Envision this. Hit one of the function keys or Mighty Mouse buttons and comes a screen similar to Dashboard. Instead of widgets, it shows application group bubbles. Upper left bubble might contain productivity applications such as iWork and Microsoft Office. ....
There's a great program that does pretty close to this. It is simple to use and looks really, really nice too, like it was made by Apple. It's called Overflow.
All the spinning cursor means is that Mach put an event on the app's event queue, 5 seconds have passed, and the app still hasn't picked up the event.
The app could be hung in an erroneous loop, or it could be doing a long operation without having allowed for checking the event queue periodically, or it could have decided to spin waiting for a response from some resource such as a network socket, again without remembering to keep another thread alive for running the event loop.
CHUD tools has an app "Spin Control" that can help to determine where the offending app is executing while the Mach cursor is up. Not much help without the source code, but might be helpful in forwarding to the developers.
C'mon peeps, the Finder is fine, the Dock if fine, the problem is with people who are too lazy to do anything more than it takes to instantly launch every program by hitting the spacebar. Is it really putting a cramp in your finger or your social life just because the Firefox icon bounces twice and you can't get to your MySpace comments quickly enough? If you want revolutionary improvements switch from Windoze to OS X like I did. What a world of difference! I love OS X because it's friggin awesome, and although I do enjoy improvements to an already brilliant idea as much as the next person, I don't think all these wack-a-do ideas are going to make it into Leopard. It's going to kick butt, don't get me wrong, just read what the guys at Delicious Monster said about Delicious Library 2 to whet your appetite for the new ish that's coming. I just hate hearing all this about "my launcher isn't launchy enough and my folders don't fold like I want them to. Here's a brillant design: develop a system that uses the built in microphone so that you can say "Open Sesame!" and the entire applications folder drops a duce in the system ram.
All the spinning cursor means is that Mach put an event on the app's event queue, 5 seconds have passed, and the app still hasn't picked up the event.
I work in a computer lab where most of the students have Windows XP at home. The spinning beach ball is the number 1 reason that most students are put off by OS X (on Intel iMacs). Not only is XP generally more responsive, but the kids equate the beach ball with a system freeze up (they use XP, what can you expect) and so they turn the computer off when it comes up. This is really frustrating because all they have to do is click on the desktop to get out whatever process is causing the hang up or force quit.
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
The UI in Leopard should be much more fluid.
Sounds like really good news. I know this has been discussed ad naseum (FTFF), but Apple should get off its ass and really improve the Finder (not just its UI, but also its performance). Unfortunately, all of our student's files are saved on an AFP server, and the Finder is absolutely atrocious when it comes to network volumes. This better be one of those "secret" improvements.
I work in a computer lab where most of the students have Windows XP at home. The spinning beach ball is the number 1 reason that most students are put off by OS X (on Intel iMacs). Not only is XP generally more responsive, but the kids equate the beach ball with a system freeze up (they use XP, what can you expect) and so they turn the computer off when it comes up. This is really frustrating because all they have to do is click on the desktop to get out whatever process is causing the hang up or force quit.
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
Sounds like really good news. I know this has been discussed ad naseum (FTFF), but Apple should get off its ass and really improve the Finder (not just its UI, but also its performance). Unfortunately, all of our student's files are saved on an AFP server, and the Finder is absolutely atrocious when it comes to network volumes. This better be one of those "secret" improvements.
These are the same things I'm most concerned about. We have a few people in the office new to using Macs and the beachballing is terrible. I actually end up shutting the computer off at times because after a couple of hours, OS X reaches a point where if you have even a few apps open, it will just churn away at the hard drive for ages - you can hear it clicking away like mad. It's likely to be low amounts of Ram because the CPU use is low but still, XP runs fine on the same machine and that's what most people compare it to and 512MB should be enough.
I think sometimes that the Intel version of Tiger is not as optimized as the PPC version because on the G4s, I don't remember getting nearly as much beachballing - application launch times are still pretty slow too, Windows launches apps almost immediately. OS X on Intel shouldn't even be the same as on the G4 because the Intel machines are much faster so the hang ups should be less. I'm going to try and get everyone upgraded to 1GB Ram at least and see if that sorts the issues but I think it's a mixture of things. The wireless reception in the office we use is poor and we use it all the time. That causes a lot of hang ups when it's trying to find a shared printer or network volume.
If Leopard doesn't improve performance dramatically, I'm sure I'm going to hear the following:
concerned worker: This OS X is running pretty slowly, I can't get my work done.
me: hmmm, you're right, let's see how it runs Windows.
happy worker: much better, no slowdowns at all.
me: yep, XP runs better than Mac OS X.
sceptical worker: so why do we use Macs?
me: *stumped*
more sceptical worker: c'mon, why?
me: well, it's easier to use and it has a better core system
dismissive worker: well sure but if I can't get my work done, what good is that?
