What Do You Want out of Leopard?
Apple recently announced the dates of its World Wide Developers Conference. This year it is coming a bit later than usual, running August 7-11 instead of the more traditional May or June. Speculation is that the conference is being held up a bit so Apple can get its hands on Intel’s 64-bit desktop chip called Cornroe and have a shiny new tower to show off at the conference. New hardware is always interesting but much more interesting is something else that is rumored to happen at WWDC ‘06: A preview of Apple’s next iteration of OS X, Leopard.
The changes brought about by Leopard will be far more interesting over the long run than any computers introduced at the show. Before specific improvements and enhancements are suggested, it is important to note that Tiger, at least personally, has been a pretty terrific release. Sure, Widgets have not quite made a huge difference in day to day life for most users (except for the Apple Matters This Day in Apple History Widget, outstanding!) but the less glitzy side of Tiger, also known as everything else but Spotlight, is generally very solid. Personal satisfaction with the current OS revision noted, it is time to address what improvements Leopard should bring.
A better Finder
This is an old complaint about OS X, the finder is busy trying to do two things at once. John Gruber of Daring Fireball sums the problem up nicely:
So, the Finder needs some work. Digging through folders to find specific files made a lot of sense when people were using System 6 and had 40 MB hard drives, heck you could remember just about every file on your computer. With the expansive hard drives of today, feature bloat and the sheer number of files most people have, just digging around through folders isn’t the most efficient way to find files. The Finder should be a priority.
Improved Safari
Safari is generally a good browser, you won’t find any fatal flaws. Yet, it isn’t without annoyances. To begin with, as Chris Howard noted, Safari isn’t the most compatible browser around. Secondly, also noted by Chris Howard, Safari has an annoying tendency after long periods of use to drag like crazy. Yes, there are fixes and tricks. You can delete Favicons or clean your Mac with any one of a seeming jillion maintenance programs (I prefer OnyX) but that is too much to ask of the average Mac user. We just want stuff to work.
Those are just minor quibbles; a new release of OS X shouldn’t be mainly about fixing minor complaints with the current release, it should be about making the OS substantially better. If the previous revisions to OS X are any guide Leopard will offer speed increases, a few pieces of eye candy for his Jobsness to gush about and plenty of under the hood improvements that you won’t see but will (even if you never realize it) appreciate. So, what hot newness would be nice to see?
Prefechting
Intel is promising laptops that use flash memory extensively. The idea is that by using a scheme called Prefetching and storing vital chunks of frequently used programs in flash memory you both speed up the computer and save power. If the difference is as big as Intel says it is (perhaps doubtful) one would expect Apple to offer a similar function in Leopard. Sure, it is a Windows innovation but share and share alike.
A Finder much more reliant on Spotlight.
As mentioned above, the Finder is in an uncomfortable between area still not quite sure what it wants to be. By leveraging the power of Spotlight cleverly the Finder could go from OS X annoyance to OS X all star.
Anti-Phishing, anti-stupid user stuff.
The recent news has been all doom and gloom when it comes to Macs and security. Yet, for all the hyperbole, the Mac is very secure when compared to other systems. The honest truth is that no computer will ever be completely safe as long as files are being moved onto it so you can expect an ove-hyped story about holes in OS X every six months or so. FUD disguised as news aside, the biggest security threat to Mac users isn’t a virus or some ham-fisted piece of Malware disguised as a JPEG, the biggest hole in OS X security resides behind the keyboard of every Mac.
With that in mind, it would be nice to see Apple add some flags to Mail. You know a flag that says something like:
Attention: your eBay account hasn’t been suspended
When users receive an obviously fraudulent email. Or
Warning: This mail did not originate from MBNA server
When you get one of those pieces of spam asking you to log into your credit card account. Even, perhaps most helpfully:
Danger, Danger: That’s not really an attractive Russian with a sincere desire for your company. It’s a guy with copious amounts of back hair who wants to take a crack at your wallet.
There is, of course, a limit to how much you can protect the painfully gullible from themselves. That, however, doesn’t mean Apple shouldn’t try to help the less computer savvy among us.
That’s a short list of improvements your humble author would like to see. Undoubtedly, the wise and intelligent readers of AppleMatters will have their own suggestions for things that should be changed in Leopard which should prove much more interesting than the previous listing.
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Comments
Nice article Chris. I think one thing I would like to see from Spotlight is not so much a fix but an added feature. I don’t know if you’ve ever used Quicksilver, I assume you have, but I’d like to see Spotlight do something similar with that. It would be nice to be able to hit say, the F8 button and bring up a small window, type in a couple of letters and then open up your favourite app without having to navigate through the finder Window.
I also agree with your point on Finder, although I know Apple have already said something needs to be done about it. It’s rather annoying (without Quicksilver) to go through everything just to open up an application. I hate to say it, but Windows has one thing better than OS X, and that’s the Start Menu. Easy access to all apps… Well, easier than Finder at least.
I just want to address what Aaron said above about the Windows Start Menu. You can basically have the same thing by dragging your applications folder to your dock and then just right click on it to get a list of applications. I actually find this easier to use than the Start Menu in Windows.
I agree about the finder. We need something a little more usable. One program I can’t live without on my Windows machine is Total Commander. It’s a great file manager application. I’ve been hoping they would port it over to Windows but they have said that there is no plan for it. I’ve also seen a couple of open source apps like Midnight Commander but they just don’t compare to Total Commander.
Good article Chris.
I have a feeling that Front Row will be added to 10.5 so “the rest of us” can use it. (Optional remote and IR receiver integrated into an ipod dock). Again, speed will be an issue and hopefully Apple will come through - especially for those with Macs slower than the 1.0 Ghzs.
