WWDC06 Thoughts
Posted on: 08.07.2006
Mail:
Are there really people out there that don’t use web based mail? If so, WHY? I can access my mail from ANY internet device on ANY OS. How is this not appealing? GMail takes a bit to get used to but after few hours you’ll wonder why you ever used an OS reliant app. I’ve never used OS X Mail and I never will.
Voice over:
Of the 2% of the computer world that uses OS X, how many people actually use the accessibility options? Why are people getting so excited over the voice thing? You’ll use it once or twice and then get annoyed with it unless you are blind. To me this was a huge waste of developer resources. There was absolutely nothing wrong the old Voice over.
Spaces:
I never used this feature in any other OS for the past 10 years, why would I use it in OS X? Again, a waste of development time.
Time Machine:
One of the reasons why I’m in the process of switching to Mac is because of Windows useless bloat features like System Restore. There better be a way to turn off Time Machine or I might end up switching back to Windows. When I delete something, I’m doing so for a reason and I don’t want my computer second guessing me while simultaneously filling up my hard drive.
I’d rather the developers focus on improving the finder so I don’t need to use Spotlight to navigate my system. When you think about it, it’s pretty sad that Apple had to even create Spotlight. All they needed to do was make finder a useful tool and an intuitive experience and people could be managing their files as fast as Windows Explorer users can.
Things I wanted from Leopard:
1. Finder: sort folders first. Please! PLEASE!!! This guy got right ... hopefully Apple will listen. You know, I wouldn’t need Spotlight at all if they added this simple feature that has been available on every OS since the beginning of time. My Amiga 500 with OS 1.3 sorts folders first… hell, even my cellphone sorts folders first. Come on Apple.
2. Finder: useful status bar info. I don’t care how much storage is left on the current partition, in fact, this is the very last piece of info that I want to know about the current open window. I want to know how many files are in the current folder and how much space they are taking up. I then want to know the total size of the current selection of files. Simple. Useful. Practical.
3. Replace the Dock. There has to be a better way. I just can’t get used to not having a taskbar. The taskbar is useful, doesn’t get in the way and is simple to use. The Dock is pretty… and that’s about it.
4. .DS_Store management. I don’t want them and I don’t need them… please don’t force me to use them. I’m sick of having to run clean up software on all of my Windows projects because of the garbage files that OS X leaves behind. Windows adds a few files by default too but they are ONLY in the root drive and they are not annoying. At the very least please offer us the option to turn them off on FAT32 partitions. I’m not paying for BlueHarvest when this could easily be avoided at the source.
5. File requester improvements. Why is there no “Up one folder/level” button? Maybe I’m missing it but the file requester is really slowing me down when I’m trying to get stuff done.
6. System wide font customization. The fonts in that white title bar/menus are way too big in OS X. It’s making it really difficult for me to consider this a professional OS when the fonts are 4 times larger than what I need. I shouldn’t have to hack the OS to fix this.
Now, I know this sounds like I really hate Apple but I really don’t. I love my Mac mini and I love using my system as a HTPC, I just wish it was as fun to use as a real, productive work environment. I guess I was just really unimpressed with this years keynote.