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
Send the Spin Control output to Apple as a bug report.
concerned worker: This OS X is running pretty slowly, I can't get my work done.
me: hmmm, you're right, let's see how it runs Windows.
happy worker: much better, no slowdowns at all.
me: yep, XP runs better than Mac OS X.
sceptical worker: so why do we use Macs?
me: *stumped*
more sceptical worker: c'mon, why?
me: well, it's easier to use and it has a better core system
dismissive worker: well sure but if I can't get my work done, what good is that?
I have conversations like this with the students on a daily basis. It is hard for them to understand the strengths of OS X and why we choose to use it over Windows when the beach ball keeps ruining the experience for them. I love it when the beach ball stops spinning and becomes frozen itself. If that is not an indication of how f*'ed up the situation is, then I don't know what is. This quickly becoming a part of popular culture as a joke of what is bad about OS X (watch at 1:20
Oh, and from an UI point of view, who decided that a spinning beach ball was a good visual cue for this? In OS 9 a small black watch popped up (still does in OS X sometimes, but not consistently enough for me to tell why).
Improved finder with metadata/content based browsing. For example, open the pictures folder and default layout would be an iPhoto like browser. The albums would be automatically generated using the file metadata and user tags. Basic photo manipulation through core image with a plug in system for third party developers. Clicking on an image would display the top 5 programs to launch or edit the file. However if you click on a browser icon the window would flip via core animation to reveal the typical finder hierarchy of the pictures folder.
The same could be done for music, documents, movies. Apple would supply basic viewing options (photo: slideshow etc, music: play ff rwd), and third party developers could create unique interface extensions that would supplement or replace the apple interface.
Brilliant Ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TednDi
Shipping
This is too important to be a "Most Wanted" feature, it should be the default by requirement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crentist
I had originally thought that the Finder might take on an iTunes like appearance with smart/playlist-like folders on the left organizing files according to metadata/file type/cusomt user organization. Your idea, however, with integration of Core Animation to adopt the view that corresponds specifically to the file type present in the folder is genius! This would augment my theory that not only with the new iLife/iWork be dependent on Leopard, but they will actually ship as a bundled part of Leopard.
Only three concerns:
1. This would be quite a drastic change for Apple, as this type of finder control seems like it would be more like Windows than Mac - note that Windows XP has some basic file-specific commands on the left hand side of the window depending on which file is selected at the time. Is this the approach that Apple would find "most intuitive?"
2. Unless you did something like Windows XP as I described above, how would you manage a window with more than one file type in it? Or would you simply not allow the pictures window to have anything but photos in it so that you could implement this iPhoto-like control of the files.
3. If this were the case, what then would be the purpose of QuickView. which is a pretty neat planned feature of the new OS?
Still, though, kudos for creativity. I have to say that I wouldn't be surpised if your dashboard-like "flip" feature did find its way into the Finder in some way or another - maybe just to edit metadata?
1. Just because it was in XP doesn't mean it's not a good idea, at any rate the Explorer Botched that Sidebar anyways.
2. I don't think this would be much of a problem since the Pictures Folder is kind of a special Folder and I'm not sure why anyone would put anything but Pictures in it.
3. You're right about this, but since the Quick Look feature is planned to be buried in a menu according to a Think Secret Screenshot, I'm hoping I can make it the default "Application" for Pictures and just cut Preview out of my life for good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Go Banana
C'mon peeps, the Finder is fine, the Dock if fine, the problem is with people who are too lazy to do anything more than it takes to instantly launch every program by hitting the spacebar. Is it really putting a cramp in your finger or your social life just because the Firefox icon bounces twice and you can't get to your MySpace comments quickly enough? If you want revolutionary improvements switch from Windoze to OS X like I did. What a world of difference! I love OS X because it's friggin awesome, and although I do enjoy improvements to an already brilliant idea as much as the next person, I don't think all these wack-a-do ideas are going to make it into Leopard. It's going to kick butt, don't get me wrong, just read what the guys at Delicious Monster said about Delicious Library 2 to whet your appetite for the new ish that's coming. I just hate hearing all this about "my launcher isn't launchy enough and my folders don't fold like I want them to. Here's a brillant design: develop a system that uses the built in microphone so that you can say "Open Sesame!" and the entire applications folder drops a duce in the system ram.
I want Spotlight rewritten from the ground up so that it's actually functional. Bug Fixes and Fixes in general to fix poorly written "Features" aren't enough. I also want a way to completely disable Spotlight and remove it's Icon built into the Preference Pane, I'm still not proficient enough with the Terminal and had to resort to Tweak Freak to get rid of it.
