Maximize/Zoom button
Either change the way this button behaves or give it an Apple styled super functionality. Right now it zooms Safari, Finder, toggles between actual size and previous size in Quicktime, makes iTunes into a silly miniplayer, maximizes Mail, iCal, iPhoto, Aperture, Firefox, and majority of third party programs... It's a toss up to whatever the next program is going to do with the zoom button.
Make the dock take up all of the bottom area
Try this on your mac, drag the bottom right corner of any safari (or any iWork programs) window, and try to resize it behind the dock. You'll see that you can't. There is an invisible wall blocking it, which is good. Now try it with the Finder, you'll find that it will hit the dock, but as soon as you drag it past the dock, it will fall off behind it. This happens to way too many programs (iTunes especially) and I find it mind numbingly dumb UX design on Apple's part.
Better spacial optimization for Expose
If you have 4 windows of the same size (ie maximized) and you expose, it doesn't make a 2x2 grid, it makes a 1 x 4 grid. Now have 10 windows maximized, it makes a 1x10 grid that gets incredibly small to see anything. Now have 20 windows and it really becomes meaningless, you have a huge screen with a thin line of windows across the middle.
Better spaces implementation
I can't see whats on other spaces at a glance, that's something I could do in Linux and Unix. An easy fix for that is make mini-thumbnails in place of the white boxes that show up when you switch spaces. Also, instigate a lag time before an App has the ability to distract you from your space. Often times when I launch Adium, it brings me to space 2, to which I switch back to space 1 to keep reading my stuff, only to be switched to space 2 a split second later.
Get rid of the pill
The pill was useful for a few reasons. People didn't have large monitors and OS X didn't have the file manager like Finder yet. If Safari 4 is any indication, Apple is already moving away from this seemingly pointless UI button. Either get rid of it, or replace it with a much more useful UI widget. Although they can leave it alone, it's not a huge issue.
Option to maximize on double click of title
The need for minimizing windows has gone away with the improvement of screen real estate and expose. I can understand why you would minimize a window before the advent of Expose, but with it, there is really no point. You can quickly expose in and out to see all your windows. They should add another function for double clicking the title bar - either full screen the app (ie iWorks style) or zoom the app.
Replace the iTunes miniplayer
With the multitude of third party apps that are vastly superior to the miniplayer, Apple should think of doing something about it. Also, while their at it, formalize the Zoom button because I keep pressing it on iTunes to maximize the player (yes, a full screen iTunes is a lot more useful) and I get the stupid mini player.
Quicktime, DVD Player, every scrubber and full screen scrubber needs to be much longer (width of screen or width of window)
I'm watching Lord of the Rings and it gives me a 200px long scrubber to move through a 3.5 hour movie? I move it by one pixel and it's nearly 5 minutes later... Make it the total width of your screen like iDVD does.
Make the Apple menu more useful
Simply said. Currently it's in charge of Dock, Preferences and shutdown/log out things. The one menu item that needs to go is the "Apple Software" item. It's simply a stupid link to Apple.com/Downloads and doesn't serve anything useful. The fact that Apple has neglected to see this over the past few years is kinda taunting. It's like Microsoft adding a bunch of "download MSN Messenger" web links to their OS.
That's all I can think of right now. Pretty much every annoyance I have with OS X to date. Safe to say I have a lot more for Windows...
Either change the way this button behaves or give it an Apple styled super functionality. Right now it zooms Safari, Finder, toggles between actual size and previous size in Quicktime, makes iTunes into a silly miniplayer, maximizes Mail, iCal, iPhoto, Aperture, Firefox, and majority of third party programs... It's a toss up to whatever the next program is going to do with the zoom button.
Make the dock take up all of the bottom area
Try this on your mac, drag the bottom right corner of any safari (or any iWork programs) window, and try to resize it behind the dock. You'll see that you can't. There is an invisible wall blocking it, which is good. Now try it with the Finder, you'll find that it will hit the dock, but as soon as you drag it past the dock, it will fall off behind it. This happens to way too many programs (iTunes especially) and I find it mind numbingly dumb UX design on Apple's part.
Better spacial optimization for Expose
If you have 4 windows of the same size (ie maximized) and you expose, it doesn't make a 2x2 grid, it makes a 1 x 4 grid. Now have 10 windows maximized, it makes a 1x10 grid that gets incredibly small to see anything. Now have 20 windows and it really becomes meaningless, you have a huge screen with a thin line of windows across the middle.
Better spaces implementation
I can't see whats on other spaces at a glance, that's something I could do in Linux and Unix. An easy fix for that is make mini-thumbnails in place of the white boxes that show up when you switch spaces. Also, instigate a lag time before an App has the ability to distract you from your space. Often times when I launch Adium, it brings me to space 2, to which I switch back to space 1 to keep reading my stuff, only to be switched to space 2 a split second later.
Get rid of the pill
The pill was useful for a few reasons. People didn't have large monitors and OS X didn't have the file manager like Finder yet. If Safari 4 is any indication, Apple is already moving away from this seemingly pointless UI button. Either get rid of it, or replace it with a much more useful UI widget. Although they can leave it alone, it's not a huge issue.
Option to maximize on double click of title
The need for minimizing windows has gone away with the improvement of screen real estate and expose. I can understand why you would minimize a window before the advent of Expose, but with it, there is really no point. You can quickly expose in and out to see all your windows. They should add another function for double clicking the title bar - either full screen the app (ie iWorks style) or zoom the app.
Replace the iTunes miniplayer
With the multitude of third party apps that are vastly superior to the miniplayer, Apple should think of doing something about it. Also, while their at it, formalize the Zoom button because I keep pressing it on iTunes to maximize the player (yes, a full screen iTunes is a lot more useful) and I get the stupid mini player.
Quicktime, DVD Player, every scrubber and full screen scrubber needs to be much longer (width of screen or width of window)
I'm watching Lord of the Rings and it gives me a 200px long scrubber to move through a 3.5 hour movie? I move it by one pixel and it's nearly 5 minutes later... Make it the total width of your screen like iDVD does.
Make the Apple menu more useful
Simply said. Currently it's in charge of Dock, Preferences and shutdown/log out things. The one menu item that needs to go is the "Apple Software" item. It's simply a stupid link to Apple.com/Downloads and doesn't serve anything useful. The fact that Apple has neglected to see this over the past few years is kinda taunting. It's like Microsoft adding a bunch of "download MSN Messenger" web links to their OS.
That's all I can think of right now. Pretty much every annoyance I have with OS X to date. Safe to say I have a lot more for Windows...
