1. Filenames : I want to be in control of filenames, not have the OS tell me what I can call things, make things disappear because I put a period in front of something, or suddenly change icon and behavior. Filenames are MINE, not yours! Stop telling me what I can do with them! Arguing that you're not as completely moronic about hiding them as Microsoft is, is no consolation. It used to work far better.


2. File behaviors : I want to be able to have one document of a given type open in one app, and another of the same type open in a different app, and have it work correctly. Files are mine, not yours! Stop telling me how they will work.


3. Drag and drop : this used to work. I could drag and drop documents onto other apps and they would highlight if they could handle that type. Now it is done by what they are named; but sometimes the names and behaviors don't sync. I have documents that are misnamed all the time, or I don't have a choice -- it should still not break. (An example is C++ header files that are not allowed to have an extension. They should work, not break the entire OS's metaphor).

Before I get lots of emails: Yes, I know a little about BeOS's metadata scheme. Yes it is better than what we have now. I'm not sure I think it was as good as what the Mac had (in at least some ways) but I do think there are some things we could learn from it. Best of all is to create a new scheme that can handle user and ownership domains as well as other resources

1. Spring loaded folders - I know some will say that Jaguar has them but in Jaguar they only have half of the functionality. There were two behaviors: drag, and double-click tunneling. Jaguar got the first behavior mostly working but is missing the second. I used to tunnel by double-clicking on the first item, and then it would behave like I was dragging something for rapid navigation. This was intuitive, easy, fast, and cool.


2. Tabbed Windows (Popup Folders) - it was always nice being able to decide how I was working and just dock a window at the bottom of the screen or set up and arrange my own topical dock (that frankly worked much better for me). Apple never implemented them as well as they should have (that whole moving around and resizing stuff on a portable, and I wondered why the top and sides weren't also part of the metaphor) so it could certainly be implemented better. But don't take away what I had and tell me I shouldn't miss it.


3. Application Menu - it was aways much faster and better than trying to play the "find the running app" shell game that is the dock. The App menu even has the texual names of things (instead of playing concentration by matching the little pictures in the dock, or me having to rollover them) and a menu gets out of my way when I'm done with it (progressive disclosure). I've stripped my dock of everything except running apps, and use it like a little always-open running Apple menu and it works much better. And I use a reasonable dock: DragThing (which has a domain system). And there are third party Applicaiton menu hacks to make my Mac work like a Mac. But I think evolution is easier than revolution, and making an Application menu would not be a huge effort.


4. Apple Menu - hey, while we're at it, I used to love to keep my accessories in there. What do you know, it was good for something. I understand the new menu layout and a lot of it makes sense. Fine; give me a "Dave menu" where I can put my things. I liked having my own menu and Apple took that away from me! Give it back!


5. Control Strip - my menubar is already crowded enough. I don't really mind controls up there and interface-wise they are consistent in behavior, but I'm running out of room already. With control strip I could organize it, hide it, and I could expand it by writing my own items. Since Apple is being a butt-head and intentionally breaking anyone else's custom-menu-control-strip things in Jaguar I want the old open way back!


6. Button view - hey, I know it is silly with the dock and all, but sometimes I set up button view windows and docked them (especially for other users). I still watch many users click once on an icon on the desktop and wait, or double click apps in a dock (and I wince). I understand their desire for more consistency and sometimes I could fake that for them with a few apps that they just click on. Not any more.


7. Finder Labels - I used to set colors and labels for items. I liked that the finder tried to adapt to my way of working and had generic behaviors like that which worked the same everywhere. Honestly, when I saw Copland's dynamic folders (auto-searching) labels became immediately 10 times more valuable. I could flag anything, anywhere as "hot" and have one folder which listed all the "hots". This was great and far more advanced than what I have now.


8. Location Manager - while UNIX management of users and accounts works, and some behaviors (like multi-homing) need location manager less, I still like location manager and I wish it was back. OS X networking still has problems if you change places on it too often (which I do). My solution is to have multiple network locations set up (that I manually set). But this doesn't change everything that I need (like printers and network drives for example) and is not as good as having all my settings able to change globally the way I want them to.


