What Mac OS X Could Do Better

Leopard

Please Fix Spaces:

  • Don't error every time I pass over a space that has a save or open dialogue.
  • Up arrow pressed while in a space in the top row should put you in the same column on the bottom.
  • [Bug] Opening a new window then switching to spaces before it shows up makes it glitch. Fix: the new win should be placed into the spaces pane that the window was opened from.
  • Make it easier to take a window from space to space. Maybe if the user held down the modifier key set to change spaces with the arrow keys or number row keys, then the top dragable bar of the window is single left clicked, and then the space is changed, the window follows for one space and becomes the top window in that space. No one would notice this unless they knew about it and wanted to use it.
  • When passing over spaces, if there are no finder windows up, don't automatically activate finder.
  • If a window command occurs in a space without any windows, it should not affect the first open window in another space, that's totally irrational.
  • When you minimize a window, don't remember what space it used to be in, the user should be able to unminimize it wherever he/she wants.
  • [Bug] If there is a window out of the bounds of the screen, when a space is changed in that direction, the rest of the window is seen briefly before being cut off.
  • When I move over a space with a popup dialogue, it should focus on that.
  • [Bug] When switching to a space, the application in the new space activates before the space is switched, so if there is a window in the background from the same application, it jumps to the front right before switching spaces and stays in front.
  • When Spaces is activated, mouse movement still registers. This is illustrated in Flash applications.
  • [Bug] If an open/save dialog is up and the space is navigated away from, the dialog won't show up again unless Spaces is activated and the space where the dialog is in is navigated to again.
  • Popup windows do not whoosh like normal windows do when dragging them to a new space.
  • [Bug] If an application is activated and the user changes spaces too quickly, the activation icon ceases to fade out. The only way to remove it from the screen again is by quitting that application and activating it again.
  • [Bug] When spaces is activated, the keyboard shortcuts for focusing the menu bar and Spotlight bug the heck out.
  • When a password input popup comes up, there is no way to type into the text field without clicking on the popup first.

Finder:

  • Make a delete file immediately function.
    Be able to use this for single files in trash.
  • Be able to cut and paste and/or move selected files Terminal style, maybe like the Go to Folder function.
  • In the character palette, make it so that the user can search by Unicode value.
  • Also for the character palette, should be able to toggle it with the key command set in Sys Prefs, not just turn it on.
  • The character palette would work much better if the window were focused when a character was chosen to be inserted, then it unfocused itself before inputting the character, then focused itself again when it was done.
  • [Bug] In columns view, when you move or modify a file, you then cannot rename it until you navigate away from and then back to the folder, nor can you type the name of it to select it. (Fixed in Snow Leopard)
  • When you click on a location in the sidebar, the focus should automatically go to the first item in that folder once it appears.
  • !! Should be a ctrl click keyboard shortcut.
  • Make a "New File" (like UNIX touch) right click submenu item in Finder, or at least one from the file menu.
  • When items in a list are arranged a certain way other than alphabetically, when a letter is pressed, the first item in the list that begins with that letter should be highlighted, not the first alphabetically. Or make an option in Sys. Prefs.
  • !! When a filename is already taken, an alert window pops up, then the filename reverts back making the user type the whole thing out again. Instead, after the popup window closes, just highlight the text in the text box with the same text.
  • When Finder freezes, the way most people would access Force Quit is by clicking the apple in the top left hand corner, but it's part of the file menu, so it has the spinning color wheel of death mouseover as well. Allow the apple to be clicked or have some sort of alternative.
  • When lists are organized any way other than alphabetically, as the user starts to type, it should match from top to bottom. There should at least be a setting to allow this.
  • When highlighting items in a list, if a bunch of items are command clicked, followed by a shift click, the items between the last item clicked and the current item should all highlight AND the command clicked items should remain highlighted.
  • Get rid of the three pixels the dock pushes all windows over when maximized. I don't need to see an itty bit of the desktop.
  • When in columns view, if the left arrow key then right arrow key are pressed in succession, the previously selected item should be reseleceted.
  • When a popup comes up, sometimes it's not focused. There is now no way to interact with it until it has been clicked on. Cmd + ` should focus the popup window of any application.
  • On the desktop, treat it just as any other finder window and be able to shift click to highlight more than one thing and anything in between.
  • The desktop should also be viewable in list form.
  • The text in Get Info windows should be read-only, not see-only.
  • Read only text should still have text navigation and selection features.
  • When clicking and dragging a file, it needs to still be possible to cmd + ` through the windows.

Text Edit:

  • Should be able to change print margins to smaller than an inch.
  • Shift + Cmd + up/down arrow key then down/up key should remove highlighting, not add at the opposite end.
    Shift + arrow key + (cmd+r/l arrow key) should deselect up to the cmd+shift+l/r arrow key position.

Exposé:

  • [Bug] If you click and hold (move but don't move) a window and activate Exposé, it glitches and makes the window move behind, and then doesn't work until you click somewhere, when it jumps to wherever you click.
  • Would work better if when all of the windows are the same size, they are separated into rows, not one gigantic row in the middle.
  • !! When Exposé is activated, switching spaces should deactivate it before switching spaces.

Preview:

  • [Bug] The search bugs when you put < characters in.
  • !! Should recognize and play animated .gif files.
  • [Bug] When selecting, if the user scrolls down, the selection no longer directly follows the mouse.
  • If the user opens an image, there is no way to use the text tool. Despite this, if the text tool was the last tool to be used, it will remain selected. The select tool should be default in this case.
  • If quick look is activated while Exposé is activated, then the user continues to use quick look, it zooms in and out, but pops off screen.
  • When I search for something, then immediately click the x in the search box without clicking anything else, it should take me back to the page that I was on.

