Tag Archives: wish-list

A few Tweetie 2 for Mac wishes

October 23rd, 2009

Tweetie on Mac

Tweetie on Mac

But, you just got done saying how much you loved Tweetie 2 for iPhone. You want more? Well, yes I do.

I am now using both Tweetie on my Mac and on my iPhone. On the day I bought Tweetie for iPhone I immediately began to wish that the two of them ‘worked together’ a little better. So here is my short list:

  • Full “persistence” between the two. Tweetie for iPhone remembers where you are (even if you quit the app). I’d like both Tweetie for iPhone and Tweetie on the Mac to know where each other is. This would save me from ever reading a tweet twice and from a lot of scrolling.
  • Tweetie 2 for iPhone syncs with Twitter’s saved searches feature. I think Tweetie for Mac should too.
  • Drafts syncing. I didn’t realize the value of having Tweet drafts until I used Tweetie 2. And now I can’t wait to see them in Tweetie on the Mac.

I’m really happy with my current state of Twitter applications. But all geeks wish for that which they do not have. So this is me just being a typical geek.

Ok Brightkite, this is what I need

March 18th, 2009

Party time is over, so I feel it safe to write a formal, public request for some of the things I really need from Brightkite. I realize that some of the things I’m going to ask for are probably not that high a priority for Brightkite, but I thought that by making a list like this I’d always be able to point back to it should the need arise.

Oh, and I’m serious about most of these. Darn serious. Seriousness level = 10.

Favorites. It is time. Dare I say, past due? I can not even begin to count the number of times I’ve seen a post on Brightkite that I’ve wanted to save for later, acknowledge its greatness, or simply file away into a list of great Brightkite objects. Anything and everything should be favoritable. I know one of the new terms on the Webz is “likes” – and you can use that if you’d like too.

Flickr preferences like Twitter preferences. The granularity of the Twitter preferences is one of the reasons I was able to begin using Brightkite painlessly. In The way Brightkite fits I wrote:

“Brightkite will update Twitter with any of your activity on Brightkite, but again, there are layers upon layers of options.  Remember I said that you don’t have to switch away from Twitter if you use Brightkite the way I do?  Here is how I have Brightkite set up to notify Twitter.”

“Layers upon layers of options” is not an understatement. You get to choose precisely which actions on Brightkite will notify Twitter, the way your Twitter messages are crafted, and more. Somehow, I need these types of options for sharing photos on Flickr through Brightkite.

I don’t mind if every single photo I post on Brightkite goes to Flickr. For me, it is more a matter of the metadata saved with the photo on Flickr that is important. I choose my titles carefully on Flickr. If Brightkite has its way it simply saves the current location (no matter how messy) as the title. Sometimes this works, othertimes it doesn’t.

What can I say? I’m picky. But Brightkite, usually, allows me to be my picky-self. So, you’ve spoiled me. Your fault Brightkite. You’ve created this animal.

Messages on the Web site like messages on the iPhone. The way that direct messages work on the iPhone is, in my opinion, a lot nicer than the way they are styled on the Web site.

Fix Childs, PA. This really isn’t a “wish list” type of request – because something is obviously fubar for my hometown of Childs, Pennsylvania on Brightkite. Posts, check-ins, photos, etc. are showing up from all over the world. No idea how this happened but it started a while ago.

Odd request: Move these two check-ins and one post. So now we’re getting really nitty – but my friends and I went to Goal Line Sports Bars (which I’ve now created a location on Brightkite for). I’d like the check-ins and posts found here (by myself and CamouflageNoise) to be moved to this location.  I suppose, at the end of the day, I’m asking to be able to move posts and/or check-ins myself via the Web site. So if this situations arises again, I can do it myself.

Hashtag support. If someone uses a #hashtag make it clickable to a post search for that hashtag.

Automatic wall creation. Walls are awesome. No doubt about it. However, if someone does a search – say for No Reservations – I think that it’d be nice to click 1 button and have it create a wall for you with the results of that search. (This is sort of related to the #hashtag support, because for me if I’m following an event, it would be nice to be able to go from a friend’s post to having a wall created for that event with two clicks).

A desktop application. Right now I’m using Fluid and the iPhone web application for Brightkite. But the iPhone web application is, in a matter of speaking, not a good solution to this problem.  Perhaps there is a Brightkite desktop application that I am not aware of that rivals the likes of Twitterrific or TweetDeck but I do not know about it.

Forward /username URLs.  Ooops!

Viddler video. We’ll talk.

I have said it before, I like Brightkite better than Twitter. But, is the above too much to ask? Thanks Brightkite.

