I’d normally do a prediction post coming up to a major Mac event but TBH I have very few predictions to make this time. Lets face it, this WWDC is all about Leopard and the iPhone, there’s not going to be time for much else. So, instead I want to just outline my wish-list for Leopard and just mention the iPhone briefly.

[tags]Apple, Steve Jobs, WWDC[/tags]

Leopard

We already know quite a bit about Leopard, and a lot of if sounds very interesting. In particular the following really appeal to me:

• Time Machine – I obsess about backups. I’d really like my Mac to just take care of them for me all by itself!
• ZFS – Sun’s new and very shinny file system. We know it will be in Leopard, we just don’t know whether or not it will be the default.
• Spaces – Sure, similar things exist for OS X but I have a feeling Apple will do it better.
• iCal update – at last iCal is joining the 21st century with things like CalDAV support.

So, those are some of the goodies we know we’re getting, so, what else do I want?

The first thing I want to see Apple fix the insane way OS X handles selecting multiple items with the keyboard in the Finder and some other apps like iTunes. There is very very little about OS X that annoys me (which is why I use OS X) but this really does get to me. Lets say you’re in the finder, you’re in list view and have one file selected. You want to select the two files below it. You hold down shift, hit the down arrow and now you have two files selected. So far so good, it behaves as expected. Now lets imagine you’re a bit clumsy, you accidentally hit the down arrow two more times instead of once more. You now have one too many files selected. No problem you may think. Just keep holding shift and hit the up arrow and the last file will be unselected again. True on Windows, true on all Linux windows managers I’ve used, not true on OS X. Instead it selected ANOTHER file you don’t want, the one above the first file you started at. There is no way I have been able to find in years of OS X use to un-do your woopsie with a simple and logical keystroke. I mean really, WTF?! That is not logical, or sensible, or indeed remotely apple-like. Please please please fix this Apple!

My other bug-bear with OS X at the moment is the terribly shoddy state of .Mac. I’ve laid out my gripes in detail before so I’m not going into them again here. Bottom line, .Mac sucks. I’m actually prepared to make a prediction here, .Mac will get a make over and will be announced at WWDC. For me they need to address the following things:

1. Speed – it needs to be a LOT faster
2. Better WebDAV driver – the current driver gives bogus status information on large files because it doesn’t actually start copying the file to the server till after it says 100% copied and starts to say “closing file”. This means big files go to 100% almost instantly and then leave you waiting with a “closing file” status for ages without any way of telling how far the transfer has gotten.
3. Reasonable space and bandwidth – the current size and monthly traffic limits are just too small. You can’t actually use your .Mac to do all the things Apple say it can unless you have very little to back up, a tiny amount of email, and a small website that almost no one visits with a podcast that almost no one listens to and a photocast that only your granny looks at about once a month.
4. A Fair Price – keep the price as is or drop it, don’t increase it.

The final reasonable-to-expect thing that I want to see is a new look. Aqua is nice. However, when it was introduced it was cutting edge and way ahead of the field. Now it’s nothing special. Like I said, it’s a very nice nothing special but Apple can do better. OS X could do with it’s first really major face-lift.

Having laid out some of the more reasonable things that I want I’m now going to move into the land of the unreasonable and the probably impossible. What I’d really like to see is build in support for Win32 apps in OS X. Without buying VMWare or Parallels or CrossOverMax I want to be able to run Windows apps on OS X. I know that’s unreasonable and neigh-on impossible to just pull out of the hat (look at the time and effort it has taken Parallels, VMWare and the CrossOver people) but wouldn’t it just be great for OS X! Suddenly the last perceived hurdles to switching would fall away. It would be a master stroke and make for one of the best “oh, just one more thing” bits in the history of Apple!

iPhone

There’s only a few things I want for the iPhone, I want it not to suck, I want to know when exactly it’s coming to Europe and with which carriers, and I’d like a date for an iPhone SDK. That’s it. Only time will tell on the first but I predict we’ll get an answer on the second, we might get one to the third but I doubt we’ll get anything concrete on the last one, just some vague hints to keep us all begging for more.

The Rest

I expect we’ll get to see iWork 07 at long last. The only real change I want to see is the addition of a spread-sheet program. TBH I’m happy with NeoOffice so I don’t really care. As for iLife 07, I only really use iPhoto and Garage Band and I’m happy with both. BTW, I don’t count iTunes as being part of iLife anymore since it’s free and available separately and updated very regularly by itself.

What I would like to predict is an announcement about movies and TV shows on iTunes in European countries. I just hope Ireland is on the list *crosses fingers*

What I don’t want to see is the rumored end of the MacMini. I’m very fond of my MacMini and would like to be able to replace it with a nippier model in the future.