Apple Wants Your Input

Johnny Mnemonic writes "Apple is asking for feedback specifically from PC users about why you might be considering a Mac purchase, or if you recently purchased a Mac for the first time, why you made the switch. A good opportunity to sound off about your Apple peeves, but also a chance to let Apple know what you think they're doing right. The Mac OS X feedback page, originally from the Public Beta, is still up and accepting feedback, also."

Comments

My list of Mac Beefs:

[Junior J. Junior III]

1. What was finally delivered in OS X was first promised to be in Copeland (OS 8). NeXT and Be technologies that were years ahead of their time and could/should have been integrated into the new Mac OS *weren't* when doing so might have been enough to demonstrate a massive superiority to Windows 95.
2. After buying a Centris 610 (LC 68040/4MB RAM/80 MB HDD/Mac OS 7.1) I waited and waited and waited for things like protected memory and preemptive multitasking to be incorporated into the OS. Apple kept promising, but IT NEVER CAME. Eventually, when I bit the bullet and HAD to upgrade, I went with Wintel, who by that time at least had *some* of that.
3. Now that I've been working in a Windows environment, I like multibutton mice. Get some! Another thing I really like about the Windows GUI is the fact that if I really want to, I never even have to touch my mouse. There's keyboard shortcuts that allow me to navigate to any part of an open window and select whatever option I want to. You don't quite get this in Mac OS releases before OS X. (Is it there in X? I haven't used it so I don't know.) It makes things a lot faster if you don't have to keep moving your hands from the keyboard to the mouse and back again, over and over. And holding down a key on the keyboard while clicking or dragging with the mouse to simulate stuff that could be implemented much more gracefully with a 2 button mouse is... well, crappy. But nothing's more annoying to me than coming up against a "Yes|No|Cancel" dialog window, where [Enter] is "Yes" but "No" and "Cancel" can be activated ONLY through the mouse. Lack of keyboard navigation options is RAMPANT in pre-OS X.
4. Another habit I enjoy thanks to becoming a Windows user is tinkering around with my hardware. Apple is good at making cases that look pretty, and with the G4 line they got good at making cases that are easy to open up, but what they still need to do is get good at making cases that have lots of bays where I can stick stuff in like extra CD/DVD drives or Zip drives or what have you... without it spoiling the beauty of the stock case.
5. Improving the cost/performance, as many no doubt have said, wouldn't hurt either. If I could build my own G4 architecture box for sub-$1000 I'd do it and be using OS X as my primary operating system in a heartbeat. Failing a cheap DIY G4 option, it'd be almost as good to be able to build an Althlon-based system that could run OS X... which brings me to...
6. Port Mac OS to other hardware or at least make the source code available so that other people can do it if you aren't willing to put forth the effort. If you're not willing to do go so far as to do this with your latest and greatest, at least consider releasing outdated versions of the OS to the opensource community so we can tinker with it. Getting your OS into the hands of the widest possible user base would pay off very well in the long run, especially once we get hooked and decide we need to have the latest and greatest.
7. Lastly, I'm still bitter about losing Bungie to their fate of becoming little more than friggin' XBox whores. How many consecutive MacWorld Expos did we get to drool over Halo, only to have it yanked away by the greener pastures over at M$FT? Bungie supposedly still has the rights to release games on other platforms beside the XBox, so get Bungie to at least put a version out that runs on Macs (and PCs for that matter!)