macOS 10.14 Wishlist: Features MacRumors Readers Hope to See in the Next Version of macOS

[JRobinsonJr]

Fix mail, I already lost very important mails in the last few days, luckily had a backup and the second time it was in the trash...WTF, on a beta though so I guess it's a bug.

Sadly, "fix mail" is not a trivial request. Apple Mail (on all platforms) is so ... 1990's? It's time for it to grow up. We need stability, better integration with Internet Standards, and a boatload of missing features. Surely Apple could spare a dozen engineers to work on this!

 

[gsmornot]

My two main wants are Homekit and APFS for Fusion.

 

[nin4nin]

PLEASE fix Photos High Sierra Bugs

• Several features were removed from Photos in Sierra
• No way to alphabetize names in the People album
• No way to ‘discover’ unnamed faces as we could in Sierra
• No way to tell photos to ignore an unknown face in the crowd
• The "Add People +" option from Sierra is gone

The Apple Photos team could learn a ton from Google Photos (old Picasa). Why are they waiting a YEAR to do anything? It's infuriating.

 

[JRobinsonJr]

Not necessarily, it just depends on the compression settings. Also, I'd prefer more free space on my 256gb SDD over a slight quality loss in photos and videos that are 5+ years old.

You say that now, and I agree, but with the current approach to photo storage/management... we can't afford the loss of quality. It's not a big deal for some/many pics, but imagine you've got family pics in there. 20 years from now you're going to want those pics of your kids/parents/siblings/etc.

 

[astrocramp]

That's just not true. Most everything on your computer can also be accessed by phone if you use cloud drives or apps. Probably more risk with the phone, since banks, apple pay, and other critical apps now rely on faceid or touchid. Also, you're not forced to use it, just disable it if you think it's not secure for your particular use case.

 

[Toutou]

Allow Command-Control-Shift-4 to save JPG or PNG files, right now it is .TIFF files only!!! and they are huge files!!!!

FYI, regular Command-shift-4 (screenshot saves to desktop) allows for multiple file types (if you change via the commend line).

The one with Control doesn't save a file, it stores the image in clipboard. What are you even asking for?

 

[MauiPa]

• Sync iOS/macOS notifications. iOS notifications already sync to the watch; why can't they show up on all devices?
• Stream iOS widgets to macOS's Today view. This may become less relevant if porting from iOS to macOS becomes easier, but right now, the disparity is unfortunate.
• Make network shares more reliable. This has been an issue since 10.0, and they've made tweaks here and there, but I still frequently run into weird glitches where stuff doesn't show, some process needs to be killed, I need to wait for a timeout, or whatever. This worked better in Windows 98.
• Speaking of which, one of the things Windows does that macOS (and Unix in general) does not is just treat a network share as a path. You don't have to actually mount it; you can just transparently access files from it. Having to mount and unmount is a weird 1970s'-era anachronism. This isn't a floppy disk…
• Make Console more useful again. Unified Logging is great on paper but has made tracking down problems so much harder since Sierra. Don't have Console running and recently had an issue? You're probably out of luck. Have Console running? Welcome to the firehose; good luck setting up appropriate filters.
• Make Continuity more reliable. My Watch unlock stopped working a few days ago. Why? Lord knows. Maybe it's because I tried a screensaver; that's when I first noticed. But I have since shut that off again. Universal Clipboard works 80% of the time. Handoff works 60% of the time. Stuff is amazing when it works, and infuriating when it does not. Give use better diagnostic tools (such as a useful Console!) to figure out why stuff isn't working.
• Sometimes, my Watch shows up in Console. I've never gotten that to work, ever. It either claims after several minutes of spinning that I need to confirm the trust prompt on the Watch (I'm not getting one!), or it just shows an empty log. Always. No matter what I do or don't do on the Watch. (Meanwhile, the iPhone is rather chatty even when idling, so this isn't plausible.) Continuity's fault? Who knows.
• Let me backup from iOS to macOS Server.
• Mail still occasionally has a hard time counting. Title bar says x items unread, Dock icon says y items, and actual mailbox shows zero items.

Good ideas. I don't get a few things you said though.

