I love using my macs - I have them at work, I have 3 at home.. I’ve had macs since the colour iMacs were released (mine was a blueberry one). It’s not that I ever particularly loved macs. I’m not a mac fanboy as people think me to be. I am however, a Microsoft hater. Their software is crap. From their OS to their Office suite… Since my other choices such as Linux or the long forgotten Amiga are really no-gos. I’ve had to make do with the Mac. Don’t get me wrong - OS X is great - it’s many times better than the MS world. It’s not without it’s flaws but that’s to be expected. However there are a couple of things MS have that I’d like to see in OS X.

Firstly is a finder that allows me to properly filter files by any meta data I should choose. On a PC I can list the files in list mode and sort them in many, many ways even for example by pixel size. The mac version of this feature is more limited.

Another thing that Vista has is UPNP DLNA support built in. What’s that? Short answer, it lets you turn your computer into an industry standard media streaming server which allows other devices to stream from it. For example, I like to play my content from my mac on my big screen TV using my PS3. To add this functionality I used a 3rd party piece of software called EyeConnect. there are others available such as Twonky media or Playback. Windows (or some versions) come with this functionality built in. Besides being able to stream from Windows Media player (from my understanding), DLNA shares on the network show up in the networks places area in Windows.

Apple’s solution is all based on their iTunes software and ecosystem. Since there isn’t an iTunes media store here then that’s a no go. Besides which there are other limitations. Apple would like you to by an Apple TV to play their media on the big screen. This has not proven to be very successful… Apple should know better than to release a single function device these days (what worked for the iPod once does not hold true today with consumers’ expectations of multifunction devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. I expect the Apple TV to develop into a fully web enabled games console one day… but I digress.

I’ve finally managed to install Leopard. Took me over a week because I wanted to go out and get myself an external hdd. I did this not so much for Time Machine which I don’t have much use for at home but I wanted to do 2 clean installs so I needed something to back up to. I proceeded to install Leopard on my 3 month MacBook and on my 4 year old G5. The G5 has 2 hdd’s, one of which I cleaned after moving its data to the external HDD.The HDD (a 500gb LaCie basic model from scanmalta.com for Lm52) will also house all my software installers and backed up installer CDs in one neat place. It will also be used to back up my Mac Pro at work. This will free up some space on my other LaCie external drive which sits on the network as my media server. I’m pretty happy with LaCie’s products and chose them originally for their long standing support for the Mac platform knowing set up would be very straightforward. (more…)

Checking out the blogoshpere and it appears many peeps are a bit disappointed regarding the latest Steve Jobs keynote speech at their WWDC (worldwide developers conference). My expectations were low. One last minute surprise was the availability of safari for windows. this was done as a tactic to allow web devs on PCs to develop for the iPhone which uses Safari. As a Mac user I don’t really enjoy seeing bits of what make using a Mac great being grafted onto PCs but as a webdev myself any increase in Safari’s market share can only be a good thing™.

Anyways I like what I’m seeing from the updated finder though the sidebar’s getting a bit cluttered, the fact that shares appear to have been revamped and new previews and sorting options are included, bodes well. What I’m waiting for are new print and open/save dialogues as they’re a bit sucky in Tiger.

Was replying to a post on TUAW and got a bit carried away - thought I might reproduce it here : D

Dear Santa Steve i know it’s a few months left till crimbo but there are a feww things i’d like but prolly won’t see in leopard -

1. well a new finder is a given - i’d really like to see some features windoze has that would be nice such as cut n paste of files even tho it breaks the paradigm…, file management features in open / save dialogues - oh improve keyboard navigation of same dialogue requesters

2. I’d like for the finder not to stall (and at times crash) each time a machine that was being accessed via a mounted share is switched off

3. I’d like the printer options to use tabs or icons a la prefs rather than a drop down menu with at times hard to understand names - a clearly labelled static menu makes for a better ui menu than any drop down menu.

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