Apple : In Depth: OS XI: what we'd like to see

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Every major new version of the Mac's operating system brings with it a slew of changes. Sometimes, these are for the better.

We remember when Quick Look first arrived and how comparatively naked a Mac felt that had yet to be updated to Leopard.

However, there's also the dark side to operating system upgrades. Occasionally, things will change and you'll prefer how they were before. In part, this will be due to getting stuck in your ways, but sometimes it'll be because Apple's new way of doing things is actually a bit rubbish.

Now and again, you'll also discover that Apple's entirely removed a feature that you loved using, turning your upgrade into something more akin to a 'side-grade' or even a step backwards.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion review

In this feature, we explore the ten things we think Apple could do to OS X that would make it a better operating system as we - presumably - move towards the 11th version of Mac OS. However, some of these enhancements could, of course, appear in OS X 10.9 and so this feature could equally be called OS X 10.9: what we'd like to see.

We've included changes to existing features, entirely new ideas and the return of some old favourites, plus the opinions of two interface experts.

Make a better Finder

The heart of OS X's interface is in dire need of a makeover

Finder

Finder is an application so invisible that many Mac users forget it's an application at all. And yet you'll use it daily to find and manage documents and files.

Finder used to have a reputation for being unstable and buggy, but those problems have largely been dealt with as OS X has matured. However, Finder remains a fairly basic file-manager, offering a handful of views and a sidebar that rapidly fills with items, the icons for which are all the same colour, making it difficult to tell them apart at a glance.

Despite those issues, Finder nonetheless remains a suitable (if uninspiring) file manager for the majority of people who own a Mac. But it could be better, especially if Apple embraced features that add-ons and alternatives offer.

Both TotalFinder and Path Finder provide tabbed browsing and dual-pane views. Tabbed browsing is a great way to reduce Finder window clutter - you can have every open window within a single tabbed pane if you like, or work with multiple tabbed windows, perhaps defined by context.

For example, if you're working on a few projects, you could have a tabbed Finder window for each, so locating related files is easier.A dual-pane mode then makes it simpler to move files between folders.

Such changes would benefit Finder but should be optional; relative novices would never have to see them, but 'power users' could revel in the increased functionality. We also wouldn't say no to cut-and-paste, file tagging, and a drop stack for temporarily holding a file during move actions.

Dismantle iTunes

It's time for this Jack of all trades to be master of some

iTunes

We remember how revolutionary and exciting iTunes was when it first appeared, back in 2001. Over a decade ago, digital music was still a novelty and apps dedicated to playing MP3s were aimed at the geekier end of the market. But when iTunes arrived, it was simple and elegant, enabling you to rip, mix and burn. (Now we just activate 'Shuffle' mode.)

Fast forward a few years and iTunes gained support for Apple's new iPods and smart playlists, and an integrated music store was added. The problem is, these additions never stopped.

Today, iTunes is a bloated monster, tasked with too many jobs and dealing with too many media types. It's still a jukebox but also houses TV shows, films, podcasts, ebooks and apps. It's used for managing iOS devices and has a rather naff social network, Ping, lurking like a bad smell.

The one-size-fits-all interface is the antithesis of Apple's own design and UI ethos, requiring plug-ins to add functionality and tutorials so people can actually use it properly. The single search engine can be frustratingly obdurate unless you know the precise name of the thing you're looking for and, let's be honest, even the name iTunes is now hugely inappropriate.

We'd like to see Apple take a leaf from iOS here (as it appears to be doing elsewhere, judging by Lion and Mountain Lion) and break iTunes into individual apps: Music, Videos, iBooks, iTunes (the store), and so on. It wouldn't be an easy task, and Apple having to support Windows as well suggests it won't happen, but we can dream…

Revamp the desktop

Why not make the desktop more like a real desktop

Desktop

The OS X desktop is an oddball. It's really a folder inside your Mac's file system, living at /Desktop, and yet you can put hard drive links on it, along with aliases to folders, and pretty much anything else. It's all too easy for the desktop to become a dumping ground for anything that's not been filed; we regularly make such a mess that unearthing any one file is nigh-on impossible, especially once there's not enough space to display all of the file icons.

With the advent of Spaces and latterly Mission Control, you do have some flexibility over how you view your applications, and store files for easy access, but it still feels like there's more to be had from the basic desktop paradigm.

We're not sure what we want Apple to do here, though. Part of us wants it to just go whole-hog with Launchpad and make that the desktop, while another part of us wants Apple to make the desktop more intelligent. Instead of it being a flat area to randomly dump files and folders, Apple could provide user-definable areas akin to an in-tray and an out-tray. Each area would be 'rubber-banded' so you'd need a distinct effort to move a file to a different area (but without the need for a dialog box).

