Mac OSX Suggestions
30 August 2004
A few suggestions from playing with Kristin's PowerBook for a few days. Many of these come from my Windows background, but I think that they're cases of Windows doing it better – not simply a desire for what I'm used to.
- Remove the distinction between active applications and open documents.
- It's confusing to have an application continue running after you've closed its last window. Especially when the only indication of this is an arrow at the bottom of a dock icon. Also, this distinction means that you can't option-tab through different windows from the same application and leads to the “invisible sheets” that Joel on Software mentions (scroll down to the Mac screenshots). Implementing this suggestion would allow access to the desktop without needing an explicitly active Finder (which would appear only if a folder window were open).
- Enlarge the traffic lights in the right of every window titlebar.
- For a company with menus designed around Fitts's law, these sure are tiny controls. It might be tough to fit bigger buttons into the slick title bars, but it needs to be done. AskTog has a more comprehensive discussion of the gumdrops (is that the official name?).
- Allow maximization of a window.
- For when we want to focus on a single document. And this means that the scroll bars should be usable by throwing the mouse cursor against the right side of the screen. And that the dock should somehow get out of the way.
- Address these nine reasons why the dock still sucks.
- Another good column from AskTog.
- Add another mouse button.
- I know that this is a long-running debate, but even Jef Raskin, designer of the Mac, says that there should have been two-buttons on the Mac mouse. As mentioned at the end of this Wired article, the context-menus should be accessible from a mouse button, not a modified click.
- Create an extended menu of programs and documents.
- A Mac hard-drive is better organized than a Windows one, but I shouldn't have to open it to launch a program that didn't fit in the dock. Something like the Windows Start menu, or something better than the Start menu (I'm referring to DragThing) would be great.
Do you have any other suggestions?
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