General:

  • Make an alt-tab function that shows each window in the current space.
  • Allow file relocation and renaming from "Open" or "Save" or "Save As" dialogs.
  • Allow the fn key on laptops to have a type of function similar to other modifier keys. It's a wasted key!
  • On MacBooks, put two more keys above the left and right arrow keys. There's so much space there! A control key would be so useful right there!
  • Open with list should be ordered by most to least used, not alphabetical.
  • When Caps Lock is on, if you hit shift it should make it lower case.
  • When you're saving something and you click on another file name, the same number of characters remain selected. Either select the whole text up to the extension or don't select anything.
  • When you change the extension in the filename in a save dialog, that means save it as that file extension, not save it as a .*.[default]. This should be detected.
  • When you click in a small, specific area in a text box, all the text is highlighted. That's useful, make it easier to do.
  • Make it easier to SHUT THE START UP SOUND OFF OR LOWER ITS VOLUME!!!!
  • If headphones are plugged in on startup, the Mac startup sound should NOT SOUND THROUGH THE SPEAKERS! IT SHOULD SOUND THROUGH THE HEADPHONES! THAT'S WHY THE HEADPHONES ARE PLUGGED IN! SO THAT IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SOUND!! WHEN YOU'RE IN THE LIBRARY!!
  • When cmd-tabbing, should be able to hit a key to jump to programs that start with that letter.
  • Have an option in Sys. Prefs. where windows pile rather than group according to program, meaning that when a window closes, whatever program the window underneath is associated with then gets focus. This is far more useful. If you want the old program back in focus, click on dock or cmd-tab. Might as well make this a sys prefs setting.
  • Add a setting to allow the user to always be able to change the file extension without popping up an "Are you sure?" dialog.
  • And once you're done making all of these changes, make a manual that highlights all the cool things to make it easier to use your computer. There really isn't a good unified source on the internet.
  • When navigating the file menu with the keyboard, should be able to hit up to open a submenu and highlight the last item instead of down then up.
  • !! When you click on a file menu dropdown separator the menu should not close.
  • Give the user at least three more key repeat rates and hold speeds.
  • In programs where you can drag the window larger than whatever is displayed, instead of having the scroll bar get bigger and bigger and then disappear, once the window is large enough to display everything, make the scroll bar get smaller and smaller again as the window is dragged larger to allow the user to place the content however they want vertically.
  • Make an option in sys. prefs. next to "Minimize when double-clicking a window title bar" that says "Maximize when double-clicking a window title bar".
  • [Bug] On "open" & "save" dialoges, do NOT allow key strokes to affect the program in the background. (May be program specific, but if there's an easy way to include this in a library, that would be AMAZING!!)
  • [Bug] Make terminal expandable to the fit the whole screen.
  • When highlighting text, if the highlighting color is too close to the text color, make the contrast greater by either changing the font color or the highlight color so it's readable.
  • Make a "comes with the OS" drawing application that kicks Paint's ass. Seriously.
  • [Bug] When there are too many file menu items, they overflow into the other menubar items. Should scroll like tabs do or something.
  • When you plug in a USB mouse when the computer is sleeping, it should not wake it up. When it wakes up, it should check.
  • [Bug] On MacBooks when you first start up, if you shut off Airport, it won't turn back on until the computer is restarted. (Fixed)
  • [Bug] When the brightness changes or a space is switched, the window that pops up flickers if a key is pressed as it fades.
  • [Bug] Why are photos taken on Macs mirror imaged?
  • cmd+tab should allow left arrow key to do the same thing as cmd+shift+`.
  • In menubar menus, when typing for an item, if no match occurs at the beginning of the items' names, search the entire items' names for matches.
  • If, before a new window comes up, another window is clicked on, the window coming up should not show up as the front window anyway.
  • The desktop icon grid should fit to the screen.
  • In the file menu, should be able to click or control click the space where a keyboard shortcut shows, have a small text box appear there or something, and record in Sys. Prefs. what keyboard shortcut you press.
  • When searching for something from a finder window, automatically search in the directory where the search was started from.
  • iTunes should have been programmed with the ordinary Cocoa library, why wasn't it? Two problems I have found: every single space thinks that there is an iTunes window in it when iTunes is running, and, like Finder, the file menu doesn't push down on the top of the window unless moved through iTunes itself. I'd have to show you what I mean.
  • [Bug] When changing Terminal's PS1 to something complicated, pressing ctrl + a will move text over, but the display does not refresh.
  • Arrow keys should navigate through all buttons on a dialog or window when a button is focused.
  • Time machine should have a wrench option to find duplicates of a file. This could happen by indexing the file sizes of all of the files.
  • When more time has passed than the interval between backups Time Machine should not wait to back stuff up. When the external hard drive is connected, it should start the backup whithout requiring the user to open Sys Prefrences, click Time Machine, click "Show Time Machine in Task Bar", click the icon, click "Back up now", uncheck "Show Time Machine in Task Bar", quit Sys Prefs, and go back to whatever he or she was doing.
  • The default color picker should have at least one place to insert a hex value.

Snow Leopard

Finder

  • When the user creates a new folder or duplicates a file or folder in column view, if he or she presses enter before the scrolling has finished, the rename box remains static.
  • On MacBooks, when the user dims the screen all the way and has a rotating image background, the screen lights up when the background image changes.