Software 
The iApps could be integrated more. For example, why can the Address Book not list recently received emails from people? Why can I not drag Address cards to iCal? And so on.
General
NNOT RELIABLE SUMMARY FEATURE: It messes up more than it helps: An illustrative example taken from Dave Farber's IP list:
From:dave@farber.net Subject: [IP] more on Hard time? Not for cyber criminals.
COMMENTARY--Jeffrey Lee Parson pleaded guilty last week to unleashing part of the MSBlast worm attack that wreaked havoc on the Internet a year ago. He got off easy. ...Compare Parson's sentence with the far stiffer penalties that the government metes out to marijuana "criminals," who harm nobody and cause no property damage. For the 2001 fiscal year, the average sentence for a marijuana offense was 38 months in prison, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
I'm now convinced that OS X's summarization is a failure. Since the article was about punishment for cyber criminals, specifically Parson's versus others', the key sentence that set up the rest of the article was left out by the summarizer:
"Prosecutors say that the deal they cut means that Parson, who is 19 years old, will be sentenced to between 18 and 37 months."
Calculator
NOT TRUSTWORTHY: It doesn't work in some cases:
A comment from Harold Thimbleby Subject: Re: Fwd: [IP] Panther's Calculator is a Bad Joke (A Rant)
I have this paragraph in my book already (excuse the latex maths)!
For example, the Apple OSX calculator v3.0 cannot calculate $10^\pi$, even though it correctly calculates $10^{3.14}$ if the user enters the value of $\pi$ explicitly. Somehow, when $\pi$ as a key is pressed, it does not work as a number. The result of calculating \keys {C 10 {$y^x$} {$\pi$} =} is 3.141592654, but the answer should be around 1385.
In repsonse to this from: David Farber Subject: [IP] Panther's Calculator is a Bad Joke (A Rant) Begin forwarded message: From: Richard Outerbridge Subject: Panther's Calculator is a Bad Joke (A Rant)
The flagship Calculator application that ships with Apple's Panther is so sick as to be shameful. Two examples:
From basic mode enter 12,000,000. Go to Convert->Area... Choose "From: Square Inch" and "To: Acre". Press OK.
The displayed result is zero (0). Press '='. The displayed result is 1.44. The correct answer is actually 1.91307009488827.
Go to View->Advanced. Try "10000/(2^32)". The displayed result is 454.5454545454546^32. Press '='. Nothing changes.
The correct answer is actually 0.00000232830643.
This could be the first piece of software that someone (that is, Apple) could get sued for, disclaimers of fit-for-purpose,
blah, blah, blah, all to the side. It's utterly unreliable, yet seemingly so simple, basic and user-friendly!
Apple should make a special out-of-band update to their Calculator, if only to avoid the embarrassment of a prospective
Windows switcher finding he can't get a Macintosh to even do basic math correctly, let alone relying on it for doing any
"serious" day-to-day work.
Address Book
NOT-SMART LISTINGS: When you type in someone's name (in the listings area top, left) you expect that person to get selected. Instead, it selects the first item where that text is stored no matter if the text is in the name field or the notes field or wherever. A bit of priorization would be nice.
Mail
DISRUPTIVE NOTICES: Mail sometimes wrangles itself to the foreground when I'm busy writing or doing some other work just to tell me it's having a problem. This is like an infant. Please, don't do this. Leave your warning stuck to what it's related to, but don't put it in my face.
MESSY SORT BY STATUS: Leading on to the next item, it would be nice to use the 'Sort by message status'. This way unread messages would always stay on the top of the screen. It just doesn't update properly.
NO DYNAMIC FOLDERS: Even Rhapsody featured dynamic folders, that is to say search criteria you could save. My own Liquid Email service had this, inspired by Rhapsody.
The way it would work is that you'd define a View, which is just like performing a search. You'd then name the View and save it. Whenever you'd click on that View in the future, it would quickly display only the messages you had set it to display.
I have put together a couple of mock-up screenshots to show how it might look in Mail, but for more information, please visit www.liquidinformation.org and go to 'Articles' then 'OS Implementations' and finally, 'Views', or www.liquidinformation.org/views-frset.html
Tobias Lee adds this comment, which would not be relevant if Apple implemented the Views, above, but I have to agree with him as things stand today: Filtering Confusion. "As many people do, I have set up a variety of rules to automatically filter my email into a series of sub folders, I also frequently refer to the Mail icon in the dock to see if any new mail has arrived. My problem is that mail that has been filtered into a sub folder isn't included in the total that appears overlaid on the dock icon. It would be better to either change the applications behavior so that the dock icon shows the total number of unread messages regardless of whether or not they have been moved to a sub folder, or to provide a preference to allow the user to toggle this functionality."