My last minute WWDC wish list

June 8th, 2008

These are not predictions.  I have no inside information. I just have needs, wants, and aspirations.  And I’m hoping that this year’s WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference happening on Monday in San Francisco, as I’ve hoped so many times in the past will help me fill some of them.

I’m going to start with something that we know we’ll get, iPhone software.  Since getting my iPhone nearly one year ago I’ve been more than happy with it.  But I’m ready for Apple to support, and even encourage, third party applications to be built for the iPhone.  On Monday we should get a pretty good glimpse of how this will work and, perhaps, even know an exact date when third party applications will be available to download and install on the iPhone through Apple’s iTunes store.

First, I’m going to cover my wishes for updates to the existing iPhone software.

  • Mobile Mail is in need of a pretty thorough update.  I manage two email addresses on the iPhone.  One for personal, and one for work.  The Mobile Mail application, using IMAP, does this pretty well – but sometimes the iPhone chokes a little.  I’d like to see speed improvements, easier flagging for following up on my Mac, and searching mail messages.
  • Mobile Safari will probably get a decent upgrade, as regards its rendering speed and hopefully cache.  The iPhone has a fairly large hard drive, and I have yet to see the reason Mobile Safari doesn’t use it to store the Web pages you visit in a cache.  Reloading pages over and over and over on EDGE is frustrating.
  • The address book, or phone contacts, is also in need of a search function.  The alphabet slider on the side, for those of us with hundreds of contacts on our phone, doesn’t make things too much easier.  I’d also like to see better bluetooth support here to sync contacts and/or send contact information to a friend’s iPhone.
  • The calendar application needs to do a better job with multiple calendars.  I would like to have all of my calendars on the iPhone, but also be able to add new events to any of those calendars instead of just one.  Sending these events to other attendees, either via email or bluetooth, would also be nice.
  • The iPhone’s camera is decent quality, but I wouldn’t mind a brightness slider, or even some effects, for when taking photos. I also wouldn’t mind being able to delete all of the photos on the iPhone with a tap or two.  Being able to tell, on the iPhone, when a photo was taken would be a major plus.

Are any of these things too much to ask for?  I don’t think so.  Next, I’m going to focus on third party applications that I’d like to see.

  • Sharing.  Just an application that would let me share anything on my iPhone with another iPhone.  Contacts, photos, documents? Why not?
  • Bonjour messaging!  Any iPhone within range?  I’d like to be able to “chat” with that iPhone by sending messages, links, photos, etc. to it.  That’d be fun.
  • Media Browser. I’ve finally setup a shared hard drive on my Airport Express at home with photos, music, and video.  Being able to access this media on the iPhone when home, would be nice.
  • Twitterrific, on the iPhone. Enough said.
  • A simple “to do list” application.
  • Games! I know a lot of people are waiting for these, and I am too in a way, but I know that my battery is going to suffer for it.

Are any of these too much to ask for?  I don’t think so either.  Sometimes though I start to think about some of the crazy ideas for iPhone applications like controllers, a way to view my computer screen at home remotely, interactive applications based on location, and other hair-brained ideas.  The possibilities seems endless, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.  I’d rather be pleasantly surprised.

And last, I’d like to just quickly state that I’m in the market for a new laptop.  My wife’s laptop, which I gave to her when I upgraded to this black Macbook over two years ago, is on its last legs.  My black Macbook, however, is running perfectly.  So I’m planning on giving her my black Macbook when I upgrade to, whatever comes next out of Cupertino.  I’m leaning towards a Macbook Pro, but I’m waiting to see if anything happens at WWDC first.

Are you ready for tomorrow?  What are you waiting to see?

My first Amazon Wish List

May 12th, 2008

You could just get lost on Amazon, couldn’t you?  Every single category seems to have a never ending list of subcategories, each with their own products as you drill down.  I have never “shopped” on Amazon.com.  I’ve purchased a few things on the site, usually by someone linking to a product, but I’ve never just browsed around.

Tonight I spent some time making up my first ever Amazon Wish List.  Why?  Because I wanted to browse around Amazon.com, not buy anything, but not waste my time either.  Now I have a good list of all the things that I was able to find in a short period of time that I will, one day, probably end up buying.

At first glance the list may seem a bit over the top.  It is.  It consists of a 42″ LCD HDTV, a few lenses for my DSLR that are in the $1,000+ range, and a few other miscellaneous things that one might consider “extravagent”.  Again, it is.  But I have good taste (*snickers*) and this list is really more for me than anyone else.

Should someone want to pick up one of the more inexpensive items on the list as a thank you for something they’ve found on my site, some of my projects that I’ve done over the years, or because they’d rather do that than owe me a beer “forever”, now they know where to look.