9. Persistence - I used to set Window positions, size, controls, and views and they would consistently work. Now they don't. Sometimes they work but often they move, change size, or change what controls are shown. When I open a new window it sometimes inherits from the previous one and sometimes not. I know there are rules for when it works and why and that I can psuedo-program them myself to work how I expect. But so far, I'm amazed at how consistently wrong it is at guessing what I want or what I expect. It didn't used to be like that.


10. Put away - I used to just go to the trash or an item on the desktop and put it away. Undo sometimes works but is not really the same behavior, nor should it be. That's for undoing the last behavior, not selectively knowing to undo an action on the specific thing I've clicked on. Where's my flipping put-away button?


11. File Name limits. You can type a name longer than it allows, then after you hit return it throws an error. What's up with an error? Are you stupid? The old Mac used to just beep and stop you when you went too far. This is just common sense dynamic feedback, guys; give people the feedback as they are doing the action, not later.


12. Tighter grid (and more control) - I used to be able to set a tighter and more effective grid on icons (in windows and on the desktop); now I'm a victim of Apple's settings. The whole interface got looser with my screen real-estate, which is annoying but I can live with it. But with icon grids it is just too much. Jaguar is better at giving me more control but we need better still. And the finder needs to pay attention to those settings (sometimes it resets or ignores them).


13. Alias feedback is weak. The little arrow is small. Italics used to offer more feedback. That's gone.

1. Mouse tracking - this sounds like a little issue. But the Mac always felt smooth and predictable. There's some new tracking in OS X (including Jaguar) that I've never gotten used to. The velocity curves are different, and it skips and jumps. Sometimes it stutters and before I know it, I've added things from the dock or pulled them out. Huh? It feels, well, like Windows to me. It is actually slightly better than Windows in that it is closer to a Mac, but it isn't yet correct.


2. Cursors that work - The I-Beam cursor sometimes works, sometimes not (especially in the finder). Same with the silly little CD-ROM cursor. Has anyone figured out that this made sense when the NeXT cube had an optical drive (so a spinning optical cursor meant "loading") but that I'm using a hard drive? Not all pauses are due to waiting for the optical drive any more! Hello? What was wrong with the watch? (Made more sense to me). I like cursor shadows and cusror look and detail. Everything else in new cursors sucks.


3. Game controller support - Apple used to have input sprockets and so on. New Apple may rely on standards too much so they won't go beyond them. Mainly the USB drivers are covering this but there's still a little loss of specialization.


4. Analog video input - I miss being able to just plug a VCR or camera into the Mac. Some of us don't own the hottest digital devices.


5. Analog audio input - this comes and goes; which makes it hard to know what you're getting. Can I just plug in a mic. or stereo or not? This is a $.05 connector, leave it alone (and in).


6. Power Management that works better - I used to get 4 real hours out of the TiBook in OS9. I seem to get about half that with Jaguar and it runs hotter. I can discuss all the reasons why it doesn't work (UNIX VM disk thrashing and so on) but in the end they are excuses; it used to work better.


7. Timed startup and shutdown - I do not leave my machine on all the time. It turns out that OS X expects that I do and it runs maintenance tasks accordingly. I used to script things like "boot at 2:00 AM, backup and 2:15 AM, shutdown at 3:00 AM until 5:00 AM, then get up before I do so when I go downstairs you're all warm for me". Silly and minor, but still gone. A few of us used that stuff.


8. Portrait monitor - OK, so I'm the only dweeb left with an old one-page portrait display. I liked it I and wonder what would have been so hard about coding one more scan rate into a video chip?


9. Happpy Mac on boot - now honestly, why did that have to go? It isn't a huge deal either way (I don't lose sleep over it). I understand updating it, making it cooler and newer looking (bigger), animating it, putting more diagnostics in there, and so on. But there's a difference between evolution and change for change's sake. They could have made it better and do more. Instead they just made it different.


10. Didn't I used to be able to set function keys to run Apps? This doesn't seem like rocket science to me! Of course Apple never got it working very well (across all apps and so on), but still; I've had these keys for 10 years...why not make them useful again?

1. ESP / Precognition : I liked being able to type the first few letters in something and have it work. Mostly it works but not always, like in the most often used place (open/save dialog). What the hell is that trying to do anyways?


