5 Bad Things About Tiger. 5 Good For Vista.

What can Apple learn from Microsoft that will improve Mac OS X? I have a list. A Top 5 list of bad things about Tiger.

Is there anything really that good about Microsoft’s upcoming Vista? Again, I have a list. Let the flames begin.

Obviously, I have more experience with Mac OS X than Vista, which won’t ship for months, if then. I’ve used Vista. It looks a lot like OS X.

Putting that experience differential to use, I came up with a list of items that bug me about OS X Tiger.

After looking at the latest version of Vista, there’s still plenty of work for Microsoft’s developers, but there’s much to like. First, OS X.

Spinning Beach Ball
It’s there, it’s nasty, sometimes it takes forever to go away when an application hangs for awhile. There’s literally got to be something wrong somewhere.

If it doesn’t respond quickly, dump the beach ball and give me something else to look at. I’m running a PowerMac G5 with loads of RAM.

Sidebar Items Brain Dead
I use the sidebar, I like the sidebar, it’s handy, so why can’t I rename those items to something else?

That’s a no brainer idea. That’s why Sidebar is brain dead.

More Background Actions
OS X needs to perform more actions in the background instead of letting you watch dumb things happen. Empy a lot of items in the trash and what happens? Copy a lot of files from here to there?

You get to watch, and wait. Then watch and wait at the same time. Why? Just do it in the background.

Dashboard Blues
Widgets are cool. How many are there? At least a couple of thousand. I use half a dozen that are worthwhile, but have to go to the Dashboard each time.

How about letting Widgets pop up one at a time, just like, um, oh, I don’t know—maybe those Desk Accessories of a couple decades ago.

Application Interruptus
Honestly, I don’t know whose fault this is, but I have some applications which interrupt what I’m doing and pop up to the front. That’s annoying.

Sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes it’s scary, as if something broke. It shouldn’t happen. How about an OS X-wide Attention Alert instead of interruptus communicatius.

There’s more, but I wanted to limit this to half OS X and half Windows Vista? What, Kate? There’s something good about Windows Vista?

Vista The Drag Queen
OS X has little scroll notifiers in iPhoto, iTunes, et al. Vista has a few neat ones, too.

Drag a bunch of items around the desktop and Vista tells you how many you have.

Smart Birds Chase Breadcrumbs
I’m not a Ribbon fan, but the Breadcrumb Bar in Windows Explorer is pretty neat. It saves space and makes it easy to figure out where you are.

Start Search
I hate the Start Menu. Vista has search incorporated in Start, so it kinda sorta functions like Spotlight in the Finder. Steal, and steal alike, I say. It’s good.

Scrolling For Dollars
Where is it, OS X? I hate scrollbars at the bottom of a window; Finder, Safari, any large object in a window. Scroll left, scroll right? Stop already.

Vista is on the right track with auto-scroll.

Looks Like Aqua To Me
Just about the time Windows rolls out Aero and everyone says it looks like OS X’s Aqua, OS X Leopard will change spots and neither Aqua or Aero will be cool anymore.

I still like Aero’s familiar look. Familiar because it kinda sorta looks like OS X Tiger.

There’s my list. Feel free to bash a bit, or add to the list. Let the flames discussion begin.