Features you wish macOS had?

[dandeco]

I'd say Dashboard, though at least Mac OS 11 Big Sur and later brought back Widgets as part of the Control Center feature. It's nice to have a desktop clock, calendar and weather Widget again, but I do miss having that calculator...
I'd like to also see Front Row return, as that was pretty cool. But now that we have Apple TV, I can see why Apple wouldn't really want to bring it back.

 

[joevt]

• VR headset compatibility. As above, Apple's failure in courting the industry to support macOS in this respect is disappointing. At present the HTC Vive is the only macOS compatible VR headset.

macOS knows about 12 different head mounted displays:

grep -r "is-hmd" /System/Library/Displays | sort -V
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-3ed2/DisplayProductID-1:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-3ed2/DisplayProductID-2:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-3ed2/DisplayProductID-3:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-3ed2/DisplayProductID-4:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-3ed2/DisplayProductID-12:        <key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-4ca3/DisplayProductID-144a:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-4ed2/DisplayProductID-1019:        <key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-5a54/DisplayProductID-5631:        <key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-10ac/DisplayProductID-7fce:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-22d2/DisplayProductID-aa01:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-22d2/DisplayProductID-aa02:	<key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-22d2/DisplayProductID-aa03:        <key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-22d2/DisplayProductID-aa04:        <key>is-hmd</key>
/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-5996/DisplayProductID-91a8:	<key>is-hmd</key>

source ../Scripts/EDIDUtil.sh
translatevendor 0x10ac
translatevendor 0x22d2
translatevendor 0x3ed2
translatevendor 0x4ca3
translatevendor 0x4ed2
translatevendor 0x5996
translatevendor 0x5a54

0x10ac = DEL = Dell Inc.
0x22d2 = HVR = HTC Corportation
0x3ed2 = OVR = Oculus VR, Inc.
0x4ca3 = SEC = Seiko Epson Corporation
0x4ed2 = SVR = Sensics, Inc.
0x5996 = VLV = Valve Corporation
0x5a54 = VRT = Varjo Technologies

The NUMBER ONE feature I'm dying to see is automatic finder column width spacing. Been asking for this for YEARS and its truly mindblowing this still hasn't been implemented. The fact that you can't currently open a finder window in Column view without it cutting off some file/folder titles, and being too wide (wasted space) for others, and having to continuously/manually click the vertical divider bars and resize is just stunning (and annoying as all hell).

I use SwitchResX a lot. The column widths in the Current Resolutions and Custom Resolutions list are always wrong. I think columns are a standard control used in many apps. I think they could add code to set the max width to be no more than a few pixels more than the max width of all the items in the column. The Finder Name column may need to ease that restriction to accomodate viewing items in nested folders - but all the other columns can have a max width. Another thing is that I want the rightmost column to not be pinned to the right edge of the column view - especially since the column view is pinned to the right edge of the window which might be expanded far wider than needed for all the columns.

I'd be happy with TDM.

Target Display Mode? It still works in Monterey for the displays of old Thunderbolt iMacs. They have a software controlled DisplayPort mux switch to move the display's connection from the the GPU to a DisplayPort Out adapter of the Thunderbolt 1 Cactus Ridge controller. For non-iMacs, I think this can work without extra hardware for Thunderbolt displays and displays connected to Thunderbolt docks/hubs.

I tend to leave Finder windows open for the specific purpose of dragging and dropping the folder I want to save to directly into the File>Save dialogue box. Then it's just a matter of saving.

Something weird in some apps I've seen recently: dragging a file from the Finder to a save or open dialog (not sure which one) may actually copy the file to that location instead of just changing the viewed location and selected file. That's a horrible feature of Windows that I don't want to see in macOS.

I'd like to also see Front Row return, as that was pretty cool. But now that we have Apple TV, I can see why Apple wouldn't really want to bring it back.

I used to use Front Row on Core Duo or Solo Mac mini (with infrared controller) connected to TV to view movie trailers.

 

[Project Alice]

I would argue that in later versions (post Mavericks) it became 'flawless'. But that's only because Apple finally switched to the industry standard SMB and not their own implementation of Samba.

Leopard was better than Tiger in networking and Snow Leopard is better than Leopard. That's all great if you're only dealing with Macs on your network and stick to the AFP protocol. But before El Cap if you got SMB involved things could get unreliable. That's why AdmitMac and DAVE were products that people bought and why Thursby software remained a viable business.