Network Share as a path? I presume this might be a windows network share (which I don't have any). But Google Drive, icloud, OneDrive, Time Capsule, and router attached all do work as you suggest.
my watch unlock has worked reliably for a long period (like - since I set it up). Sounds like your specifics need to be reported. My watch never shows up in Console maybe part of issue?

 

[alexandero]

You say that now, and I agree, but with the current approach to photo storage/management... we can't afford the loss of quality. It's not a big deal for some/many pics, but imagine you've got family pics in there. 20 years from now you're going to want those pics of your kids/parents/siblings/etc.

Most likely no one will ever have interest in all of my >10.000 photos, so selectively compressing the ones which aren't so important isn't a loss. Also, the videos I've taken with my iPhone 3 most likely use a compression technology of the past decade, so I doubt there'd be any quality loss when converting them to HEVC (but a major gain in freed memory).

 

[nutmac]

Mine:

• APFS: Data integrity check.
• iTunes: Split into Music, TV, and iTunes (for purchasing contents).
• iSync: Syncing with iOS is initiated from the iOS device. iTunes Helper is replaced by iSync service that responds to sync requests from the iOS device.
• App Store: iOS style revamp, upgrade pricing.
• Gatekeeper 2: Developers can use Gatekeeper 2 API to install apps directly, which downloads, installs, and updates apps App Store style.
• Dark Mode: Dark mode expands beyond menu bar and Dock.
• Face ID, True Tone, ProMotion: Requires new hardware, of course.
• Mail: Focus Inbox that filters out less important emails, thread notification, Smart Inbox and VIP are synced with iOS devices.
• iCloud: Shared folders.
• Photos: Shared iCloud Photo Library, deduplication, performance enhancements.
• Apple Pencil Support: New MacBooks and MacBook Pros will now accept input from Apple Pencil, both on the trackpad and the screen.
• Safari: Open up Touch ID/FaceID as a two factor authentication WebKit service.
• More Responsive: Immediately wakes up from sleep, etc.
• Messages: iMessages app, iMessages Business Chat, iMessage Effects, etc.

 

[Pakaku]

Personally I'd just be happy going back to how Snow Leopard looked. Metallic style, actual contrast, actual depth to the windows, and in general making things easy to visually distinguish without having to flip on a bunch of stuff in the Accessibility window.

Same to iOS, but that's a whole other nightmare

 

[happysymptom]

Just make it reliable for 2014 era MacBook Pros with NVIDIA GPUs. Swiping between spaces is a slideshow on 10.13

 

[redheeler]

[*]Unified macOS and iOS design - With rumors of apps compatible with both iOS devices and Macs, MacRumors reader Glmnet1 would also like to see a more unified design between Macs and iOS devices. What that might look like is unclear, and while it could happen at some point, it's not likely for this year as we're not expecting major design changes with iOS 12 or macOS 10.14.

No unified design, please. Dumbed-down mobile experiences on desktop aren't fun, and that's just what you'd be asking for...

 

[David G.]

A play/pause keyboard button that f’in works. That alone would thrill me.

 

[chucker23n1]

Network Share as a path? I presume this might be a windows network share (which I don't have any).

Sure. SMB, AFP, NFS, SFTP, …

On Windows, you can just pull an Open dialog in any app and open \\server\share\path\to\file.txt directly that way. Behind the scenes, network authentication takes place, but \\server\share is just transparently available.

But Google Drive, icloud, OneDrive, Time Capsule, and router attached all do work as you suggest.

Google Drive, iCloud and OneDrive "sort of" work that way because they sync to the local file system anyway.

Time Capsule does not work that way at all. It mounts a network share in the background, and this causes funky issues if you use different network shares from the same machine Time Machine is on.

my watch unlock has worked reliably for a long period (like - since I set it up). Sounds like your specifics need to be reported. My watch never shows up in Console maybe part of issue?

Are you sure your Watch doesn't show up even if you leave Console running for a few minutes?