I want Dashboard to cache at Start Up. I use this one quite often and some days more than others. Usually I only boot my Mac once a day, leave it plugged in at home, put it to sleep when I'm not using it, or when I go somewhere with my Macbook, put it to sleep, unplug it, and put it in my Bag. Usually I'll open Dashboard sometime in the morning and it will cache everything, other times I'll open it sometime later in the morning, afternoon, or in the case today, at night and it's always annoying seeing it load during the first time I open it, so I want it to Cache in the background before I open it so when I finally do hit F12, it's ready to use saving me a second of two of frustration while I wait for it to load.
I want Preview to open a PDF at actual size by default. I hate Zooming, resizing the Window, Zooming, and basically guessing what actual size is. I don't resize anything beyond the first time I open an Application, and hate having to drag that bottom right corner. I'm glad the resize options are shoved into a corner so I don't resize by accident or something, but it's still annoying enough when I have to deal with it on a constant basis that I completely replaced Preview with Adobe Reader for PDFs, it opens everything at Actual Size and generally doesn't get in my way, but it's still one more App to deal with and one more I shouldn't have to.
Quicktime Player needs to have full screen mode "unlocked" by default without having to pay $30 for Quicktime Pro. I view video files in Quicktime Player all the time, I also have an AppleScript Application just for viewing those same videos in full screen. Now I could just go into Front Row or iTunes, except I generally don't want to keep all of my videos in iTunes and deal with it when all I want to do is view a simple video file. I keep my favorites in Quicktime's Favorites Menu and when I have 5 minutes at school I like to jump into Quicktime and view a Music Video or something, and I usually like to do it in Full Screen mode. So if iTunes and Front Row can already do this, why can't Quicktime? One other thing about Quicktime, the last thing I want when I open Quicktime is for that stupid content guide to pop open. Clicking any of the links just opens the iTunes Store or in the case of the Quicktime Pro ad, opens the Quicktime Pro page in the Apple Store. It's annoying and it's only one more window to deal with!
Why can't I rearrange Tabs in Safari? Maybe it's an old habit from my Firefox on the PC days, but reordering Tabs is one of the most useful and most basic features I can think of for any browser. From time to time I still make the mistake of trying to reorder my tabs in Safari until I realize I can't.
Stop changing my defaults! I have no idea how this happens, but from time to time I'll open a PDF and it will open in Preview instead of Adobe Reader. This also happened once with a .txt opening in TextEdit instead of TextMate. It's always annoying when this happens and I always have to find the file and re-change it's default and click Change All just to make sure it doesn't happen with other files.
Clean up the Security Preference Pane. At the top you have FileVault with a long explanation which is nice, but at the bottom you have a random assortment of other security features, "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" is up at the top of that half, and after "For all accounts on this computer" there are several more features that could go into their own Sub Pane. Further, here's one Leopard does fix: The Firewall isn't in the security tab like it should be. When I first took my Macbook out of the box I went through each and every preference pane tweaking it to my liking after the first boot up, but I was shocked to see that the Firewall was located in the Sharing Pane instead of the Security Pane which makes absolutely no sense.
What makes even less sense is that there is no Widget Manager built into the System Preferences, although I found a third party one. I later found it was another widget when playing around with Dashboard. Now why have a Preference Pane for Dashboard? For one thing, if they can justify having one for Spotlight, they can certainly justify it for Dashboard, for another it's consistent, the System Preferences is where I expected to Delete or Disable Widgets.
Rewrite the CDs&DVDs Pane to be some sort of Pane for launchd. Since all the pane is for is for handling the launching of different applications depending on what kind of disc you put in, it would only make sense. Image Capture for example, is like a glorified launching preference pane for me because the only 2 things I ever used it for was telling it to open iPhoto when I plug in my camera and telling it to use HP's "TWAIN" Software when I plug in my Scanner.
Speaking of which, they really need to add Bonjour to scanners so I don't have to unplug my All-In-One plugged into my Airport Express to use my scanner. External Optical Drives would be nice as well, and then they can round up the EOD and Scanner manufacturers and tell them, "Hey, we have a great idea, why don't you put Bonjour into all of your Scanners and EODs?" just like what they did with printer manufacturers.
The Font Dialog needs to be completely rewritten. It's hard to find the font I want because instead of a drop down menu I have that horrible Column of fonts, and if I want to resize a font in some applications, it's my only option. It doesn't even give me a preview of the font selected, and because I haven't made a point to look at each and every single font to find my favorites, I'm stuck with a subset of the fonts available because I don't want to play a game of guess and check.
I'm sure I could find much more, but I'll leave it at that.
