alexyacoub.com

I really love OSX. There are some features that I feel are missing. I was just planning on listing the things I’d like to see. If you see anything here that already exists, please point me to it!

• Adium and Mail integration: This is a very minor thing, but when you use iChat, the Apple Mail client shows you who is online in your email window. Gmail and Yahoo do this too. It would be really snazzy if Adium could hijack whatever communication system iChat uses and make this work.
• Adium “dock-like” buddy list: I would like it if you could attach the buddy list to one side of the screen, and have it hide into and out of the screen like the dock does.
• Dock’s hidden actions: Maybe it’s just because I’m on a slow computer, but when I start an application, I want the bouncing icon to show a little even if the Dock is hidden. Currently, the Dock only shows bouncing icons when they are alerts. It would be nice if Apple figured out a way to show other Dock status changes when it is hidden — namely, exiting applications.
• Safari draggable tabs: I would like to see Safari add support for rearranging tabs, and dragging them between windows.
• Safari session saving: Safari should be able to save sessions easily and/or bookmark whole windows (and all the tabs). In addition, there should be some kind of autosave feature in case of a crash.
• Safari find in page: Firefox’s find-as-you-type and their beautiful search bar (at the bottom of the page) are two features which any self-respecting application should emulate. Safari is the biggest OSX offender here, though I can think of a couple other apps that could add that bar at the bottom.
• iCal links: When you add an event to iCal, you can add a link. The link isn’t clickable. Why not?!
• iCal and Mail integration: iCal should let you link to emails, and Mail should use some kind of heuristic (a la Gmail) to figure out if an email references an event, and allow you you to add it to iCal.
• Address Book widget: This widget changed recently, and the new one sucks. For one, the button to send you to the Address Book application is no longer there, so you can’t easily edit from the widget. This means I have to add the Address Book back into my dock. I saved a copy of the old widget (only because I updated on a machine in the lab and noticed the change before Software Update ran on my machine), so let me know if you want it.
• Better gVim: Vim is my favorite editor. On Linux, gVim is my favorite editor. There is no decent Cocoa version of gVim, though. Sadness ensues.
• Terminal tabs: Terminal needs tab support! EVERY app should have support for tabs if it supports multiple windows.
• Built-in notification (Growl) support: Apple really missed the boat on this one. If the OS supported something like this by default, every application would use it, and it would be a lot easier for the end user to configure. As it stands, each app uses something different, though Growl does have a decent amount of cross-application support.

One thing I hear from a lot of people when I complain about Safari in particular is that I should start using Firefox. It supports most of the features I want. I have tried FF as my main browser many times, and I always end up going back to Safari. The interface is so much nicer and cleaner, and the hotkeys work just like the rest of the system. In addition, KHTML’s output is nicer, in my opinion, than Gecko. I’ve tried Camino, but rather than make Gecko wrap in a nice Safari-like interface, it manages to take out the useful features of Firefox and make the Cocoa interface look ugly, in my view.

Leave a note with your own wishes or with notes about the above.