Oh okay. I mainly use AFP, but I have my NAS setup for both. SMB is usually annoying for me on every OS, not just old Mac OS X. But it does seem to work reliably even on Tiger when I do connect to it.
On Linux I use AFP, lol basically I only use SMB for my one Windows install and iOS devices.
AFP isn’t the default anymore apparently but I still like it better. It also seems to be faster but that might be because I have SMB 1.x compatibility mode enabled.

 

[Malus120]

First... Fix macOS Monterey's ridiculous memory leaks, (FFS) and just start taking better care of macOS in general then...

Graphics, gaming & GPUs:
1. Vulkan drivers on macOS for Apple Silicon OR full documentation for Apple Silicon GPUs and the ability to install third party Vulkun/OpenGL/OpenCL Drivers (likely would require reduced security settings of course)
2. A Proton like compatibility layer for Windows & Linux games and Apps with good compatibility / performance
3. A “smart” GPU driver that can take code designed for traditional GPUs and at least try to un-bottleneck it for higher core count Apple Silicon tile renderer GPUs
4. Feature parity for Metal with Vulkan and DirectX
5. MoltenVK built into xCode/macOS, actively maintained with official support and better compatibility/usability
6. PCIE/Thunderbolt (e)GPU support for Apple Silicon
7. Full PCIE/Thunderbolt GPU passthrough for Virtual Machines

General:
1. A firm commitment to maintaining Rosetta 2 going forward
2. More flexible/fleshed out macOS Virtual Machine support through the official library on Apple Silicon
3. The ability to at least virtualize 32-bit mac apps (via virtualizing older version of macOS)
4. Full HDMI 2.1 support
5. HDR support on external monitors that isn’t wonky
6. Ability to force iOS applications to run on Mac (remove ability of iOS developers to opt out)
7. A dedicated library like CUDA for machine learning that leverages both the GPU and neural engine.

 

[Nermal]

The thing I miss the most from Risc OS is three-button mouse support. The buttons are called Select, Menu and Adjust. Select and Menu do what you'd expect. Adjust is the clever one. For example:

- Click Adjust on a folder window's Close button to open the parent folder
- Click Adjust on a document window's Close button to open the folder containing the file
- Double-click Select on a folder to open it in a new window, double-click Adjust to open it in the same window
- Double-click Select on a document to open it and keep the folder window open, double-click Adjust to close the folder window
- Click Adjust on a scroll bar arrow to scroll in the opposite direction
- Click Adjust on a file or folder to add it to/remove it from the current selection (if I want to select files A, F and Q in a folder then I click A with Select and F and Q with Adjust, without having to hold Command or similar, likewise if I want everything except B then I do a Select All then click Adjust on file B)
- Click Select in a block of text then click Adjust in another part of the text to highlight that range without needing to drag (particularly helpful when you want to select a large block of text that would usually require scrolling)

This stuff's been in Risc OS for at least 30 years yet neither Windows nor MacOS have made any attempt to copy it...

 

[Arctic Moose]

Lots of good suggestions in this thread! The two I haven’t seen mentioned:

• First-party clipboard manager
• Desktop management (including virtual) that doesn’t suck (FVWM-style would work for me)
• Bonus: I used Dashboard all the time, I'd appreciate getting it back

Oh, and also a way to print/export all account information from Keychain Access.

 

[Janichsan]

• Please give me back the old iTunes we all hated. The Apple Music app has taught me humility and showed me how good we used to have it. I thought it didn't get any worse than iTunes. I was wrong.

I wouldn't necessarily want iTunes back, but I agree that Music is just bad. It's still lacking a lot of things that iTunes had and the iPad-like single window interface simply sucks on Macs (which is true for all iPad-like single window interfaces - so basically large parts of modern macOS...)

But what's even worse is Podcasts.

2. A Proton like compatibility layer for Windows & Linux games and Apps with good compatibility / performance

Remember OS/2? If not, something like that was at least one of the reasons why you don't.

Such an compatibility layer would remove any incentive to provide proper, native Mac applications.

4. Full HDMI 2.1 support

That's (afaik) a hardware issue, not an macOS issue.

7. A dedicated library like CUDA for machine learning that leverages both the GPU and neural engine.

Core ML?

 

[curnalpanic]

iChat with tabs!

 

[opeter]

Flexible "split screen/grid" management of open windows/apps similar to these found in MS Windows or different Linux Desktop Environments without 3rd party application (BetterSnapTool, Spectacle etc.):

How to easily split screen space to fit two windows in Ubuntu

There are cases when you need to switch between two applications in your work. For example, a common use case is reading commands/instructions from a web page opened in a web browser and trying them out in a command-line terminal. I'm sure many of you are used to the Alt+Tab method of switching...

www.faqforge.com

 

[joevt]

That's (afaik) a hardware issue, not an macOS issue.