This would turn the OS X desktop into a digital equivalent of piles of stuff on a real desk, but with the ability to move things around without the hassle of real-world folders. With Quick Look and a 'mini' Exposé, this could be a great time-saver.

In the meantime, Hazel offers some solace, sorting any folder's content through user-definable rules.

Add more colour

Colour

Apple's interfaces appear to be heading towards two extremes. On the one hand, you've got the kind of thing you see in Finder and iTunes - a sea of blue and grey. And then at the opposite end of the scale, you have iCal with its fake-leather toolbar (complete with fake stitching) and Address Book, which is a prime example of how making an application that looks like a book but isn't a book, really isn't a smart move.

Colour is useful for differentiation, but apeing real-world objects in a computer interface - termed 'skeuomorphism' - distracts from the content. We'd like to see Apple aim for something of a happy medium in future, bringing back a little life to Finder and iTunes, but not turning them into another iCal.

Enhance Spotlight

Spotlight

In some ways, Spotlight is great. It provides a central location for finding pretty much anything on your Mac. The big problem with Spotlight is its randomness. You'll type in a search term and, if you're lucky, get what you're looking for as your first choice and click to open it.

But often, you'll click a nanosecond after Spotlight 'helpfully' reorders the list, causing you to launch something else, slowing down your entire Mac while the weightiest application you own grudgingly lurches into life.

What we really want is Siri for OS X, but some kind of super-intelligent version, like a benign Skynet that would instantly know what you meant by "that Pages document I wrote about that thing for John" but wouldn't on a whim decide to eradicate the human race.

Enhance full-screen mode

You've given it to us, now make it work properly

Full screen

In a world that boasts distractions by the bucketload, we're grateful for anything that helps us focus. Even if it reminds us a tiny bit of something Windows has been able to do since day one, full-screen mode, introduced in OS X Lion, does this, blocking out everything apart from the front-most app.

It's now an essential part of our Mac experience, especially when working in iPhoto and apps for writing. Full-screen mode wasn't much use in OS X Lion when you had a multiple-monitor setup, as all but one of your displays showed what amounted to a blank screen, but this annoyance was fixed with the release of OS X Mountain Lion.

But there are still many apps that don't make use of this brilliant feature - including some of Apple's own programs like App Store. If you'd like to use the full-screen feature on more apps, you can do so with a SIMBL plug-in called Maximizer. SIMBL - or SIMple Bundle Loader - is a system for loading custom code into Cocoa applications.

Then you need to download Maximizer, decompress the file and then put the Maximizer.bundle in the SIMBL plug-ins folder which resides at: /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins.

To take things further in the next OS X we think that a split-screen mode would be really handy (for example, to have a writing tool and browser side-by-side), although such functionality can at least be approximated by window managers like Moom.

Give us a media centre

Bring back Front Row - or preferably something better

Front Row

There's pretty much no chance of this happening. We're sure if we went up to Tim Cook and demanded media-centre software from Apple, he'd tell us to buy an Apple TV, while scowling angrily - and Tim usually seems like a laid-back guy.

And yet we can't help thinking Apple's missing a bit of a trick here, in not enabling any Mac (such as the svelte Mac mini) to become a home media centre. Of course, Apple used to ship Front Row, which was essentially a front-end for your iTunes content that provided access to your music, videos and photos through an Apple remote. The interface wasn't a million miles away from what you get on the Apple TV either, making it all the more surprising Apple axed it.

Now, your best bet is some flavour of XBMC Media Center, Plex, a Boxee unit, or biting the bullet and buying that black box that is the Apple TV. We can sort of understand Apple's decision to remove Front Row, when they're keen to push Apple TV for your media needs, and the idea of a 'media hub' is being phased out in lieu of streaming and cloud storage. We also suspect not a lot of people used it and were merely perplexed when they hit Command+Esc by mistake, only to find OS X replaced by giant icons.

But given that today's Mac still plays host to the majority of your photos, music and home video, it seems odd to have removed a fairly innocuous piece of software that made the viewing experience slightly less arduous.

Revert to 'Save As'

Save as

In OS X Lion, Apple integrated versioning into the heart of the OS. Regular copies of any file you work on are automatically saved, enabling you to go back to an earlier version, or compare versions and copy content from one to the other.

At the same time, Apple drastically changed the save system on the Mac. Instead of the default Save command and Save As…, you now have Save and Duplicate. Some people like this new workflow, but old habits die hard and after much grumbling, Apple has relented: Mountain Lion reintroduces Save As… to OS X but the option only appears in your File menu if you hit the å key.

We think most people won't know this and it should become the default view.