Tobias Lee comments on SMTP as well: "Another mail issue I have come across is the apparent inability to delete SMTP mail addresses from the 'outgoing mail server' drop down menu in Preferences/Accounts (maybe there is an editable list somewhere but I haven't found it?). The problem is that as a freelancer I quite regularly have to change the SMTP address I use to work within whatever corporate network I am on and after a while the 'outgoing mail server' list gets filled up with redundant information. There needs to be a simple method for editing the content of the SMTP server list."
iPhoto
STRANGE NAVIGATION: The main areas of iPhoto such as 'Import' and 'Share' are toggled between on a navigation bar, where most studies show that novice and mature users are more comfortable with a tabbed division. Just put a few tabs on the top of the screen and it all becomes a lot clearer. Also, 'Order Book' is not inside 'Share', but on the same level. Seems odd.
KEYWORDS CAN BE EXPANDED: The keywords are a very, very powerful addition to iPhoto. The way you assign keywords is also very well done; you can do it at your leisure, not just when you import pictures.
There are a few issues though;
• The Keyword window can not be resized.
• The Keywords are not categorized (if 'my keyword 'California' was categorized as 'Location' then I could easily build more powerful Smart Albums. They could possibly also benefit from having icons.
• The Keywords are 'Assigned' and should therefore be 'Unassigned', not 'Removed', as 'remove' can be confusing - 'what, remove picture?'
• The 'Show All' and 'Search' buttons are slightly misleading. I have therefore suggested a simple 'Show selected items' button, which performs the function of the 'Search' button. The button will highlight when clicked. Clicking it again shows all pictures.
 Current |
 Proposed changes (not a designed version, feature list only) |
DICTATED FOLDER STRUCTURE: You cannot put your iPhoto images where you want them. They have to remain in their default location for iPhoto to be able to access them. Not so nice. If you remove them, iPhoto crashes. Not a biggie though.
Sherlock
FORGETFUL OF STARTUP REQUESTS ON X: A neat feature of Sherlock on MacOS 9 is that it listens to your keystrokes on startup. That means that you can type 'command'-f (to launch Sherlock) and your search criteria- immediately after that and you can even hit 'return' and as soon as Sherlock actually starts up it will carry out your search.
On MacOS X though, it won't remember more than the odd character.
HIDES RESULTS LOCATIONS: Once you get the search results it is not actually visible where they are. You have to manually re-size the bottom window pane. Tiny, but silly bug.
Where's the help file?
Ah, here it is.
iCal
CAN'T OPEN LINKS: The nice little app doesn't allow you to click on a URL to launch it.
NEEDLESSLY BIG: The interface is just too wide. Why can't I choose to not see the months and the To Do?
So instead of this:...
I could choose this:
Even better would be to have Safari's button controls and get rid of all the buttons on the bottom of the screen if I so choose. As you might have noticed, I'm not a bit fan of heavy interfaces.
iSynch
COULD EASILY BE MORE POWERFUL: Why is it not as simple and powerful as having three check-boxed settings only (with expert mode supplying more of course):
Backup ALL my settings so that if I loose my computer (crash or physically loose it, god forbid)I can easily restore my settings for everything.
Backup ALL my contacts, calendar items and to do lists (basically low bandwidth iApp contents)
Backup selected folders of data.
iTunes
THE BIG ONE?: This may be the biggest user interface blunder of all time - hiding an active button beneath another. I mean it is standard practice to gray out inactive or inapplicable buttons. But to make you click on one to make the real come alive? Seriously...
The user gets this. Must GUESS that it needs to be clicked.
Then get this
Suggestions:
Auto Play Lists by artist
Many compilation albums have tracks by only one artist, so the 'view by artist' list can quickly become huge'. A nice preference would be for iTunes to automatically create playlists for artist witth (user definable, say start with) mayne 5 songs in the users collection? This would indicate it's an artist the user likes in general, not just because there is one track on a compilation.
Show what tracks are in playlists
I am one of those users who predominatly use playlists. I would love to see in the Library view, an indicator of which tracks are in which playlists, so that I can easily see 'orphaned' tracks which are in no playlist.
No Double Drags
It would be great if every time I drag a track to a playlist (more than once would be by mistake) that it would not be duplicated.
Auto-Down Rate
If a track is skipped before tracks for 5 seconds, a user preferences should allow the iPod/iTunes to rate the song lower.
QuickTime Player
WRONG EMPHASIS: The player emphasizes the interface more than it does the video it shows, as illustrated below. OK, a nitpick, but the point is that the interface itself is just way to prominent so the content almost drowns.
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Emphasis on the interface, with the video literally in the background.
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More emphasis on the video, which is more on top, with a drop shadow and a bit more room to breathe.
