HostWerks.com Dave's Mac OS X Page of Ideas
Updated 4 November 2003
OS X Ideas
Here are a number of ideas I have that can improve OS X.

Note, most of these are applicable to Panther and previous versions of OS X. With Tiger on the horizon, these may no longer be valid suggestions.
  1. Finder takes way too long to build the "Open With" contextual menu. Jaguar is much faster than 10.0/10.1 was but it's still not good enough. Perhaps there's some way the file extensions could be indexed to a list of applications appropriate for that file type? There's has to be a faster way.
    Mac OS X 10.3 aka Panther has made large strides in eliminating this issue. However, it's never enough so keep working on it Apple.
    find dialog

  2. The Find dialog should automatically resize itself as drives/volumes/CDs are mounted or unmounted. At least make it resizable. Like this
    find dialog

  3. Ditto for the Preferences window. Why do I see scroll bars here? Please...
    Fixed in Panther.
    preferences

  4. Correct the problem that requires me to keep the mouse cursor moving in order to select text that's scrolled off screen. BBEdit does it right, why not other apps? Safari is definitely squirelly when it comes to selecting text from a web page. Try it. Again, Panther has improved but not eliminated this issue.
  5. While not exactly an OS X issue, it sure would be nice if I could use Backup with more than one machine using my .Mac account.
  6. Save/Open dialog boxes need to keep both size and position between sessions.
    open save dialog This is the default behavior with OS X.
    open save dialog And this is how I think it should be.
  7. Icon placement on Desktop. User should be able to specify where drives, server volumes, and CDs show up on the desktop.
  8. Finder needs some sort of Preview capability for graphics and other files.
  9. A consistent command-key (⌘) equivalent for accessing Preference is different applications needs to be defined and enforced. If one exists already, it needs to be enforced.
  10. The Preview application needs the capability to display animated GIFs animating.
  11. Hovering over an icon in Finder will show a preview of the contents of the selected file.
  12. Icon placement in windows: why is there no way to apply your "all windows" settings to all enclosed folders. Or at least a user should have the ability to apply window settings to everything in their Home folder.
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This page last modified on 06/17/08