I want to be able to sync my desktop machine and my MacBook Pro seamlessly, meaning that all my Mail replies from the laptop are correctly filed and accessible to me when I'm using the desktop.
And don't mention IMAP. My mail folders (with attachments) can't all fit on a server.
I have conversations like this with the students on a daily basis. It is hard for them to understand the strengths of OS X and why we choose to use it over Windows when the beach ball keeps ruining the experience for them.
Then there's the lack of driver support too. Then Apple bring out such lame hardware updates and BTO options. It's very hard to justify using Macs to average users. PCs have cheaper hardware that is updated more regularly and gives you more options, they have more support, a faster (albeit older) OS, more software compatibility.
To unix users and programmers, it's easy to justify. Having a full BSD unix OS that is easier to use than Windows and more commercial support than Linux is great. But even there, programmers sometimes like to customize their OS and OS X still doesn't allow themes and it's slower than Linux.
I love those cartoons. I've experienced the frozen beachball too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neruda
Oh, and from an UI point of view, who decided that a spinning beach ball was a good visual cue for this? In OS 9 a small black watch popped up (still does in OS X sometimes, but not consistently enough for me to tell why).
Yeah, it's definitely inconsistent. I use Shake and it has a cool little timer but then after the timer, I get the beachball, then the timer. In other apps it's just the beachball. I think it's a horrible cursor - maybe they wanted something to remind people of the old Apple logo.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neruda
Come on Leopard.
I'm eagerly waiting on Leopard too to see what they've done with it. If they managed to put it on their iphone, they must have streamlined it considerably. I'm really starting to think that there wasn't much work done on the Intel version of Tiger. It makes sense because the compilers were buggy and they switched hardware in just 9 months so they wouldn't have had time to do serious optimization. I'm annoyed at the delay though because we are desparetely in need of some speed.
These are the same things I'm most concerned about. We have a few people in the office new to using Macs and the beachballing is terrible. I actually end up shutting the computer off at times because after a couple of hours, OS X reaches a point where if you have even a few apps open, it will just churn away at the hard drive for ages - you can hear it clicking away like mad. It's likely to be low amounts of Ram because the CPU use is low but still, XP runs fine on the same machine and that's what most people compare it to and 512MB should be enough.
I think sometimes that the Intel version of Tiger is not as optimized as the PPC version because on the G4s, I don't remember getting nearly as much beachballing - application launch times are still pretty slow too, Windows launches apps almost immediately. OS X on Intel shouldn't even be the same as on the G4 because the Intel machines are much faster so the hang ups should be less. I'm going to try and get everyone upgraded to 1GB Ram at least and see if that sorts the issues but I think it's a mixture of things. The wireless reception in the office we use is poor and we use it all the time. That causes a lot of hang ups when it's trying to find a shared printer or network volume.
I don't experience the beachball often. And when it does, it's 95% of the time because of Photoshop (using huge files) or Safari (they really need to adress those memory leaks) have eaten all memory and the OS is swapping on the HD.
Concerning speed: I also have a Sony Vaio Core2Duo machine with XP, and it's not that fast at all. And that's just for email and surfing. Thing is: the Sony has 512 MB RAM, and the G5 3 Gig. I think a modern OS distincts itself in UI, stability, security and services.
Speed differences will mainly be found through CPU speed and RAM.
512 MB RAM does an OS (and certainly OSX) no good.
i'd love to see Apple create a better media preview folder feature for the creative user and not have to have 3rd party apps develop supplementary programs to cover this glaring shortfall.
one thing that has been lacking in Mac Os has been folders that effectively display media such as images. this feature was nonexistent on Os 9, yet in Windows 98 larger thumbnails of image files could be selected as a viewing option over the general file icon. finally in Os X better previews of image files were available, but only in the form of larger icons, not image previews, except in column view, (but it's still lacking and not dynamic in a user sense). yet once again in XP and Vista, folders can display image files in large previews and can be manage more easily by moving any image anywhere on the system from any given folder. essentially this is what Adobe Bridge does, mimics a standard XP folder behaviour. as a result i use Bridge all the time in my art creation. the irony is that why doesn't Mac Os have something like this as a standard folder feature?! it makes no sense to me that Apple would make a 'creative media oriented' Os and not provide folders that preview media in all their glory. actually there is no such feature anywhere in the Mac Os that does this. Preview sucks, unintuitive and ergonomically awkward and it doesn't make sense for what's needed in a creative work flow. in fact Preview should be a feature of the Finder. iPhoto could work but it's not like a Bridge or a Finder in a creative environment.
2.
i'd like to see the dock expanded in its capability. as part of my work i use the dock extensively toggling windows back and forth. it would be great to be able to create a special 'dock folder' that could be specified to house windows associated with a specific program, ie Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator. then when windows are retrieved a mouse over click would spring open an Expose-type preview and selections could be made.