Source: My Amazon.com Wish List.

(Side note: I added this to my sidebar on the home page and about page along with a link to buy Threadless tees.  If you buy a tshirt from Threadless using that link I get a credit towards buying a shirt for myself.)

I’m not jailbreaking my iPhone

November 1st, 2007

Am I the only person with an iPhone that hasn’t at least tried to Jailbreak (read: hack) it? Nearly everyone one I know that has an iPhone, and is at least somewhat geeky, has tried to hack their iPhone to get third-party applications up and running on it.

A line up of nine iPhones

My iPhone, is one of these
Photo credit: Erik Kastner

Sure, it seems like a fun little project (especially now with only needing to visit jailbreakme.com on an iPhone) to crack your phone and install all sorts of neat tweaks and full applications that let you do interesting things – but so far it has seemed unappealing to me.

Most of the applications that I’ve seen has been from me messing around with someone else’s iPhone. However, with that little bit of experience I’ve seen that most of the applications currently available were not applications that I felt warranted me hacking my iPhone. Don’t get me wrong – I think it is really cool that you can use Terminal, Remote Desktop, Apache, and a whole slew of other applications in the palm of your hand – but I don’t need those applications in my palm of my hand.

So, perhaps for most of the people that have installed some of these applications, games, and fun user-interface tweaks it has been a matter of entertainment. They figured they could, so why not? But I think that starting in February/March of 2008 we’re going to see much more refined applications that have value to nearly all iPhone users rather than just a small portion of those that like to edit configuration files on remote servers while eating dinner at a restaurant.

iPhone application wish list

What do I see coming? I’m sure my imagination isn’t powerful nor creative enough to speculate but I can say what I’d like to see. Here is a short list of the things I’d like to do with my iPhone:

  • Contact sharing via Bluetooth to iPhone and non-iPhone alike.
  • The ability to delete all photos!
  • File system access via Safari for file upload processes.
  • Quick, easy, screenshots. Skitch mobile?
  • Hack Safari and add a better cache!
  • When on wifi; be able to stream music from other iPhones/iTunes.
  • Oh, I almost forgot. Flash that doesn’t rob battery. (I know, a pipe dream).

Useful applications for the masses will be available on the iPhone in short order and I’m looking forward to it. Any experience the developers of the applications that are already in existence can gather before an official SDK is released in February will only make them better – so I am ok with letting everyone else work the bugs out for me. Strange, I’m normally an early adopter, but this time I’ve decided to sit it out and watch the others play.

Have you hacked your iPhone? Have you found any compelling applications? What would you like to see next year?

Thoughts on the iPhone

July 3rd, 2007

Before I begin gushing about the iPhone I have to mention, especially for those of you that do not have one yet, that you can win one of two free 8Gb iPhones that we’re giving away over at Viddler just for doing simple MeToday videos. Each video you do (one per day per person) is an entry into the contest. No, you don’t have to do one every single day. But since each video is an entry one would think that the more MeTodays that you do, the better chance you have at winning! We’ll give someone an iPhone on the 15th and 30th of July. So don’t read the rest of this post! Go get a Viddler account!

MeToday: June 29, 2007

My precious!

Ok. So what do I think of the iPhone? As you might have already guessed, I love it. For the entire weekend I rarely got onto my Macbook to do anything except sync my latest settings of my iPhone to the computer. The iPhone is a great mini-computer for getting most of your core Internet activities done like checking/responding to email, surfing the web for information, or other simple daily tasks like this.

I won’t get into the speed of the EDGE network or how the virtual keyboard is. To me these are non-issues thus far and I don’t have much to compare these two things to since I have never had a cell phone that used the Internet, nor a full sized hard keyboard. I can type pretty fast on the keyboard and the Internet is nearly as fast as being home on Wifi. So again, both are non-issues.

Again, it is the little things

One of my fellow line-waiters John Gruber did a fantastic job giving his general overview of each feature of the iPhone the other day. My impressions are on par with John’s except that I’ve found myself typing just fine. Be sure to read his thoughts if you’d like to catch some of the nice things about each “feature” of the iPhone.

However, I’d like to extend his list a little bit to remark on some of the little things I’ve noticed while using the iPhone that I think make the experience all the more enjoyable.

The weight of the iPhone came as a surprise to some. Yes, it feels heavier than it looks. To me this make the iPhone feel tough and rugged when compared to the way it looks. I think the fact that we’re seeing people surprised at how tough the iPhone actually is, is because it doesn’t look very rugged. It looks elegant, which doesn’t usually mean tough. However the weight of the iPhone makes it feel very rugged to me.

