I still remember the first time I loaded the public beta of OS X on my iMac. User account? What the *#$(*@ is that! But I was patient. Until I got to the finder. Opening windows was like surfing through molasses.
But because it was a beta I was cool with the slowness in the finder. They’ll work it out at Apple right?
Well, yes and no.
I still remember lining up for 10.1. And I’m pretty certain that most of the people lining up were there because they were excited about the improved speed of the finder. Unfortunately they, and I, would have to wait until Panther to really have a usable finder. Panther is definitely workable. But here is the rub. Go to a machine that can boot up OS 9 and open up a bunch of windows. Start scrolling down a list, copy stuff, etc. It’s faster. The finder in OS 9 is still snappier.
I realize at this point the speed in Panther is acceptable for most tasks. And I understand that the multitasking capabilities of OS X enable me to do many more things at once. But still. I want a snappy interface. More than Dashboard. More than searchlight. More than anything. Apple has historically done a good job of speeding up the finder with each major realize of OS X. I look forward to seeing the results in Tiger. Quickly.
What are you looking forward to in Tiger?
Various Improvements
Well, to begin with: an Address Book that doesn't suck ("Undo" doesn't nuke last entry, for instance; also some restraints on auto-fill, please. I'm tired of having to try to "catch" a five digit zip code before it becomes an (incorrect) nine-digit zip code.)
Auto-open folders in the dock on drag-over.
Ability to anchor the dock, preferably in multiple places, so that you could have multiple target areas where you expect to find things.
I'm looking forward to the published improvements to the OS as well, but these un-addressed peeves come first to mind.
Performance concerns
I completely agree that Apple has done an amazing job improving the performance of OS X since its initial release. The only UI operation I still find sluggish is window resizing, and I'm not too concerned about it.
So the performance improvement I want in Tiger is a little different: Please don't make things slower on my existing systems! Dashboard, Spotlight, iSync improvements, and Core Image all look really, really cool. But I hope that they don't kill the performance of my ibook or powerbook with significantly higher cpu, memory, or disk requirements.
I confess I am pretty confident Apple will achieve this since the new Mac mini only comes with 256MB standard. Apple's got a great track record so far with OS X, and I expect them to keep it up!
I agree
Increased speed would be nice, especially for us G4 users. Increased reliability is on the wishlist too. Don't get me wrong, my Powerbook is much more reliable than any Windows system I use but there's still times that I have to reboot or force quite things.
They should also go further in making Mac OS X live in a Windows world, especially when it comes to networking. For many users it's still not as easy as it could be.
Finally, although we know that OS X has much less problems with viruses, worms and other nasties, Apple could do more to make it all but unbreakable, thereby once and for all kill the "security through obscurity" myth.