A big gripe I have with OS X is that renaming the "Utilities" folder or moving Apple apps breaks the automatic updates of apps and OS updates. Does anyone know if that's been fixed in Leopard?
I hope I'm not asking anyone to break any NDA's if so I apologize. I'm just very curious as to if this bug has been fixed or not...
And I second the fixing of FTP upload through the Finder
Comments
Envision this. Hit one of the function keys or Mighty Mouse buttons and comes a screen similar to Dashboard. Instead of widgets, it shows application group bubbles. Upper left bubble might contain productivity applications such as iWork and Microsoft Office. ....
There's a great program that does pretty close to this. It is simple to use and looks really, really nice too, like it was made by Apple. It's called Overflow.
http://www.stuntsoftware.com/Overflow/
The app could be hung in an erroneous loop, or it could be doing a long operation without having allowed for checking the event queue periodically, or it could have decided to spin waiting for a response from some resource such as a network socket, again without remembering to keep another thread alive for running the event loop.
CHUD tools has an app "Spin Control" that can help to determine where the offending app is executing while the Mach cursor is up. Not much help without the source code, but might be helpful in forwarding to the developers.
All the spinning cursor means is that Mach put an event on the app's event queue, 5 seconds have passed, and the app still hasn't picked up the event.
I work in a computer lab where most of the students have Windows XP at home. The spinning beach ball is the number 1 reason that most students are put off by OS X (on Intel iMacs). Not only is XP generally more responsive, but the kids equate the beach ball with a system freeze up (they use XP, what can you expect) and so they turn the computer off when it comes up. This is really frustrating because all they have to do is click on the desktop to get out whatever process is causing the hang up or force quit.
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
The UI in Leopard should be much more fluid.
Sounds like really good news. I know this has been discussed ad naseum (FTFF), but Apple should get off its ass and really improve the Finder (not just its UI, but also its performance). Unfortunately, all of our student's files are saved on an AFP server, and the Finder is absolutely atrocious when it comes to network volumes. This better be one of those "secret" improvements.
I work in a computer lab where most of the students have Windows XP at home. The spinning beach ball is the number 1 reason that most students are put off by OS X (on Intel iMacs). Not only is XP generally more responsive, but the kids equate the beach ball with a system freeze up (they use XP, what can you expect) and so they turn the computer off when it comes up. This is really frustrating because all they have to do is click on the desktop to get out whatever process is causing the hang up or force quit.
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
Sounds like really good news. I know this has been discussed ad naseum (FTFF), but Apple should get off its ass and really improve the Finder (not just its UI, but also its performance). Unfortunately, all of our student's files are saved on an AFP server, and the Finder is absolutely atrocious when it comes to network volumes. This better be one of those "secret" improvements.
These are the same things I'm most concerned about. We have a few people in the office new to using Macs and the beachballing is terrible. I actually end up shutting the computer off at times because after a couple of hours, OS X reaches a point where if you have even a few apps open, it will just churn away at the hard drive for ages - you can hear it clicking away like mad. It's likely to be low amounts of Ram because the CPU use is low but still, XP runs fine on the same machine and that's what most people compare it to and 512MB should be enough.
I think sometimes that the Intel version of Tiger is not as optimized as the PPC version because on the G4s, I don't remember getting nearly as much beachballing - application launch times are still pretty slow too, Windows launches apps almost immediately. OS X on Intel shouldn't even be the same as on the G4 because the Intel machines are much faster so the hang ups should be less. I'm going to try and get everyone upgraded to 1GB Ram at least and see if that sorts the issues but I think it's a mixture of things. The wireless reception in the office we use is poor and we use it all the time. That causes a lot of hang ups when it's trying to find a shared printer or network volume.
If Leopard doesn't improve performance dramatically, I'm sure I'm going to hear the following:
concerned worker: This OS X is running pretty slowly, I can't get my work done.
me: hmmm, you're right, let's see how it runs Windows.
happy worker: much better, no slowdowns at all.
me: yep, XP runs better than Mac OS X.
sceptical worker: so why do we use Macs?
me: *stumped*
more sceptical worker: c'mon, why?
me: well, it's easier to use and it has a better core system
dismissive worker: well sure but if I can't get my work done, what good is that?
Oh, and I've used Spin Control, but it is useless since this is only a diagnostic tool that offers no practical solution to the problem. What good is it to see what is causing the beach ball if there is nothing that you can do about it.
Send the Spin Control output to Apple as a bug report.
concerned worker: This OS X is running pretty slowly, I can't get my work done.
me: hmmm, you're right, let's see how it runs Windows.
happy worker: much better, no slowdowns at all.
me: yep, XP runs better than Mac OS X.
sceptical worker: so why do we use Macs?
me: *stumped*
more sceptical worker: c'mon, why?
me: well, it's easier to use and it has a better core system
dismissive worker: well sure but if I can't get my work done, what good is that?
