A wish list for Apple

Who knows, maybe someone at Apple will see this, so here’s a list of things that I noticed and that maybe could be improved:

System Preferences

  • Displays: a checkbox allowing the user to turn off the built-in display of an Apple laptop. One could then leave the laptop open for better sound (and cooling) and use the built-in webcam when using the laptop with external displays.

Safari

  • Let users choose their own search engine.
  • Allow users to install extensions/add-ons for Firefox and Chrome: put a checkbox in the settings to allow user to enable extensions not downloaded from the App Store. Show dialog warning/notifying user that “Apple has no control over what those extensions are doing” or something similar.
  • Implement container tabs like in Firefox.

Finder

  • Similar to Nautilus/Gnome: Cmd+L should transform the part of the Finder window showing the current directory name to an editable text field containing the full path of the folder. (Yes, I know about Cmd+Shift+G.) Cmd+L would also be analogous to Safari.

macOS

  • Window management: allow users to switch to MS-Windows-style window management; meaning that users can use Alt-Tab to switch between all windows of all apps, even when they are minimized to the Dock or hidden (Cmd+H).
  • Allow remote access via RDP.

Apple Books

  • Allow the user to set margins, columns, and line height similar to what’s possible on a Kindle. I really like the Apple Books app and use it every day on my iPhone and iPad but it feels like so much screen space is wasted. Update on 2022-09-23: Just installed iOS 16 and noticed that some things like line height can now be adjusted manually—nice!
  • When reading PDFs allow the user to change colors of the text and background.

Preview app

  • Offer options for inverting/changing colors of PDF files. In Apple Books I always use a light font on a dark background for epub files, it would be great if Preview had similar viewing options for PDF and other file types.

Keynote/Pages/Numbers

  • When opening a, e.g., PowerPoint file do not convert it to Keynote format and then present the user with a “Save As:” dialog window to save the file. Assume the user wants that PowerPoint file to remain in the same location in the same file format. Presumably, this is done to encourage the use of Apple apps but in reality it leads me to just go straight to MS Office.


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