What direction would you like Mac OS to take?

Posted by iindigo on September 26, 2012 09:02 am 39

With the release of Lion and most recently Mountain Lion, many long-time Mac fans seem to have become dissatisfied with the iOS-inspired direction development of Mac OS has taken.

This leads me to the question the title poses: where would you like to see Apple take Mac OS? In your eyes, which features do you feel are currently missing? Which are alright, but simply need improvement? Which should flat-out be removed?

I am personally fairly satisfied with 10.8, but there are definitely things Apple could be doing (and should have done) to make OS X a modern, cutting-edge operating system that anybody sane would have a hard time bashing. These include:

• An improved Finder. Overall it's alright, but many small things lack polish and the experience could be a lot better. A few power-user features that are off by default but can be switched on would also be welcome.
• A modern filesystem. HFS+ has served me well since I started using it with Mac OS 8, but the time has come to replace it with something more capable. ZFS is the obvious candidate here, but if Apple develops their own thing that's fine with me too, so long as it has a similar level of capability.
• A huge focus on optimization. Every OS X release since Tiger has felt increasingly bloated, with snappiness taking a hit each time; 10.8 helped a fair deal with this but they still have a ways to go.

There are others as well, but I'm more curious to see what other people want from OS X.