I would like to see iSight have an option for video using a dial up line - even if the quality is less than stellar. Not all hotels I go to have DSL and I’d like to be able to use iSight. The quality is not as important as long as you know why it’s degraded.
Aaron - I found an app called Overflow last week and have started using it. Allow for various apps to be placed under one icon on the dock (I have 24 in mine) and is a lot faster than the Start menu in Windows ever was. Found it at http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/ which is a huge listing of OS X apps. Worth looking at and there is a free demo available.
CaptainMac, thanks for the advice. I did this in the past before using Quicksilver, but users shouldn’t have to make their own ‘start menu’, it’s something that should be, and hopefully will be, included into Leopard, or at least something better.
MacKen, thanks for the link. I’m going to give it a test for a week now and see if it’s more beneficial to me than Quicksilver.
Start bar? Are you serious? It’s just like an alias of your applications folder with other things added!!! I do agree the finder needs work but you’re all overstating it!! It’s still the best available by a longshot
I personally would like another iSight which is a lower-res, compatible with dial-up and cheaper… Much cheaper!!
i think all I need from leopard is a mildly improved finder and a new turbocharged safari! It’s so slow on some sites. It get’s very annoying at times but I’m stuck with it for widget downloads and it’s top-class RSS integration
I would like to see support for IGMP version 3. Apparently such support has been held up on MacOS X due to an Apple patent. However, Windows, Linux, and even other flavors of BSD have this. Some developers (such as myself) need it bad!
John Sircusa of ArsTechnica has said and covered the woes of the current Finder best in his reviews of Panther and Tiger <http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/18>. Apple could use these as a template for what needs to be fixed. And if they get anywhere near to Path Finder-like features and performance <http://www.cocoatech.com/pf4>, then Leopard will be something buy. Will see…
My list of impossibilities:
Spotmeta-like support in Spotlight
Working rsync -E
AES in Secure Transport Protocol (Security.framework)
Open-source XNU
OpenBSD’s PF ported to OSX instead of ipfw2
isakmp instead of racoon
Better VPN support (not need cisco and apani’s vpn clients?)
Uninstall (dependency aware) capabilities for [m]pkg (PackageMaker)—or a real package mmgt framework like DarwinPorts.
ZFS (ya right) (and dtrace while you’re at it)
... I’m sure there are a lot more, these were just pulled out of the air.
I just want to see a new innovative feature, like exposé, spotlight or aqua. Preferably a few new ones.
A ‘better this’ or ‘better that’ isn’t a new OS. It’s barely an upgrade.
Luke: I exactly agree. But I have to say I’m pretty stumped about what exactly they could be. And I would like to see lots of other general low-level improvements. Most of all though I want to be impressed!
Speed. It’s pretty snappy now but I’d love it to be fast. Get Quartz extreme working very well. OpenGL performance improved greatly. Java speed improved. Built-in VOIP. It makes every Mac a business Mac. More interactivity in the dock icons. I like the way Mail shows you how much mail you have. Other applications should have that.
A totally revamped iTunes. It’s gotten junked up with the music store and the video store, podcasts all in there. Just strip it down and do music again. Make programs for those other features. Simplify everything again. Consistent user interface across applications. Brushed metal gone. The new grey plastice fixed. It looks cheap right now. PVR. Software update available to every third party. That would be great. Cheaper .mac. Keep the software tools coming. Keep them free. Make them great. That will pay off in the future as more people come to the mac platform. Some very nice software has shown up lately on the Mac.
I WANT SCREEN PARTITIONING!
Do you reckon they heard me at Apple?
It means I want to partition my screen so apps are limited to their designated partition. Thus I can work from keep thing permanently in view without other apps continually popping under or over them.
I somewhat agree with the “Start Menu” idea Aaron suggested. Supposedly the Dock is meant to supplant the need for something like that. You keep all your frequently used apps in the Dock.
Problem is I have 41 apps in the Dock…
The create a link to the Applications folder is not a good workaround as it lists every file in that folder, which makes it slow to open and very cluttered and you’ve got no control over what appears in it.
I had a quick look at Overflow - thanks MacKen - and it looks promising.
My thoughts include:
- Much snappier performance. MacOS X can feel very sluggish at times, even on the latest hardware.
- Better screen layout taking account that most screens are widescreen format these days. This means menu bars across the top of the screen and dock at the bottom (yes I know it can be moved) result in a small amount of usable vertical space with large areas of wasted space to the sides
- Better Finder. Duh.
- More stable Safari. Ad blocking.
- System restore/roll-back feature, like Windows
- An iChat which is compatible with more than just iChat and AOL for video
- More robust MacOS. I still get occasional problems with a corrupted plist file that prevents the system from booting.
- Much improved Spotlight. It’s slow and basic. Quicksilver would be a much better starting point.
- Better firewall with “Little Snitch” capabilities builtin. Why does every application need to dial home???
- Ability to use iCal to schedule tasks on the computer
- Decent uninstall capability, remove Library files, etc
- More 3D effects on desktop. eg. ability to rotate windows sideways and stack to one side, like in Sun’s prototype 3D desktop
- Built-in language translation capabilities. View any webpage, application or document in your native language automagically
Paul Howland said “- Ability to use iCal to schedule tasks on the computer”
totally!! being able to update the crontab through iCal would be an awesome feature.
My use of the computer has become so much more efficient since i installed QuickSilver. Why on earth would you want a start-menu-like feture when superb tools like QS exist?
i have 90 Apps in my Dock and 8 Folders next to the trash icon including the Applications folder but the Applications folder is so full that it will not display every thing in the Dock menu anyway. the only advantage to having the Dock so full is that it can not take up very much vertical screen space on my 17” Monitor.