The speed of the interface is something that I was very skeptical about. The commercials led me to believe that the interface was just as fast, if not faster, than switching windows on my computer. In my relatively little experience with mobile phones – the interfaces on these things have never been described by me as “snappy” or “fast”. However the iPhone’s interface, in general, is incredibly fast. When speaking with John Gruber in line, he remarked how the iPhone’s “one app at a time” focus really lent itself to being able to be very fast. The iPhone doesn’t need to show windows inside of windows or multiple layers or even windows on top of windows. The application that you are currently looking at is obviously getting the priority in the Operating System which makes the iPhone blaze.

The sleep, volume, silent, and home buttons are the perfect combination of buttons that were decided to be “hard buttons”. Although one can easily adjust the volume in most applications within the iPhone’s interface, you can also use the hard volume control on the side of the iPhone. The same goes for the silent and sleep buttons – I never have to “turn on” the iPhone to use these options. And the home button is definitely far better than keeping the “doc” visible and having a “desktop” button or something. I’m really glad the iPhone has a home button.

Within each application on the iPhone there are small, hidden gems that you will only find through experimentation or someone telling you that they are there. Like the ability to turn on the caps lock key, or tapping the top bar to auto-scroll to the top of the page in Safari (both tips came from John Gruber’s site), etc. None of these small interface features are handed over, but once you find them you love them.

Of course, I want more

Keeping in mine that, technically, this is iPhone 1.0 which includes all the hardware and software that came in those beautiful black bags on Friday, I have a few things that I’d like to see improved. I’m sure that, internally, this is build 10,000+ of the iPhone’s OS and its applications, but from my perspective it is still 1.0. Being such, I fully expected to have the wish list that follows.

  • Better integration with Gmail. Right now Gmail marks things as “being downloaded” when I look at them either via Mail.app on my Macbook or on my iPhone. This causes some frustration since I’d like all of my email to be “everywhere”. To fix this, I think either Google or Apple will have to update it so that it marks it as being read on the iPhone or not. Either way, the email “works” – but it could work a little bit better. (Side note: On the first day of release, the Gmail integration was wrought with problems ranging from getting duplicate messages to simply not working with Google App’s hosted domain email. These issues have been fixed, presumably by Google, over the weekend. So ++ to them.)
  • Though I haven’t used the “Notes” feature yet, I could see a huge amount of improvement being done here, which might make me want to use Notes on the iPhone. Simply saving the notes saved as RTF files that are synced to your computer into ~/Documents/iPhone Notes/ would suffice for me. Why create notes that you can’t really use? A work around is taking a notes contents and creating an email out of it, which can be done fairly easily.
  • iCal integration seems to work “ok” but I have the same complaints as others. If I have separate calendars within iCal they should also be separate within iPhone’s calendar application. And, when syncing with my Macbook, I shouldn’t have to choose only one calendar that the iPhone can write to. I am not sure why there is this limitation. Something else I noticed is that if I setup an iCal alert on the iPhone it works perfectly but it doesn’t work within iCal. It shows up in the application but iCal never shows me the the alert when I asked it to. Not sure why, perhaps this is a bug.
  • The camera feature should allow a photo to be taken by tapping anywhere on the screen. I think some people would hate this because it would cause a lot of accidental photos to be taken, but taking photos of yourself and someone else with the iPhone is very hard with only a small button to push. Perhaps this could be a setting? Can has Photobooth for the camera? I don’t care about the crazy bulging eyes and stretching chins stuff, but it’d be nice to have the ability to take black and white photos or something simple. Obviously this is a minor, minor update that I’d enjoy seeing to the Camera feature.
  • Small browser cache? From what I’ve been able to tell Safari on the iPhone only caches the current page you are looking at. Reloading a page is fairly quick but the second you navigate away from a URL the cached version is lost. I have an 8Gb iPhone, I wouldn’t mind dedicating even a few hundred megabytes to Safari’s caching if it would mean that hitting the back button wouldn’t reload the page.
  • Normal headphone jacks “don’t work” with the iPhone because the iPhone’s input jack is sunken so low into the casing of the iPhone. Jason Kottke resolved this by actually cutting his headphones a little bit to allow the jack to sink in deeper. There are several add-ons being offered to make this easier, but I am unsure why this was done in the first place?
  • The iPod allows you to update your set of icons on the button of its menu. I think this should be an option in all applications on the iPhone including the home screen. There are a few web applications that are being released for the iPhone that I’d love to create a shortcut to from my home screen. The first button I’d get rid of from the home screen? YouTube followed by Stocks. I simply won’t use those things on my iPhone too often.
  • Google Maps on the iPhone is amazing! But I feel this application will probably receive the greatest number of updates over time. It is perhaps one of the most “complex” applications on the iPhone and using it is a delight most of the time. However, there are a few usability problems when you switch from searching for a location to getting directions to that same location. (I’ve found that it is easier to save locations in your Google Maps bookmarks.) I’m sure these little things will be improved soon and that integration with the rest of the phone’s applications will happen in the future. One of the first things that comes to mind is to tell the camera application where you are using the Maps feature, which would in turn write the Latitude and Longitude to the photos.