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Final Cut Express
ODD KEYFRAMES: When I double click on a clip in the timeline, to bring it in to the viewer and want to animate it, it doesn't behave as I would expect. I am trying to do simple key framed zooms on text (from a layered, imported Photoshop file).
When I change the settings (size) at the start of the clip and then click on the 'next edit' button in the canvas it takes me one frame after the clip has ended! Not on the last frame, which would be useful. Is there maybe another button I should click?
I cannot see simple key frames in the timeline and the viewer, canvas and timeline all have their own time scrubber, which do not seem to update each other. Animations seem only possible to set in the canvas so when I double click on a clip to view it in the viewer, then click on the motions tab, nothing happens.
I expect to set key frames change behavior at them and for it all to be consistent. As it has been with all the motion based software I have ever used since way back. Like infini-D (yes, that old one), most other 3D apps, Premiere (1-6.5) and such.
PHOTOSHOP FILE UPDATES: The other problem is that I cannot find a way to have my imported Photoshop file automatically update when I change it. Which makes the whole feature of importing a layered Photoshop file useless in my opinion. Of course I may change some of the text in the file in the future. Why can I not just make that change in Photoshop and see it update in Express without having to re-import it and change all the settings?
For some reason, dragging Photoshop files into the browser works sometimes, but not consistently.
NO TYPE PREVIEWS: The type tool is OK but you cannot write type on the screen, so you don't know how you are doing on size and composition.
Safari
NO MP4 SUPPORT: Apple brags that QuickTime Pro allows you to save files in the new Internet video format, MP4, yet Safari does not support mp4. Not so good.
TABS DESIGN: Not sure about the visual implementation. The upside down tabs break with convention for no good reason I can think of; the tab for the active page seem to be associated, visually, with the tool bar, not the page.
upside down tabs.
So I thought I'd play with this layout, seeing as this will be a really cool addition to Safari. Potentially. In this version, the tabs look like tabs and only the front most tab have a small close button. What do you think? Better or a waste of time?
upside up tabs.
An alternative, as I understand they probably want the Tab to be associated with the URL, is this, put the bookmarks on top, then the URL and finally the tabs:
TAB URLS CONFUSION: I also agree with this comment on Dave Hyatt's comments for his web log comment on the release of Beta 2 by Tim Thøgersen on April 14, 2003: "Nice to have tabs. But why is it that all browsers with tabs does the following: When you open a new tab and the browser cannot contact the url is removed so the address line i empty. This prevents you from a) remembering what tab you opened and b) correcting the url."
TAB DRAG & DROP: Additionally, it would be nice if dragging an file from the desktop onto the tab area would open it as a tabbed item. It would also be great if you could drag a tab from one window to another, like you can with tabbed tools in Adobe products. Bakafish posted about this on Dave Hyatt's comments on April 14: "I hate to sound like an ungrateful complainer, and I'm totally willing to wait if is just an implementation issue, but seconding Daniel Smith's post regarding drag and drop support for the tabs is something I'm terrified will be overlooked. I find that dragging url's to the tab bar is much more natural than doing a contextual click, concentrating on the choices and selecting 'open in new tab'. Dragging and dropping is something I can do without concentration, plus it allows me to reuse the existing stale tabs, so I'm not spending my time housecleaning tabs that are already read. The issues with the address bar not correctly updating for the tab being viewed is problematic as well. I often want to modify my position within a site, or copy its URI for transmission to a coworker. The whole concept of mounting ftp: url's to the file system is frustrating as well. I know this is being pushed upon from on high, but if I am browsing through an ftp servers directory structure in order to download something, I don't want to go to the finder. I would have done that in the first place if that's what I wanted. It should be optional."
MORE ON TABS: Other issues are handled well at http://acm.roosevelt.edu/mt/chandler/archives/000007.htmlHYPER-AUTOCOMPLETE: More from Dave Hyatt's comments
DRAG AND DROP AMNESIA: When you drag and drop text from Safari to the Finder you get a nice clipping. Why can the clipping not include the URL of where it came from, maybe listed in the Get Info window.
HYPER-AUTOCOMPLETE: More from Dave Hyatt's comments page; "Bah!
The tabs are great, but it still has one problem that prevents me from using it as my every-day browser: the autocomplete is too insisting. If I have typed "http://www.apple.com/safari" into my URL box and read that page, and then try to type "http://www.apple.com" in later, it insists on autocompleting it with "/safari". Thus I have to type in where I want to go, and then look to see if it has decided I want to go someplace else and correct it if it has. Not good in my opinion..." Mine neither. Forgot to write this one when it annoyed me... Thanks!
Tobias Lee has a few suggestions for Safari. I have included the ones I agree with :-)