A switcher’s wish list
I have a few wishes for the Mac Operating System, and I’d like to catalog them now prior to their eventual release. I’m not saying my word is law, but I’ve seen many people and magazine authors commenting on some of these as well. I’ll try to keep this list within the scope of a “switcher’s POV” in that I will not be commenting on what I’d like to see brought back from OS 9 and subsequent Mac or Apple Operating Systems. But rather, these “features” or tweaks will be from what I’d like to see implemented based on my experiences with Windows.
Rename and Delete within Open/Save Dialogs
As far as I know, Jaguar was the first OS X version (10.2) which allowed for clicking on the filename to create a replacement from within the Save dialog. This is extremely handy, and you only notice this feature when it’s missing.
I’d also like to see the ability to Rename and/or Delete a file from within the Open/Save Dialog window. This feature is in Windows, even though I believe it could be done better. The one thing I hate about the Windows version is that after you rename a file within the Save dialog - you have to retype the entire filename of the old file. Otherwise it prompts you to overwrite the new file - incredibly annoying. But at least the feature is there, because this functionality does not exist in OS X to-date. I have not yet installed nor used Tiger, so I can not comment if this feature is within OS X 10.4. However, after reading September’s MacWorld magazine, I can see that within their wish-list this item still remains, after using Tiger, so I can only assume that it does not.
Bug report in all Apps
Safari currently has this ability, and though I realize that Safari is a relatively new app - I’d like to see this implemented on all applications in some form or another. Perhaps this could be a preference to turn on or off, but having the ability would be nice nonetheless. When a program crashes, which is very seldom, there is a report that you can send to Apple at that time. Microsoft has the same thing with crash reporting. However, not all bugs cause crashes, so being able to click a “Report a Bug” button would be killer.
Drag items via Expose
Currently, if you’d like to drop a JPG from your desktop into Photoshop, it’s easy as pie with Expose. Simple hide all windows (I have a left-bottom hot corner for that) click hold drag the file, bring the photoshop Window to the fore, and then plop it in. This is a bit tricky, being that you have to wait for Photoshop to be “in-focus” before you can drop it. Being able to drop it from within Expose would make things a lot faster. Though I have no idea if it’s even possible - since Expose merely shows you a dynamically created screenshot of the Apps window, rather than the actual window shrunken down (I’m no OS X expert, so I really don’t know if that is what it does).
Tab to Drop downs
Being able to tab from an input box to a select (or drop-down) box. So far I have been unable to do this in any browser on OS X, so I don’t think it’s at the browser level. I can do this on Windows though. Is it just me?
Calendar from iCal within Mail.app
There might be something out there to handle this, but I wouldn’t mind having the ability to look at my calendar from within Mail - like in Outlook. Keep them as separate apps, so people can choose to use just one, but integrate them slightly more.
Resume file Transfer over network
This is not something that can be accomplished with Windows either, if my memory serves. But when dragging a 700mb file to your file server via a mounted share, I wouldn’t mind being able to resume that transfer should the Wifi network be unexplainably interrupted by Windows XP’s uncanny ability to drop a network connection for no reason at all.
More to come in the future…
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