I’m going to cut this list short because, as I said, this is a 1.0 release and one that I’m overwhelmingly happy with. I’ve found the iPhone becoming an extension of my laptop in ways I hadn’t considered before. I knew that I’d find the iPhone useful, I didn’t expect to want to use it more than my laptop.

What are your thoughts on the iPhone? Any wishes that I didn’t cover?

Leopard wish list – Part four: Finder

November 16th, 2006

My wish list for the Finder is not as extensive as other’s will be. Partly because I do not have as many complaints about the Finder as I’ve seen long-time Mac users have – particularly those you came from OS 7, 8, and/or 9.

Fixes

As I said, my list of fixes will be pretty short.

An unlimited number of labels would be where I’d start. If you open your preferences in Finder you have a Labels area that gives you a selection of 7 colors that you can change the names of, to fit the label. I use this feature rather sparingly so I can actually get what I need labeled within the 7-label-limit – however why is this a limitation at all? Why not have a quick + button that lets you select a color, name the label, and you are off to the races. Perhaps it has to do with people deleting labels that scares Apple from including such a feature.

Saved searches are currently the only folders that allow you to view things “like Spolight” windows show files. By kind, date, etc. If you create a smart folder you can see a new view button at the top – but yet you can not view those on other folders. I think it’d be neat to have that view across the system, not just within saved searches.

Keyword autocomplete when doing a keyword search is really annoying. If you do a search within Finder, then click + and add a Keyword filter – Finder will load your list of keywords from your entire system (including those in iPhoto). On my Macbook it took about 20 seconds to do this (good ole’ beachball meantime), and then it autocompleted anything I typed. Instead of being able to type in partial names (i.e. Paul), it forced me to search for a specific Paul. Here’s the annoying part, I have 7 people that I know with the first name of Paul, and 8 that I know with the last name of Paul. Turn the autocomplete off.

DMG mounts should not automatically be opened with the finder in “collapsed mode”. I am not sure where to throw the blame here – if it is Apple, the developer who packaged the DMG, or something that I’ve set on my system. But I have never once wanted to keep Finder in collapsed view since I will eventually have to drag the application into my applications folder to install it.

Feature requests

There is a lot of hoopla about having tabs and other various things, but I’m not sure I’m on board with that yet.

Better media browsing when you are viewing a folder filled with images, movies, or audio. Right now if I’m viewing a directory full of JPGs I can view it in thumbnail (or tile) view, and then open my preferences and bump up the size of the thumbnails. But why not an iPhoto like slider for this type of thing? Why not have a quick way to sort by date, kind, or keyword?

Apple should start taking some of the functionality back out of the applications that it creates and start putting those features into the operating system. Make it just as easy to find a photo in Finder as it is to do in iPhoto.

Final thoughts

See, that wasn’t so bad. I’m sure the improvements to Finder in Leopard will be pretty broad. Not only because of the amount of criticism that has flew – but also because there will be new features that it needs to support (such as Time Machine).

I’m not sure I want to see it change too much though – and if it becomes anything as bloated as Path Finder I may just have to revolt!

Note: Be sure to check out other parts of my Leopard wish list listed below:

  1. Part one: Safari
  2. Part two: Mail
  3. Part three: iChat
  4. Part three: Finder

[tags]finder, macintosh, apple, mac os x, osx, leopard, wish list, iphoto, keywords, searching[/tags]
[slug]leopard-wishes-pt4-finder[/slug]

Leopard wish list – Part three: iChat

November 14th, 2006

Another application within the Mac OS that is open for most of my day is iChat. Many have chosen to use third-party chatting applications like Adium – but the ability to hold audio and video conferences, and transferring files to those on my list, proves to be indispensable features for me.

Fixes

I hope not to sound as if I use iChat begrudgingly because, on the contrary, I rarely find fault with iChat during my normal usage. However if I really turn a critical eye to it, I find:

Error messages should be more descriptive when a video or audio conference, or file transfer fails. Many times there are issues with NATs or Firewalls getting in the way of iChat trying to make connections. iChat typically reports with an error message along the lines of “blah blah blah”. If iChat could have a built-in utility to test your connection for possible problems, and then offer ways of solving those problems based on it’s findings – that’d be cool.

