not scheduled until 10.4...
engpjp</strong><hr></blockquote>
Now do you have some precise info or all this is pure speculation?
<strong>
Why? Just use Command-C (Copy), then Command-V (Paste). Simple!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Three reasons.
One, I never liked the whole Copy, Cut, and Paste metaphor for files and folders. It seems those commands were just balatantly ripped off from Windows. What happens if you Cut a bunch of Files, then shut your computer down? I wouldn't want to go searching for them, if they haven't been deleted. Those commands should at least be under the File menu, not Edit, when dealing with Files.
Just because there's key commands for doing something, doesn't mean there shouldn't be a GUI element as well. With a drawer, the files would stay there until you moved them, so you'd never lose them if you Copied something else after you Cut some files.
What if you want to take a bunch of files and put them into different directories? cmd-c and cmd-v would be totally useless then.