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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Apple fans the net over have had to eat some humble pie as the big fruit in Cupertino contradicted their earlier statements about shipping OS X.5 “Leopard” on time by now stating that it’ll arrive 3 months late, ie in October. They’re blaming being overstretched cos they had to get the iPhone out of the boxes by June.

Jeremy Horwitz over at iLounge had my same thoughts about Apple using coupons that will allow new Mac purchasers between now and the release to receive a free copy of Leopard on release.

Pro users are still waiting for the upgrades from Adobe to upgrade to Intel Macs, now they’ll wait for upgrades to leopard. It would make sense for them to do so cos it will save $1000s on multiple licenses in spite of the money extra speed will generate / save.

Personally, I’ve been waiting for the next release of macs and leopard but will push back my purchase. It’s funny how everything backfired for Apple - taking pot shots at MS for vista delays, then having to state leopard isn’t delayed then contradicting themselves a few days later… Screw the iphone i want a new Finder and new Macs, portables and a midrange pro (ie an iMac specced machine w/o monitor and with hdd and gfx card upgrade options that isn’t bottlenecked by using laptop components)!

Search facilities have long been one of the Mac OS’ strengths, I recall being impressed by my first Mac’s almost instantaneous find facility. And apple continued to improve it on OS X when things started getting messier on people’s hard drives as from 100’s of megabytes we’re now dealing with 100’s of Gigabytes of stored data to sift through. Up until 10.3 (panther) we had the good ol’ find utility. Come 10.4 Tiger and now we have spotlight. A feature so good, Microsoft got out their photocopiers for (according to Steve Jobs at least) and made system wide search a priority for Vista.

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Cogito ergo sum indeed! “Think” is quite simply, the answer to my prayers. I am a Mac user. I am a Mac fan. I can be considered a windows hater but I’m ready to admit when Microsoft got things right. One of these is full screen support for apps. Whereas the Mac lets every open app window float on top of one another, Windows keeps them all neat. It’s not the maximise feature per se but rather the ability to keep one app’s GUI from interfering with another which I find most useful (ever used Adobe or Macromedia apps?)This is nowhere as great at the Amiga’s screens implementation but it does prevent a very annoying thing from happening - missing a window or clicking the wrong window. Don’t know how many times I’ve missed a window and clicked on the desktop or another app by mistake. Often if the underlying app is dormant, it might take a while to move to the top, even on a dual 2.5 Mac Pro (Rosetta’s a bitch).

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Ok, it’s been a while since my last post but hey I’ve been busy of late! Unfortunately it’s been all work and no real play *sigh*. But I still had time to fiddle around with some interesting apps so here’s two very quick reviews. The 1st up is Scrivener. It’s a word processor of sorts, its main aim to assist in the writing process.

Now there are several pieces of software out there, vying for our attention especially in the process, getting things done utilities section. Scrivener stands out however, much like delicious library did because it has a killer feature that gives both an instant oh cool, wow buzz and is actually quite useful. This feature being a cork-board. That’s right a cork-board. Basically besides outlining tools and clippings collection features (albeit limited compared to dedicated apps), Scrivener presents the aspiring writer with a graphical cork-board to which virtual index cards are attached. These cards contain chapter synopses and can be rearranged whilst sketching the structure of a book or document. This simple feature makes planning and outlining more compelling and easier than the real life equivalent and I’ve found that it really does aid the creative process. There’s also a fullscreen mode that further caters for those who Think is a great piece of software… Scrivener’s features are broad and the program appears very stable and rounded for a 1.0 release.

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