Better Address Book integration is something that I’ve long for since the beginning. Both Adium and iChat both pull your contacts address cards to add buddies to your list – however they also hold their own lists separate from the address book. I’d like to see every contact held within iChat to be in the address book, and vice-versa, by default. What typically happens is, if I sign up for a new AIM account, and load up iChat – I will be forced to go in and add each buddy from my address book into iChat – rather than it just recognizing them. Perhaps there is a reason that they do not do this (perhaps some would find it annoying) – but for me – I think it’d be neat to at least have the option.

File transfers that don’t work when video and audio do seems really strange to me. If I am talking to someone on video and I try to send them a file, and it doesn’t work, that seems strange to me. Why can we make a connection for audio or video and not for transferring files?

Update the tooltips which are used to show your buddy’s info. If you hover over a buddy, you can see some quick information about them – usually their AIM name, and current status. Like Adium, I’d like to see this updated to show a larger version of your buddy’s icon – along with a way to quickly send them an email, an invitation to an event in iCal, a link to the song currently playing in iTunes, etc. This could also be considered a feature request, but I’ll get more into that in a second.

Feature requests

There are a few of my feature requests that delve slightly into what we already know will be included in the next release – but bear with me because I think they need to be refined a little more.

System-wide iChat integration could go well beyond what we see now with Mail and Address Book. Currently you can see who is online from within Mail (if you have that particular email address associated with the current AIM username), and also from within Address Book. This is sufficient in my opinion though anywhere address book information is used (i.e. in the Address Book widget), it’d be nice to see a person’s online status as well.

However, there are many more ways I’d like to see iChat integrated into the OS. If we take a look at the four reasons I currently use iChat, perhaps we can see a way to integrate it more.

1. Text messaging. There are several ways I could see this being used. Contextual menus in Safari, as just one example, give you a way to “Search in Spotlight” and “Search in Google” when you have highlighted text. Perhaps “Send to buddy” would also be available instead of having the need to copy/paste all the time. This may seem like a very small thing, but just think of the amount of time it could save.

Perhaps this feature could be extended a bit further to actually be an option from within Pages.

2. Audio chat. Audio chat should not be limited to only sharing one’s voice. With a little jiggery pokery, or software like Audio Hijack Pro and Soundflower, one could potentially share their tunes with someone working remotely out of the office or with a computer not directly connected to the LAN. Or, maybe two people would like to collaborate on a project in GarageBand, and they could do so by “porting” the output of GarageBand in the current audio chat.

The implications could be fairly endless here.

3. Video chat. Just like with Audio chat, I’d like to see a way to share video via the video chat feature. I realize that the upcoming release will have some screen sharing, iPhoto slideshow, and other features. But being able to open iMovie and show someone a rough cut of a project their working on – could prove extremely valuable.

4. File transfers. What about being able to send a file from anywhere in the system to someone on your buddy list? You can do this now by dragging that file onto your buddy’s name in your contact list – but what if you could do it from within the application you are working on the file with. Say I’d like to send that same rough cut of the iMovie project to someone so that they can edit it further. Emailing it is not an option (too big). I could send it to him in iChat but that means I’d have to save it, open finder (or use Spotlight) and drag the file onto their name ect. What about a button to “Send to Buddy”?

Update (9am on Nov. 15): It turns out there is a product for doing something like this with Skype. It was written about on TechCrunch. Interesting.

I could also envision this feature being awesome from within iPhoto. Quickly send someone an entire album. Sure, this would bypass Apple’s .Mac photo-sharing service built-into iPhoto. But I think .Mac sucks.

Final thoughts

As I said, I really don’t have many issues with the current iChat. Not enough to make me jump ship to something like Adium (which I would have to write a 5-part piece to say what I don’t like about it). I’m going to stick with iChat – and I’m looking forward to the new stuff coming up.

Note: Be sure to check out other parts of my Leopard wish list listed below:

  1. Part one: Safari
  2. Part two: Mail
  3. Part three: iChat
  4. Part three: Finder

[tags]apple, macintosh, mac os x, osx, wish list, leopard, ichat, buddy list, aim, adium, audio hijack pro, soundflower, safari, spotlight, mail, garageband, imovie, iphoto, finder, itunes[/tags]
[slug]leopard-wishes-pt3-ichat[/slug]

Leopard wish list – Part two: Mail

November 13th, 2006

I’m not as much of a power-user of Mail as I probably could be. There are features of Mail that I simply do not use, and therefore my request for Mail are rather light. However, I do feel that some of my requests make sense, so hopefully they will be included in Leopard.