Unlock worked OK for a few months, but even when it did, I was never completely satisfied. Sometimes, it would just try to reach the Watch for several seconds, flail, then let me enter a password (why can't I enter a password while it's trying to reach the Watch, the same way I can enter a password while iPhone tries Touch ID or Face ID?). Sometimes, it would explicitly give the error message that the Watch is too far away (why doesn't it just keep retrying to see if the Watch is closer now?).

But now it just stopped altogether? Weird. And I'd love to report specifics, if only I had an idea how to find them out.

 

[Bacillus]

I hope the unification between iOS and macOS does not happen. Many of the macOS apps are already lacking features compared to some of their Windows counter parts. Who would want further dumbed down mobile apps on their full-fledged computers?

Agree - or at least include some handle so we crummy ducks can use our Mac as a phone

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

Fix the damn MAIL program! It's been broken for years. Every update loses server settings. Fixing those is worse than a trip to the dentist! If you have like a dozen email accounts for businesses/personal, etc, remember all your server settings and passwords is nearly impossible. At any given time, I have at least one email account that will not SEND MAIL AT ALL! This is ridiculous and gone on long enough. UGH!

 

[iansilv]

I would just like to have roaming profiles work again so I can have any person in my office use any computer and have their desktop roam with them.

 

[kemal]

How about making buttons that are highlighted in blue *click* when pressing Return or Enter.

 

[Toutou]

iMessage / Facetime / and Contacts just need to be merged into a single "iPhone" app on macOS that does it all seamlessly.

You DO realize there are people who don't use an iPhone, right?

 

[mmomega]

1. One button enable/disable all auto correct suggestions, as i type, etc type things. Systemwide.

2. Group Facetime option. This was available in iChat, even just 3 way but hey 4 would be nice.

3. Take the animoji team and see if they can get with the iMessage team and actually get iMessage in the Cloud working outside of beta. Cause that emoji/animoji team is on top of ****.

4.Give me a better fullscreen. Green button fullscreens with menu bar. Or hell, an option in system prefs. Green button with menu bar or complete full screen but with full screen by default.

5. Just go ahead and rename system preferences to settings. Be done with it already.

6. Older disk utility back, pre 1st aid button.

7. Allow Siri on my laptop to turn my bedroom light off.

8. Apple buy Fantastical and let that team take over the calendar app on iOS and Mac.

9. Let "Set service order" in network settings actually mean what you set it to. If I am using a 10Gb fiber connection, I choose that connection at the top of my list of connections and my Apple Watch unlocks my computer, well now my computer resorted to using WiFi again.

10. Just do a Windows Snap'eque function and move on.

11. Take TV Shows out of where they are hidden within Apple Music. It makes zero, zero, zero sense to go into iTunes, to then go into the Music section then have to remember to go into Browse and that is where you will find TV and Movies.
They aren't under Movies.
They aren't under TV Shows.
The TV Shows and Movies are under Browse, inside of Music.

Out of the little things there are to nitpick, I just don't see how out of all of the smart minds they have on staff that the best decision was to have iTunes have 3 main tabs right? Music, Movies, TV Shows. And then someone decided, let's hide all of our Apple made TV Shows and Movies inside the music section. Just change the music section to MTV.
Can you tell this is a button for me?

 

[CLS727]

You DO realize there are people who don't use an iPhone, right?

The whole point of the Apple ecosystem is that everything works seamlessly within their walled garden.

Why should I have less of an experience to accommodate people that want to use an Android?

 

[nitramluap]

I’d rather see basic Finder functionality working properly, like the option to “right size all columns individually” in column view.

As of now it only works for one column (same as to double click on the column border) - completely useless. When you continue to navigate folders all columns are again of the same size.

This has been broken since Mavericks (my very first Mac OS).

I guess I am asking too much from Apple.

Hold down 'Option' and double click on any column border and they all resize to fit. It's been like this for ~15 years.

 

[mrzz]

unified macOS / iOS design - most stupid idea ever

 

[Phil in ocala]

Installing in the background as it has been before on OS X....Yes PLEASE... the way it works now just isn't the OS it used to be.

Homekit on a Mac, another good idea.

And, if I was in control, go back to the UI days of OS X, give me back the polished UI.

How about something basic...like the ability to delete by right click any doc, jpeg, Aiff file....?????