Apple: the research lab for Microsoft
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For you Windows users, the cool thing about this article is it tells you how to implement a version of these wishes on your PC. Good read.
Windoze already has too many features that don’t work.
I would add built-in support for .pdfs to that list.
The should first fix the features they have, so they work.
Especially the basic features.
For example, why do my XP and 2K machines often forget how I grouped the icons on my desktop, scrambling them all up on me?
That’s basic stuff, for Pete’s sake.
Apple owns the patents for several of those technologies, so I would not expect to see them in Windows anytime soon.
A Windows web server on the home desktop. -- That will end well.
The principle issue with addressing these items is that the underlying "guts" of Windows does not lend itself to making the sort of fundamental changes needed in order to add these features. Perhaps the days of Windows being the "only" OS used by business are coming to an end...
To capture just the active window/dialog box instead of the entire screen, press Alt-PrintScreen.
Where it goes from there, however, is another matter entirely. It's up to you to open up Paint or another image editor, paste the captured screen into the app window, and then save it. What a pain.
If you're taking many screenshots at one time, do this:
1. Open a blank Word/OpenOffice doc.
2. After doing Alt-PrintScreen to capture a window, CTRL-V in the doc to paste the screenshot.
3. After capturing all the screenshots, save the doc.
4. Save it again as an HTML file.
Each screenshot in the HTML file is named and saved automatically as a separate JPG. (Word also saves each image as a PNG).
This method is much faster than plopping each screenshot into an image editor as you capture it, and then naming/saving separately.
Later, you can use an image editor if you need to.
ping to me for later
That list is rubbish.
What Windows users need is:
1. seamless backwards compatibility (especially corporate users who run software written inside their own company specifically for their jobs)
2. no Registry. The Windows Registry paradigm can only *stop* a program from running...a very bad way to do business (OK, the registry file should exist to maintain backwards compatibility, but that’s it).
3. the OS *is* a firewall. Probes of ports and external signals should be logged, but only allowed when a user tells the OS via a dedicated background screen (pop-up message box “OK” clicking should banned)
4. You don’t click “Start” to shut down your OS. That’s just stupid; it makes Redmond look like a bunch of stoned college kids
5. Right clicks on *anything* should allow you to see and **change** all properties (not just listed properties...all properties down to the deepest code level) and those changes should be persistent even through reboots
6. the task bar should have a Google search window (hey, Microsoft didn’t want you to have a Microsoft search window, so Google must be a better suggestion to them)
7. Pop-Ups and message boxes (e.g. click “OK” to continue) should be banned or at least changed to have a timer that self-clicks “OK” after a pre-set amount of time so that no user is compelled to baby-sit a PC during a reboot or installation
8. the user should be able to kill every process and service, even if doing so corrupts the hard drive and turns off the power to widows and orphans
9. software installations and upgrades should be banned from forcing the user to reboot in order to use the new service
10. the user should have the option to request a “max performance” review in which the OS shows how much performance can be gained, and how many “unused/non-mandatory” services/dlls can/must be turned off (or set to a priority so low that they consume less than 1/1000th of CPU time), such that a single program is given full PC power with as little OS overhead as possible...via 1-click
This may all be true, but I probably use about 10% of the features on my computer. This sounds like an additional 18 features I would never use.
Adding MKS Toolkit and ActivePerl go a long way toward making Windows tolerable. :-)
Windows still doesn’t do ISO burning? Wow. Does anyone know if you can create an ISO with out 3rd party tools on Windows? Unix has had that since forever. (”dd” is one of the oldest commands.)
My personal pet peeve is that what people think an OS does ends up being an endless grab-bag of “features” many of dubious worth. Stickies notes being an OS function? That type of thinking is the *problem* not the solution.
The best thing any OS can do is to do what it does best (schedule processes, manage memory, manage devices, run some background processes, provide a file system) and then GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.
Decouple the OS from the UI, the applications, the services and leave that out of kernel space. Erect a firewall between OS and applications so that a problem in an application doesn’t bring down the whole box.
Certainly in the microsoft world, the trend has been the exact opposite. Exhibit A, the integration of the browser with the OS.
This is exactly the wrong approach, IMHO.
I’ve tried six+ virtual workspace managers for MS Windows, including the one MS offers via its add-on tools site. They all have problems, but there is one I can recommend.
VirtuaWin: http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
I’ve had it set up for 12 workspaces on some machines, right now I’m using 4. It has the most working features and works the least quirkily of them all.