Fixes

Here are some things that I believe should be fixed in Mail.

Smart Mailbox rules are seemingly complete – though I find one oddity among them. When you select the “Message is in Mailbox” filter, you are presented with every Mailbox you’ve setup – even the Smart Mailboxes that you’ve already created. However, if you select the “Message is not in Mailbox” filter, you are not given the Smart Mailboxes as options. I’ve thought about this for awhile, and I still can’t figure out the reason.

The search box should allow for multiple filters such as you find in the current Finder. Searching for a subject, then being able to click + to drill down until you find what you are looking for. I have about 12,500 pieces of email, and finding the 1 that I am looking for can sometimes prove difficult with a single search filter.

The address book panel seems very OS 9-ish. It works, but I’d like to see the design of this updated a bit.

Feature requests

I realize that Mail is getting “a significant upgrade” when Leopard is release, though the major feature additions looked atrocious in my opinion. Here are some things I’d like to see.

The iLife Media Browser would be an awesome addition to Mail’s default set of icons on the New Mail window. Attaching photos from your iPhoto Library is quick and easy – if you already have iPhoto open. I envision a time where we can click on the Media Browser (similar to what you find in Pages, iMove, etc) and find a photo or photos and attach them with ease.

Side note: The new version of Mail will have “stationary” – and from what I can tell from the screenshots released so far there is a new button called “Photo Browser” at the top. I hope that this is not a brand-new, non-standard media browser that does not use the same frameworks that are used throughout the system so far. And, I hope that this button is not only enabled when you choose a particular style of stationary that allows for photos. We need this feature to be available any time we want to send normal attachments.

An all new way to attach files would be nice. Utilizing a media browser to attached photos, audio, and perhaps even video – would be nice. But I can see definite improvements that could be made to attaching documents, spreadsheets, and compressed archives too.

Imagine you need to attach an Excel spreadsheet, a PDF document, and a .Zip file full of product images to an email. When you do this, I would like to see a preview of the document that I am going to attach. (This does currently work with PDFs and Images) I’d like to see previews for Excel spreadsheets, Text files, Rich-Text Files, Word Documents, .Pages documents, Keynote Presentations, and anything else that usually resides in the document window.

As per .Zip archive files, it’d be nice to select a zip file in the “attach file” panel and be able to see the file names of the files within the archive. This would ensure that I’ve selected the correct file to attach.

Automatic compression of multiple file attachments is something that was “introduced” by AOL back in the mid to late 90s. I have not used America Online since then, so I have no idea if this feature still exists.

If I had an email with multiple attachments, as described above, Mail could automatically compress those files on send. This way, the transmission of data would be slightly smaller. On the other end, Mail.app would uncompress those files into their original state prior to displaying the message to the recipient.

Side note: The biggest problem with this feature in AOL (circa version 2 or 3) was that when you sent email to anyone that was not an AOL user, they’d just get a .zip file. Back in those days .zip files were not yet the norm, and so you had to have people go to winzip.com or something to download a utility to uncompress those files. In other words, their email client did not have the “automatically uncompress files upon receipt” feature. Annoying to say the least.

The other problem with this is, Mail would have to have a slightly proprietary compression format so that when a .zip, .tar, .bz (etc) type of file would come in, it wouldn’t always uncompress those files. If I was sent 1,000 text files in a .zip archive, I wouldn’t want those files automatically uncompressed by Mail.

Final thoughts

I’m trying not to be too picky, otherwise this list would get quite long. Any application that is used as often as an email client always gets more than it’s share of scrutiny. I’m fairly happy with my email client to-date, and I hope that the trend continues.

Side note: Leopard Mail will include Stationary, Notes, To-Dos, and RSS feed reading ability. From what I’ve seen so far, I do not “like” any of them (even though what I did see would be considered BETA).

The Stationary seems a bit superfluous though I can see people having a ball using them. The Notes doesn’t make sense to me yet simply because I do not email myself notes. There are hundreds of ways to “take notes” on the Mac OS ranging from widgets to small menu bar applications to full-blown GTD applications. The “to-dos” in Mail seem like they’d be better kept and updated within iCal. I’m sure the integration between iCal and Mail will be might tighter this time around – so I’ll have to see that integration prior to passing judgement.

RSS within Mail is a completely new headache to me. RSS feeds within Safari is only made for those people who keep track of a few web sites. With constant attention to feed management you may even be able to get away with having 100 subscriptions in Safari without pulling your hair out. Unless the integration of RSS feeds (which should be called “Feeds” but we’ve already talked about that), rivals that of NetNewsWire, then I see no improvement than using Safari for your subscriptions. Too much synergy may not be a good thing in this case.