What do you mean? We have the hardware already, in the form of Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs with HDMI 2.1 ports and also DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 adapters. We need macOS to enable it properly.

 

[spamabyss]

The window management of windows 10. I know I could just switch back but I don’t trust microsoft and like the apple integration and hardware. But boy is that stupid maximize to fullscreen but on a new desktop behavior driving me crazy. Windows snap also works 100 times better on windows 10. Just snap the top bar and drag it to the left or right. Then choose one of the other open windows which get displayed in an overview and it gets the other half of the screen.

Just snap the top bar again and drag it to the top and it maximizes. I can do that blind. Which I can’t say for hitting the small buttons in macOS. It also drives me nuts that when I‘m in fullscreen in macOS and then say want the calculator on top I get thrown back on the main desktop. Many things just take many more clicks and work less elegantly than on windows 10.

I could go on (hovering over an item in the task bar and being able to chose from all the open windows, in mail for example.) Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I love about macOS. And these things keep frustrating me on a daily basis and the gestures or even little workarounds like magnet just aren’t doing the same job for me. Shame that Microsoft will be Microsoft and therefore isn‘t an option for many other reasons.

 

[eyoungren]

Oh okay. I mainly use AFP, but I have my NAS setup for both. SMB is usually annoying for me on every OS, not just old Mac OS X. But it does seem to work reliably even on Tiger when I do connect to it.
On Linux I use AFP, lol basically I only use SMB for my one Windows install and iOS devices.
AFP isn’t the default anymore apparently but I still like it better. It also seems to be faster but that might be because I have SMB 1.x compatibility mode enabled.

If you're only using Macs and iDevices in your network then yes, SMB on Tiger will work for the few times you use it. But you start adding in Windows PCs and Windows Servers and it becomes very apparent that this is Apple's implementation of SMB and not the standard SAMBA. Getting Tiger to connect to a Windows server for instance requires downgrading the server security.

And yes, Apple is deprecating AFP now because they switched to the SAMBA standard. Maintaining two file protocols is no longer cost effective.

Note…I have recently discovered that SMB has a bug in Mojave. Drives shared from Mojave Macs via SMB will eventually disconnect (a few hours to 24 hours later). I never noticed because I was still continuing to share via AFP until just recently.

 

[Janichsan]

What do you mean? We have the hardware already, in the form of Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs with HDMI 2.1 ports and also DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 adapters. We need macOS to enable it properly.

I had to think hard which Macs have a Radeon RX 6000. Which is actually none (?), but I guess you mean the Radeon Pro W6600X/W6800X for the Mac Pro, which share the RDNA2 architecture with the RX 6000.

That's quite a niche product for Macs, so I guess I missed that, but you are correct: these should be able to support HDMI 2.1, but don't.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Native Moom window manager (Apple’s version sucks). Native AlDente battery charging manager for MacBooks (Apple’s version sucks).

Wildcard - a return to the old bookmarks sidebar setup, like it was before they killed it in Safar 15…and made it suck.

 

[srbNYC]

Scheduling of emails.

 

[snipper]

In Mac OS 9, you could install a ‘Sounds’ system extension that let you trigger sounds with every Finder event. It came with a ‘water’ soundpack. Or that was available online. I still miss that! I’ve tried to recreate the experience but it didn’t work with OS X or only on some events, because Apple didn’t publish the info..

 

[joevt]

I had to think hard which Macs have a Radeon RX 6000. Which is actually none (?), but I guess you mean the Radeon Pro W6600X/W6800X for the Mac Pro, which share the RDNA2 architecture with the RX 6000.

That's quite a niche product for Macs, so I guess I missed that, but you are correct: these should be able to support HDMI 2.1, but don't.

Any Mac with a Thunderbolt port can have a 6600 or 6800 or 6900. But I also mentioned DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 adapters which can give some HDMI 2.1 features - more if the GPU also supports DSC (RX 5000 series, Ice Lake, M1).

 

[AlumaMac]

I'd say Dashboard, though at least Mac OS 11 Big Sur and later brought back Widgets as part of the Control Center feature. It's nice to have a desktop clock, calendar and weather Widget again, but I do miss having that calculator...

Have you tried using Spotlights built-in calculator?

 

[stiligFox]

Better window management. Windows’ snap features are top tier. I think someone said Microsoft has a patent on that feature though? That may be why we haven’t seen it on macOS.