I have conversations like this with the students on a daily basis. It is hard for them to understand the strengths of OS X and why we choose to use it over Windows when the beach ball keeps ruining the experience for them. I love it when the beach ball stops spinning and becomes frozen itself. If that is not an indication of how f*'ed up the situation is, then I don't know what is. This quickly becoming a part of popular culture as a joke of what is bad about OS X (watch at 1:20
and here at 0:56, LOL).
Oh, and from an UI point of view, who decided that a spinning beach ball was a good visual cue for this? In OS 9 a small black watch popped up (still does in OS X sometimes, but not consistently enough for me to tell why).
Come on Leopard.
Improved finder with metadata/content based browsing. For example, open the pictures folder and default layout would be an iPhoto like browser. The albums would be automatically generated using the file metadata and user tags. Basic photo manipulation through core image with a plug in system for third party developers. Clicking on an image would display the top 5 programs to launch or edit the file. However if you click on a browser icon the window would flip via core animation to reveal the typical finder hierarchy of the pictures folder.
The same could be done for music, documents, movies. Apple would supply basic viewing options (photo: slideshow etc, music: play ff rwd), and third party developers could create unique interface extensions that would supplement or replace the apple interface.
Brilliant Ideas.
Shipping
This is too important to be a "Most Wanted" feature, it should be the default by requirement.
I had originally thought that the Finder might take on an iTunes like appearance with smart/playlist-like folders on the left organizing files according to metadata/file type/cusomt user organization. Your idea, however, with integration of Core Animation to adopt the view that corresponds specifically to the file type present in the folder is genius! This would augment my theory that not only with the new iLife/iWork be dependent on Leopard, but they will actually ship as a bundled part of Leopard.
Only three concerns:
1. This would be quite a drastic change for Apple, as this type of finder control seems like it would be more like Windows than Mac - note that Windows XP has some basic file-specific commands on the left hand side of the window depending on which file is selected at the time. Is this the approach that Apple would find "most intuitive?"
2. Unless you did something like Windows XP as I described above, how would you manage a window with more than one file type in it? Or would you simply not allow the pictures window to have anything but photos in it so that you could implement this iPhoto-like control of the files.
3. If this were the case, what then would be the purpose of QuickView. which is a pretty neat planned feature of the new OS?
Still, though, kudos for creativity. I have to say that I wouldn't be surpised if your dashboard-like "flip" feature did find its way into the Finder in some way or another - maybe just to edit metadata?
1. Just because it was in XP doesn't mean it's not a good idea, at any rate the Explorer Botched that Sidebar anyways.
2. I don't think this would be much of a problem since the Pictures Folder is kind of a special Folder and I'm not sure why anyone would put anything but Pictures in it.
3. You're right about this, but since the Quick Look feature is planned to be buried in a menu according to a Think Secret Screenshot, I'm hoping I can make it the default "Application" for Pictures and just cut Preview out of my life for good.
C'mon peeps, the Finder is fine, the Dock if fine, the problem is with people who are too lazy to do anything more than it takes to instantly launch every program by hitting the spacebar. Is it really putting a cramp in your finger or your social life just because the Firefox icon bounces twice and you can't get to your MySpace comments quickly enough? If you want revolutionary improvements switch from Windoze to OS X like I did. What a world of difference! I love OS X because it's friggin awesome, and although I do enjoy improvements to an already brilliant idea as much as the next person, I don't think all these wack-a-do ideas are going to make it into Leopard. It's going to kick butt, don't get me wrong, just read what the guys at Delicious Monster said about Delicious Library 2 to whet your appetite for the new ish that's coming. I just hate hearing all this about "my launcher isn't launchy enough and my folders don't fold like I want them to. Here's a brillant design: develop a system that uses the built in microphone so that you can say "Open Sesame!" and the entire applications folder drops a duce in the system ram.
FTFF and Screw Spotlight too!
I just bypass both of those altogether and use Quicksilver now.
Sebastian
I have several, most of them small.
I want Spotlight rewritten from the ground up so that it's actually functional. Bug Fixes and Fixes in general to fix poorly written "Features" aren't enough. I also want a way to completely disable Spotlight and remove it's Icon built into the Preference Pane, I'm still not proficient enough with the Terminal and had to resort to Tweak Freak to get rid of it.