Note: Be sure to check out other parts of my Leopard wish list listed below:

  1. Part one: Safari
  2. Part two: Mail
  3. Part three: iChat
  4. Part three: Finder

[tags]apple, macintosh, mac os x, osx, mail.app, mail, iphoto, ilife, safari, leopard, mac os 10.5, wish list, ical, gtd, stationary, notes, to-dos, rss[/tags]
[slug]leopard-wishes-pt2-mail[/slug]

Leopard wish list – Part one: Safari

November 10th, 2006

I fully realize that my “wish list” that I will be publishing is coming a little late to be included in the Spring-time update to the Mac OS – however it is good to note that much of what I am documenting has already been sent to Apple months ago.

The first thing I’m going to tackle is Safari (though I believe that Safari should be updated as a separate application and not part of the OS). I’ll try to focus my thoughts from fixes, to actual bugs, to feature requests.

Fixes

The following are not “bugs” in the traditional sense. I believe that most of the following was done intentionally, I just do not think they should have been done.

Setting your default browser is currently held within Safari’s preference panel. This “feature” definitely gets on the nerves of many and really I can’t figure out why this resides in here. In order to switch from Safari to Firefox you’d need to first open Safari and tell it you want Firefox to be the default browser.

This isn’t to say that Firefox (and other browsers) do not ask if you’d like to use them as the default browser on your system – but this does not mean that this is the proper location for this preference. What if I uninstalled Safari?

The blue RSS button at the top of the browser is fairly misleading. Apple is attempting to “brand” a doc-spec. In other words, they are saying that all “feeds” are RSS. Obviously this is not true. I do not want that icon to change from RSS to ATOM to “WHATEVER” when it applies, I’d much rather see Apple use the unified feed icons to go along with the unified feed theory (another post I have to bring over to my local site soon).

Multiple feeds detection kinda goes along with the above. I suppose this could be filed under a new feature request – but I feel like they might have kept it simple on purpose. I wouldn’t mind seeing a short list pop up with the available feeds for that site. Obviously this would only be useful if web masters actually listed these feeds in their documents.

Feature requests

Safari is definitely a browser for the average user, but I’d like to see a few of the “not so elementary” features from other browsers find their way into the Leopard release of Safari. Why? Because I’d much rather use Safari than Firefox if it only had the following.

Photo description

Bookmark keywords (click to zoom)

Bookmark keywords is something I use heavily in Firefox. I am not sure how widely used this feature actually is, since even browsers like Flock do not currently have this feature built in (and Flock is built off of the same engine and core as Firefox). Side note: I’ve been told that Flock 1.0 (due out sooner than later) will have these features as it will be built off of the Firefox 2.0 release.

To explain really quick, for those that are not familiar with this feature – Bookmark keywords allow you to setup shortcuts for your bookmarks. Let’s say that you had a rather long URL that you visited often, and you didn’t want to traverse your long list of bookmarks in order to get to that page without typing in the name manually, you can setup a shorter keyword for that. (see screenshot) You type in that keyword, and poof, you’re there.

Searchable history is not something I use every day, but when you need it – you find it very handy. I suppose I could liken a searchable history to Spotlight. Before Spotlight was introduced we never knew how much of a pain it was to find things on our local system. But, after having Spotlight for awhile now, I find it indispensable. Such is the case with searchable history. Safari’s history menu is crude – and needs a significant update.

Update: As Nathan pointed out the history in Safari is indeed searchable. But I would have never found it if he hadn’t told me where it was. So the UI needs to be adjusted to make this much more accessible.

Final thoughts

Really my requests for Safari are very light and don’t hold a ton of water when it comes to my decision to use Firefox instead of Safari. There are other, underlying, reasons why I use Firefox that are much more “under the hood” type of reasons. For instance, many WYSIWYG editors inside of various web applications do not function properly within Safari. Hopefully, with the very latest version of Web kit no doubt being included in the upcoming release of Safari, we’ll see some of this functionality made available.

I remember the first day I wanted to jump ship from Safari to Firefox. I wanted to use Google Calendar and couldn’t because Safari was not a supported browser. But now that I rarely use any online web applications – I may switch back and deal with my little niggles mentioned above until they become available (hopefully) in the next release.

Note: Be sure to check out other parts of my Leopard wish list listed below:

  1. Part one: Safari
  2. Part two: Mail
  3. Part three: iChat
  4. Part three: Finder

[tags]leopard, mac os x, osx, macintosh, apple, safari, wish list, browsers, flock, firefox, bookmarks, history, rss, feeds, atom[/tags]
[slug]leopard-wishes-pt1-safari[/slug]