And one more thing. This is a hardware problem, not a macOS problem (per the thread title), but I need native boot camp support back. The lack of native Windows x86 boot support (because of ARM) is a huge blow to Macs in my purchasing decision.

edit: Or if Apple could just build an emulation layer for Windows apps that worked as well as Rosetta 2, then I’d be all set. Oh a man can dream. (I’m aware there’s apps like CrossOver but app support is a hit or a miss)

Look at Magnet in the Mac App Store, it does the same exact snapping window mechanic that Windows does and does it even better. It works flawlessly and was even updated to work even better with Monterrey recently, but also goes way back. It’s one of the first things I install on macOS, I really can’t live without it!

 

[orionquest]

Note…I have recently discovered that SMB has a bug in Mojave. Drives shared from Mojave Macs via SMB will eventually disconnect (a few hours to 24 hours later). I never noticed because I was still continuing to share via AFP until just recently.

That has been driving me nuts for ages, wondering if my system was faulty or something. Do you have a reference for this, and is there some kind of workaround?

Also this bug seems more prone if iTunes is left open, less so if it is not running.

 

[JPSaltzman]

I miss a little utility app from the Classic OS called "Copy Doubler" (part of the family that also released Ram Doubler" ) -- when it came time to copy a new folder over an older one, it gave you the option to (a) copy all files, regardless of when time-stamped, or (b) just copy the new files only.

What a time saver! Mac OS X never gave you an option like that! It just wants to copy the entire new folder over the old one.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Mac OS X never gave you an option like that! It just wants to copy the entire new folder over the old one.

You can use rsync, which comes with macOS.

DESCRIPTION
       Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool.  It can copy locally, to/from
       another host over any remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon.  It offers a large number of
       options that control every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of the set
       of files to be copied.  It is famous for its delta-transfer algorithm, which reduces the amount of
       data sent over the network by sending only the differences between the source files and the
       existing files in the destination.  Rsync is widely used for backups and mirroring and as an
       improved copy command for everyday use.

       Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check" algorithm (by default) that
       looks for files that have changed in size or in last-modified time.  Any changes in the other
       preserved attributes (as requested by options) are made on the destination file directly when the
       quick check indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.

If you don't care for the terminal I'm sure you can find a decent frontend for it.

 

[eyoungren]

That has been driving me nuts for ages, wondering if my system was faulty or something. Do you have a reference for this, and is there some kind of workaround?

Also this bug seems more prone if iTunes is left open, less so if it is not running.

No direct reference, no. I'll see if I can find the webpage(s) that led me to this later on today. But the workaround would be connecting via AFP and not SMB. That said, I have NOT tried connecting via CIFS (which is SMB1) so I can't say the problem is entirely SMB (yet).

 

[MisterK]

Refined Finder UI (modern but better bright balancing)
I'm not so big on the themes idea, but I do find MacOS's light theme too bright (almost giving me snow blindness after working all day) and the dark theme too dark (where windows are harder to differentiate because you can't see shadows). The Snow Leopard levels of greys and blues felt like they were better UX and accessibility-wise.

Paste Clipboard to Files in Finder
I'd like for Finder to be smart enough that if I have text in my clipboard, pasting into Finder would create a text file. If I have an image in clipboard, pasting into Finder would just create an image file and sounds into MP3 files. This would replace the current "it does nothing" behaviour.

Better Window Management
Windows Snap feels like a smarter window management solution than macOS's single split screen option.

More Pronounced Labels
Labels in Finder and Flags in Mail are far too subtle currently. Anyone who uses them wants to be able to see files differentiated at a glance.

Finder's Gallery View merged with CoverFlow
Coverflow wasn't the most utilitarian view, but Gallery View could use its large previews to the left and right of the selected file like Coverflow did. It's hard to find files currently because I have to go back to small icons rather than just perusing giant previews.

Whimsy and Animation
I miss the ripples when you'd put a widget on the desktop. And the cool feelings of the genie effect on the dock or warp when minimizing. Our computers have so much power now, I'd love to see more use of animation or effects in the OS.

 

[Heindijs]

All the reasons eyoungren gives for Xtrafinder I totally agree with. I've been using that piece of software for years. On Snow Leopard it really was a must for me, nowadays it's still incredibly useful, but some features have been added to macOS by Apple (such as sorting folders on top and tabs) I also really like it enabling some useful features from Windows Explorer such as cutting and a 'go up' button

One thing that I don't like is how the design of the tabs changed from resembling old Chrome to something hideous. You used to have the option to choose between the tabs looking like the ones in Chrome or the ones from Opera. Now it just clashes with the aqua look sadly.

Still definitely worth the 5 bucks I paid for it