I want Dashboard to cache at Start Up. I use this one quite often and some days more than others. Usually I only boot my Mac once a day, leave it plugged in at home, put it to sleep when I'm not using it, or when I go somewhere with my Macbook, put it to sleep, unplug it, and put it in my Bag. Usually I'll open Dashboard sometime in the morning and it will cache everything, other times I'll open it sometime later in the morning, afternoon, or in the case today, at night and it's always annoying seeing it load during the first time I open it, so I want it to Cache in the background before I open it so when I finally do hit F12, it's ready to use saving me a second of two of frustration while I wait for it to load.
I want Preview to open a PDF at actual size by default. I hate Zooming, resizing the Window, Zooming, and basically guessing what actual size is. I don't resize anything beyond the first time I open an Application, and hate having to drag that bottom right corner. I'm glad the resize options are shoved into a corner so I don't resize by accident or something, but it's still annoying enough when I have to deal with it on a constant basis that I completely replaced Preview with Adobe Reader for PDFs, it opens everything at Actual Size and generally doesn't get in my way, but it's still one more App to deal with and one more I shouldn't have to.
Quicktime Player needs to have full screen mode "unlocked" by default without having to pay $30 for Quicktime Pro. I view video files in Quicktime Player all the time, I also have an AppleScript Application just for viewing those same videos in full screen. Now I could just go into Front Row or iTunes, except I generally don't want to keep all of my videos in iTunes and deal with it when all I want to do is view a simple video file. I keep my favorites in Quicktime's Favorites Menu and when I have 5 minutes at school I like to jump into Quicktime and view a Music Video or something, and I usually like to do it in Full Screen mode. So if iTunes and Front Row can already do this, why can't Quicktime? One other thing about Quicktime, the last thing I want when I open Quicktime is for that stupid content guide to pop open. Clicking any of the links just opens the iTunes Store or in the case of the Quicktime Pro ad, opens the Quicktime Pro page in the Apple Store. It's annoying and it's only one more window to deal with!
Why can't I rearrange Tabs in Safari? Maybe it's an old habit from my Firefox on the PC days, but reordering Tabs is one of the most useful and most basic features I can think of for any browser. From time to time I still make the mistake of trying to reorder my tabs in Safari until I realize I can't.
Stop changing my defaults! I have no idea how this happens, but from time to time I'll open a PDF and it will open in Preview instead of Adobe Reader. This also happened once with a .txt opening in TextEdit instead of TextMate. It's always annoying when this happens and I always have to find the file and re-change it's default and click Change All just to make sure it doesn't happen with other files.
Clean up the Security Preference Pane. At the top you have FileVault with a long explanation which is nice, but at the bottom you have a random assortment of other security features, "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" is up at the top of that half, and after "For all accounts on this computer" there are several more features that could go into their own Sub Pane. Further, here's one Leopard does fix: The Firewall isn't in the security tab like it should be. When I first took my Macbook out of the box I went through each and every preference pane tweaking it to my liking after the first boot up, but I was shocked to see that the Firewall was located in the Sharing Pane instead of the Security Pane which makes absolutely no sense.
What makes even less sense is that there is no Widget Manager built into the System Preferences, although I found a third party one. I later found it was another widget when playing around with Dashboard. Now why have a Preference Pane for Dashboard? For one thing, if they can justify having one for Spotlight, they can certainly justify it for Dashboard, for another it's consistent, the System Preferences is where I expected to Delete or Disable Widgets.
Rewrite the CDs&DVDs Pane to be some sort of Pane for launchd. Since all the pane is for is for handling the launching of different applications depending on what kind of disc you put in, it would only make sense. Image Capture for example, is like a glorified launching preference pane for me because the only 2 things I ever used it for was telling it to open iPhoto when I plug in my camera and telling it to use HP's "TWAIN" Software when I plug in my Scanner.
Speaking of which, they really need to add Bonjour to scanners so I don't have to unplug my All-In-One plugged into my Airport Express to use my scanner. External Optical Drives would be nice as well, and then they can round up the EOD and Scanner manufacturers and tell them, "Hey, we have a great idea, why don't you put Bonjour into all of your Scanners and EODs?" just like what they did with printer manufacturers.
The Font Dialog needs to be completely rewritten. It's hard to find the font I want because instead of a drop down menu I have that horrible Column of fonts, and if I want to resize a font in some applications, it's my only option. It doesn't even give me a preview of the font selected, and because I haven't made a point to look at each and every single font to find my favorites, I'm stuck with a subset of the fonts available because I don't want to play a game of guess and check.
I'm sure I could find much more, but I'll leave it at that.
Sebastian
And don't mention IMAP. My mail folders (with attachments) can't all fit on a server.
I have conversations like this with the students on a daily basis. It is hard for them to understand the strengths of OS X and why we choose to use it over Windows when the beach ball keeps ruining the experience for them.
