Ways OS X Can Improve

I am an Apple evangelist, speaking the ways of the Macintosh, and have been since the days of Vista. I love OS X and the ease of use, the customizable interface, and the many benefits it has to offer. However, no OS is perfect, and despite what most Apple fanboys say, OS X is no exception.

The Dock. The Dock is a very nice feature and has been in OS X for quite some time. However, it lacks a few things, in terms of customization. Apple  needs to put in "themes" for the dock. The glassy look is nice, but it gets old. And not everyone like the 3D look. Yes, you can download applications that modify the dock, but I strongly believe that this needs to be built in.

UI Themes. Like Windows, OS X needs themes for the overall interface. The gray look with colorful buttons is nice, but gets old. I would love to see Apple creative support for themes that are built in to OS X, such as an "Aero" look, similar to Windows. Again, you can download software to have a themes in OS X, but Apple needs to make their own, built in to the OS.

More options in Expose. Expose is great, especially in Snow Leopard. I still think it is unfinished, and could use more customizable options, and I also think Apple could implement Expose in other Apple software, such as iTunes, Safari, iPhoto and iMovie.

The return of support for third-party screen savers. When you upgraded to Snow Leopard, you probably noticed that all of your third-party screen savers no longer worked. It is unknown why Apple removed the support for this, but it would be nice to have it back.

These are just a few, but important, things Apple could improve OS X with. There are more, I'm sure. Comments welcome.

Exposé For iPhone?

Exposé is one of the most productive and useful feature in Mac OS X. Have you ever thought of it on an iPhone or iPod Touch? Ocean Observations has an idea, an Exposé feature for the iPhone and iPod Touch by using the home button’s double tap features. Tap the home button, and up to 9 pages of homescreen are shown in a grid. Tapping any of the displayed pages will jump you directly to that page, allowing you to skip from page 1 to page 8 without swiping 7 times. Interesting idea, but would Apple include this or would it be a “jailbroken iPhone charm”? I can see myself using this, because it could also mean running apps in the background. Here below is a demo of the “iPhone Springboard Exposé”

A Hidden OS X Feature… For Word Nerds

I love finding those little hidden features within OS X that make using my already great Mac, an even nicer experience. That's why, when I found this feature by mistake… I had to share it with all of you.

 I know a lot of you reading this do not know me personally, but if you did… you would learn rather quickly that I am a true word nerd. I love knowing the exact definition of words so I can use them later in their appropriate context. When I am browsing the web, I sometimes come across a word that I do not know, and because of this… my dictionary lives in my dock. But that may change, thanks to this nifty little keyboard shortcut.

 Say you are reading a news article, and you aren't exactly sure what a certain word means. All you have to do is move your cursor over the word you want to look up, and press Command+Control+D. You will see a little contextual window pop up right in the browser with the full definition of the word.

 I'm not sure how well known this is, but hopefully that helps some of you!

Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Available August 28th

Earlier this morning, Apple updated their online store to include Snow Leopard. With a release date of August 28th. If you pre-order, Apple is guaranteeing that Snow Leopard will be delivered by 28th. You can purchase Snow Leopard for $29 for a single license or $50 for a family pack of five licenses.

Chrome OS: Haven’t You Heard of Linux?

After reading dozens, and I mean dozens of articles about Chrome OS and how it is going to be a hit to Microsoft and Apple. When reading the articles, they usually run down the features of the operating system, and the announcements that Google made about it.

Here is an example list from ZDnet.

Timing.

Note the 12-18 month delivery: they’ve been watching how M$ freezes the market with “strategic” pre-annoucements.

Pricing.

Free, as in open-source. M$ will have to fight for every dollar from netbook makers. Google should be handing out “Chrome OS” coffee cups to every M$ OEM starting with HP and Dell.

Target.

Developers: “For application developers, the web is the platform. . . . [it will give] developers the largest user base of any platform.”

Goal.

“. . . computers need to get better.” More like a big smartphone and less like a server – a clear swipe at M$.

Market.

“. . . small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” Google is generously ceding the server OS market to M$ and Linux – for now.

Hm. Sounds a lot like something we know already huh?

Let’s go back to pricing. Notice that it says that it will be free and open-source. Just about every Linux distro is open source and completely free, all you have to do is download the disk image and burn it to a disk (excluding SUSE).

Let’s take a look at the market as well. Is linux aimed at netbooks as well? Yes. Linux is so lightweight, just as Google says Chrome OS will be, that it needs very little memory and processing power to run and still be fast, sometimes as little as 256MB-512MB of RAM.

I’m surprised Google gave the OS a target. You shouldn’t be “targeting” any certain group, if you are making an operating system, it’s best that you advertise it to be the best for EVERYONE, not a certain group. Bad on Google’s part. Even if they are including developer tools to really make it “special” for developers, it seems very un-google-like to not target the entire user base.

What’s all the hype about?

JD

My Bite Into Apple

http://mybiteintoapple.com