2. Open / Save : this always had some problems that they had almost gotten worked out (in MacOS and Navigation Services). This new version is much worse. Why can't I resize things in column view so I can actually read from my list? I used to be able to see the names of things. If you are doing it "new" then why doesn't it just work more like other finder views and allow list or icon view? Copland was trying to make it better; instead we started over.


3. Open / Save : as long as we are on Open/Save dialog, what moron figured that the controls and keyboard shortcuts should be different between that and the finder views? Duh! Hello? Have you heard about consistency?


4. Radio and Checkboxes : I like to click on the name, not just the tiny control itself. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Stop it. Make it work right all the time.


5. Draggable edges : I liked being able to grab the edge of windows to drag them. Not to mention having some contrast where one window ended and another started. I lost that with the Aqua theme; and I'm not even going to get into the hundreds of issues with that look and the whole menu transparency thing that drives me nuts.


6. Command-period : I remember when command-. would stop things. I know it wasn't the most intuitive command but now things are worse. Maybe make something new with similar functionality or hack that to work again. But I want something predictable and consistent. Jaguar is better than 10.1 but needs more.


7. Control Panels menu : I used to be able to quickly go to the control panel item I wanted (through a hierarchy). Apple reverted us back to System 6's control panel where everything is a two stage process. Not a win, though I like the logical grouping. That grouping could have been done from menus as well. Without my stuff in it the Apple menu is naked anyway so start with each topic and have the items underneath. I know you are in love with your own icons but I like speed of use. Also control panels used to feel more open (people could make them with help from Apple, etc.). It feels less open now.

1. Shell - MPW people understood both shells and UI. So did some other efforts. I used to be able to see commands and add menus that ran either shell scripts or apple scripts or both. What about a help browser that can go through commands and man pages? Did everyone with that clue leave? Or is Apple trying to tell me that terminal is the ultimate shell environment? I think the problem is that they don't want to emphasize the shell too much, so they won't put any money into it. But some people (like me) have to use it. So make it more usable.


2. I used to have the extension manager that I could use to control what was running, what could be running, what I could turn off, and so on. I want similar functionality. There is sort of a "startup items" now, and there are ways that I can add things as psuedo-chron jobs and so on but Apple should make them standard, document them, and put an interface on their management. I don't think making users edit plists is the ultimate in management.


3. Dock - sorry, the dock sucks (for some types of work/people). You've heard it before; I'm not going to go into it. But if you aren't going to fix it at least make it open and expandable (replaceable). In fact, even if you are going to fix it, make it an open, expandable, and replaceable thing. Right now it feels like a testament to Steve's stubbornness and hubris: "My way or the highway". What a way to build customer loyalty.


4. Device Drivers : there are more now, and things are getting better. In another few years we'll have the same variety that we used to. This isn't to bash; these things take time and I think that OS X will eventually grow to be better than OS9 was in this area. But we still haven't caught up yet, and don't try to tell me we have.


5. Print center : I used to think chooser was bad; now I have print center. It's slow, confusing, quirky. And shouldn't it (also drive setup, etc.) be in control panels or the Apple menu? What about scanners, cameras, and so on? I think all of this control panel stuff needs to be reworked to be more open and consistent. I want to go there to set up devices, not wander the hard drive looking for places Apple or others may have hidden things.


6. Another thing is that I used to set up lots of auto-mount network drives. While I can manually mount network drives in OS X I've never figured out how to auto-mount them. There's probably a way (and I haven't tried hard to find it) but it should be more obvious or be part of the settings for that drive.


7. Another nice to have is Internet controls that work across the system and are more consistent. Some of this is the fault of Apps that do their own thing (Explorer comes to mind) but fix them or convince them to see the light. The Internet controls worked better in OS 9; where are my helper apps settings?


8. The old Apple strived for Openness when it came to the OS (sometimes too much). The new Apple is more open in some areas (Rendevous) but then closed in other areas. Why isn't there a replaceable dock? What about themes? What about the control strips? Play nice with others or they may take their toys and go home! I'm not saying they're all great ideas but I do think there's a selective attitude about what constitutes "open".