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my MWSF wishlist - top ten announcements I wish Apple would make

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I know that it's a bit early for this kind of post, but I'm going to be out of the country for most of December [1], so I feel like I might as well get the ball rollin'.

Here are ten things that I want from Apple at MWSF. This isn't a list of what I think will actually happen at MWSF, this is a wishlist. My Amazon wishlist has all sorts of things that I don't think I'll ever get, and I view this in mostly the same way.

  1. iPhone -- I want a new mobile, but I haven't actually spent any time doing any research into them to see what best fits my needs (or, y'know, even articulating what those needs are). Thus, I want an iPhone, because my imaginary iPhone has everything that I want [2].
  2. Mac Pro Mini -- I really wish that Apple had a middle ground in their desktop line. I really like my Mini, but I wish it were just a hair more customisable. I'll take a larger form factor. But I don't want a behemoth like the Mac Pro. I want something in between. And no, the iMac isn't the in-between, because I don't want the iMac monitor.
  3. MacBook Mini -- This isn't intended to be a trend with the mini, but ... I really wish that there were an ultraportable laptop in the MacBook family. The latest generation of the Sony Vaio TX series is what I want Apple to compete with. With all of the travelling that I do, the idea of an ultraportable makes me salivate. I love my MacBook, don't get me wrong, but I still want something smaller.
  4. Laptop docks -- The one thing that I miss from having a ThinkPad is the dock. It so nice to be able to drop your laptop into the dock. Every time I sit down in my office, I have to manually hook up my Ethernet cable, power supply, USB hub, and firewire hub. Okay, so it only takes me a few seconds, but it's still annoying.
  5. Spotlight improvements -- I really do love Spotlight. I often use it as an app launcher. (I know, I should probably give Quicksilver or something of its ilk a go sometime.) But the limitations of Spotlight annoy me. First of all, I really want Spotlight to be a real window that I can Apple-tab to. This is especially true when I'm looking for a document, but I have to try several items from my Spotlight search results to get the right one. There's probably a whole post of Spotlight improvements that I want, so let's move on.
  6. Casual games -- One thing that I really wish I could find more of on OS X are casual games. The big games that I want make it over here (Sims, Civ, etc). It's the little games that I miss. All of those Popcap games ... sigh. According to their site, only eight of them are on the Mac. I remember playing Hoyle Card Games on Windows 3.1, and I haven't found anything that even approaches the level of that ancient game for my Mac, let alone what they're up to today (although I haven't touched it since that original version, so maybe they haven't done anything since then).
  7. Easy updating of non-Apple applications -- I <heart> Software Updater. I never have to check to see if there's an update of the OS or any of the Apple apps. They just magically appear. Sadly, the rest of the Apple development world doesn't have it that easy. They either have to roll their own auto-updater, or they just go without and hope that people check for updates. Neither of these options provides an optimal user experience. How dumb did I feel when I loaded Civ4 onto my laptop, couldn't get it to work, and found out a week later that there was an update that fixed my problem?
  8. iTunes International -- I really wish that I could get more international content on iTunes: television series from the BBC, music artists that are listed on iTunes [somewhere else] but not on iTunes America, etc. I get that there's copyright issues here. But Apple should overcome them and give me iTunes International. Even for the purposes of a wishlist, I'm willing to accept that they might not be ale to get everything listed everywhere, but let's take a stab at getting some of it.
  9. Rip audio from DVDs -- I have a fair number of concert DVDs. I want to be able to listen to the audio from them on my iPod. Ditto the increasing number of DVD-As that are coming out, such as R.E.M.'s recent re-releases of five of their albums on DVD in 5.1 surround. I use my Mac Mini as my media server, and it annoys me that I can't (easily) get the audio off of these DVDs.
  10. Free iPod Shuffle to every MWSF attendee -- A girl can dream!

Okay, that's what I want at MWSF. What would you like to see Apple announce at MWSF?

[1] I'm headed to Sydney for Christmas, so I'm gone from 06 Dec through 02 Jan. Don't expect any posts from me while I'm gone. :)

[2] And yes, I know that I'm setting myself up for disappointment. It's just like when your favourite book gets turned into a movie, and the film is all wrong because it's nothing like what it's like in your head. The iPhone, if it ever does come into being, will be exactly like that.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2006
    Heh, no comments from the peanut gallery regarding my name :-) Let me just reiterate how much I want a light weight laptop. AND it needs to fit in my bag. I know that I should be using a laptop bag (and it might explain why I keep breaking my laptops) but I don't. I just don't. I have a cool Marc Jacobs bag, a lovely Prada bag; I'm happily ruining them for work. I want my snazzy mac 2 lb max laptop to help me do so.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2006
    Oh, yes, I definitely agree on the dongle part.  I'm already annoyed that my MacBook has a different dongle than my old PowerBook or a new MacBook Pro (not to mention that I have to buy the dongle separately).  I'd love to be without one.  One of the good parts about being in MacBU is that, when I forget my dongle (and that's definitely a 'when', not an 'if'), someone else in the room is virtually guaranteed to have one.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2006
    Dunno what you're expecting from iPhone/MacPhone Pro but I'm expecting multiple user interfaces,  gesture driven, cube switching,  between phone, PDA, digital media player, GPS,  iChat AV, remote control, terminal.app, PDF reader functions... More then even the hardware, I'm getting excited at the possibilites of the OS this thing will run - maybe it will be the same OS as the MacTablet

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2006
    Use Command-Option-Space to open Spotlight in its own window. While you would need to Apple-Tab to the Finder and then Apple-~ to the Spotlight window, you can always use the global window switching shortcut, Ctrl-F4

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2006
    Yeah, I know that's a workaround but it's not quite what I want.  I tend to have lots of apps open at any given time, so cycling through all of them to get to the Spotlight window is rather annoying.  I want real Apple-tab, not pretend Apple-tab.  Apple-tab is an easy one-handed move, but Control-F4 just isn't (especially since I have to remember to make it Control-Fn-F4).

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2006
    I'm still mourning the loss of the 12" notebook model. =( It's very surprising to me that Apple decided to do away with it during the Intel switch. I absolutely love my 12" PowerBook and I see a lot of them when I'm out and about so it seems like it sold fairly well. To me it's the perfect size for carrying around or just hanging out on the couch working. It's pretty darn capable too. I regularly edit large RAW files in Photoshop and I played World of Warcraft a lot for well over a year on it as well. I don't see myself getting rid of it any time soon, even when I upgrade to a MacBook Pro eventually. And I will continue to hold out hope on Apple bringing it back at some point in the future. =)

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2006
    Hello! I really second the thought of an internatonal itunes store.... maybe not so much for the tv but for hard to come by music, like latin, asian or other stuff that does not enjoy the benefit of wide international release. It's a strange thing how in this global it still so hard to connect to other cultures. It should also be easy enough to create a internatonal store and let record companies sign up if they want (even on an artist to artist basis) and that would give smaller companies a wider audience. So please Apple go on and bring us closer... And also a massive yes to the small form factor Mac Book Pro (also still loving my first gen rather battered powerbook 12") Have a great holliday... :)

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2007
    The comment has been removed