Sound controls

Apple only provides a limited amount of control over sound in OS X. You can control input and output devices, and there's a global volume control, along with volume level settings in sound-oriented apps like GarageBand and iTunes.

But apps are increasingly noisy, especially web browsers, and there's no easy way to silence them. We'd love to see something like Prosoft's SoundBunny (prosofteng.com/products/soundbunny.php) built directly into OS X, providing the means to adjust the volume of any open application, and, preferably, individual browser pages.

This would clearly be more complicated than the standard controls, but Apple is not averse to providing more advanced controls 'under the hood'.

WindowShade

WIndow Shade

WindowShade started out as a third-party utility, became an add-on to Mac OS 7.5 and was later merged into Mac OS 8's Appearance Manager. It was a handy tool for peeking at whatever was behind a window.

A quick double-click on any window's WindowShade widget would collapse it to just the title bar. The WindowShade concept bit the dust in OS X, presumably because windows could be minimised to the Dock, and newer versions of the operating system provide Exposé and Mission Control for quickly viewing open windows and moving between them.

For a while, you could at least install Unsanity's WindowShade X 'haxie', but even that's not an option if you've upgraded to OS X Lion or the new Mountain Lion.

Tutorial: iMovie for iPad: how to edit your videos quickly and easily

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Apple has made it really easy to edit home movies on your Mac thanks to the constantly refined iMovie app. But with the release of the iPhone and iPad, Apple went one step further and introduced a portable version of iMovie to enable you to edit on the go.

Of course, it's pretty bare bones compared to what you can do on a Mac, but that's not the point: with iMovie for iOS, you can edit wherever you are, taking advantage of the long battery life of iOS devices.

More often than not, you can have a finished movie by the time you get home. Although bulkier than an iPhone or iPod touch, an iPad gives you more space to edit in, making the process a more comfortable experience.

With the help of the iPad Camera Connection Kit, you can also easily transfer shots from your iPhone or iPod touch to your iPad, so one person can keep shooting while another edits, giving you immense flexibility.

We'll show you the basics of editing on an iPad. Then you can hit the ground running without feeling that video editing is solely the preserve of 'proper' computers.

How to perform basic video edits on the iPad

1. Create a New Project

step 1

Launch iMovie and you'll be presented with an old-style American front-of-house movie theatre. Previous projects are represented by posters (made up of a still image of your project, along with a design that's based on your chosen theme - more on that later).

Here you can rename your project by tapping on its title; you can also play your film back or export it with the options available at the bottom. To create a new film, tap on the '+' button. Choose the option to create a new Project.

2. Library and themes

step 2

All the clips stored on your iPad are available on the top-left part of the interface (we're using landscape orientation in this tutorial). Media is divided based on type: videos, photos and audio - which includes music from your library as well as sound effects and themespecific background tracks.

With themes you can add titles and transitions to your project. You can choose the one you want by tapping on the Gear menu, top-right, and swiping the thumbnails until you find the one you like.

3. Preview and clip selection

step 3

Go back to your library's Video section. You can preview any clip in the top-right section of the interface by dragging your finger over it. To select a clip, tap on it. You can then drag the yellow handles on either side inwards to only select part of your clip; use the main preview section to trim your selection precisely.

Then tap on the clip and it'll jump down into the timeline. Add a few more to build up your edit. Notice in the library that any clip or clip-part that's used in the project now has an orange line under it.

4. The timeline

step 4

The red line represents the playhead and the image shown top-right of the screen is the frame that the playhead's over. This playhead is stationary. You move your project by dragging it to the left or the right.

You can further fine-tune your edit straight from the timeline: tap any clip to bring up yellow handles. Use them to add or remove parts of that clip from your project (the currently used part is still linked to the main clip you took from the Library). To zoom in or out, move two fingers away or closer together.

5. Reordering and splitting

step 5

To change the order of clips, tap and hold on one. This removes it from the timeline. With a finger still touching the screen, you can move that clip to another position. If you release it while it's out of the timeline, it's removed from the project.

You can also perform more complex edits like inserting a new clip in the middle of an existing one: move the playhead over the clip then select it. Now, swipe down over the playhead to cut your clip in two. You can now insert a new clip in between those two parts.

6. Working with transitions

step 6

A transition is added between each clip, which may not be what you want. You can alter those transitions by double-tapping on them. You can choose between no transition (i.e, a straight cut) to a cross dissolve, to one based on your chosen theme; the transition icon changes to reflect your current choice.

You can also alter the duration. Select Theme, move the playhead back a bit and press the Play button to preview. You can then return to the Gear menu, select a theme and see what that transition looks like.

Yahuui Blog

Saturday, November 10, 2012