Then there's the lack of driver support too. Then Apple bring out such lame hardware updates and BTO options. It's very hard to justify using Macs to average users. PCs have cheaper hardware that is updated more regularly and gives you more options, they have more support, a faster (albeit older) OS, more software compatibility.
To unix users and programmers, it's easy to justify. Having a full BSD unix OS that is easier to use than Windows and more commercial support than Linux is great. But even there, programmers sometimes like to customize their OS and OS X still doesn't allow themes and it's slower than Linux.
I love it when the beach ball stops spinning and becomes frozen itself. If that is not an indication of how f*'ed up the situation is, then I don't know what is. This quickly becoming a part of popular culture as a joke of what is bad about OS X (watch at 1:20
and here at 0:56, LOL).
Oh, and from an UI point of view, who decided that a spinning beach ball was a good visual cue for this? In OS 9 a small black watch popped up (still does in OS X sometimes, but not consistently enough for me to tell why).
Yeah, it's definitely inconsistent. I use Shake and it has a cool little timer but then after the timer, I get the beachball, then the timer. In other apps it's just the beachball. I think it's a horrible cursor - maybe they wanted something to remind people of the old Apple logo.
Come on Leopard.
I'm eagerly waiting on Leopard too to see what they've done with it. If they managed to put it on their iphone, they must have streamlined it considerably. I'm really starting to think that there wasn't much work done on the Intel version of Tiger. It makes sense because the compilers were buggy and they switched hardware in just 9 months so they wouldn't have had time to do serious optimization. I'm annoyed at the delay though because we are desparetely in need of some speed.
These are the same things I'm most concerned about. We have a few people in the office new to using Macs and the beachballing is terrible. I actually end up shutting the computer off at times because after a couple of hours, OS X reaches a point where if you have even a few apps open, it will just churn away at the hard drive for ages - you can hear it clicking away like mad. It's likely to be low amounts of Ram because the CPU use is low but still, XP runs fine on the same machine and that's what most people compare it to and 512MB should be enough.
I think sometimes that the Intel version of Tiger is not as optimized as the PPC version because on the G4s, I don't remember getting nearly as much beachballing - application launch times are still pretty slow too, Windows launches apps almost immediately. OS X on Intel shouldn't even be the same as on the G4 because the Intel machines are much faster so the hang ups should be less. I'm going to try and get everyone upgraded to 1GB Ram at least and see if that sorts the issues but I think it's a mixture of things. The wireless reception in the office we use is poor and we use it all the time. That causes a lot of hang ups when it's trying to find a shared printer or network volume.
I don't experience the beachball often. And when it does, it's 95% of the time because of Photoshop (using huge files) or Safari (they really need to adress those memory leaks) have eaten all memory and the OS is swapping on the HD.
Concerning speed: I also have a Sony Vaio Core2Duo machine with XP, and it's not that fast at all. And that's just for email and surfing. Thing is: the Sony has 512 MB RAM, and the G5 3 Gig. I think a modern OS distincts itself in UI, stability, security and services.
Speed differences will mainly be found through CPU speed and RAM.
512 MB RAM does an OS (and certainly OSX) no good.
i'd love to see Apple create a better media preview folder feature for the creative user and not have to have 3rd party apps develop supplementary programs to cover this glaring shortfall.
one thing that has been lacking in Mac Os has been folders that effectively display media such as images. this feature was nonexistent on Os 9, yet in Windows 98 larger thumbnails of image files could be selected as a viewing option over the general file icon. finally in Os X better previews of image files were available, but only in the form of larger icons, not image previews, except in column view, (but it's still lacking and not dynamic in a user sense). yet once again in XP and Vista, folders can display image files in large previews and can be manage more easily by moving any image anywhere on the system from any given folder. essentially this is what Adobe Bridge does, mimics a standard XP folder behaviour. as a result i use Bridge all the time in my art creation. the irony is that why doesn't Mac Os have something like this as a standard folder feature?! it makes no sense to me that Apple would make a 'creative media oriented' Os and not provide folders that preview media in all their glory. actually there is no such feature anywhere in the Mac Os that does this. Preview sucks, unintuitive and ergonomically awkward and it doesn't make sense for what's needed in a creative work flow. in fact Preview should be a feature of the Finder. iPhoto could work but it's not like a Bridge or a Finder in a creative environment.
2.
i'd like to see the dock expanded in its capability. as part of my work i use the dock extensively toggling windows back and forth. it would be great to be able to create a special 'dock folder' that could be specified to house windows associated with a specific program, ie Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator. then when windows are retrieved a mouse over click would spring open an Expose-type preview and selections could be made.
I hope I'm not asking anyone to break any NDA's if so I apologize. I'm just very curious as to if this bug has been fixed or not...
And I second the fixing of FTP upload through the Finder