14 DAY TRIAL // Why do you think the chicken crossed the road? From where I'm standing, it must have been because on the other side everything seemed to be a lot better than on its side. Probably the chickens that lived on the other side of the road had better food, a lot more space in the henhouse and a couple of bubble bathtubs to relax after a hard day of work finding worms and other stuff that chickens like to eat.
The exact same way, Windows and Linux users would cross the street into the Mac yard when they'd see that they could get the best of everything from a single, stable and extremely easy to use operating system. Every Mac user out there knows that OS X is, as I already said it, easy to use and stable as a rock but, if this is the case, why aren't people migrating to the Mac platform as fast as the guys from Apple would want them to?
There are lots of things that could be added and/or improved to the operating system to increase a Mac's user appeal points on its score card. I will only write about the ones that I consider the most important (in no particular order) and, if you think there are others that I haven't mentioned in this article, you should feel free to further expand the list in the comments.
The first, and the one that I consider to be the most important if Apple intends to take a big bite out of the Windows user base, is the improvement of the game support on the Mac platform. If you have used a Mac long enough and you have a lot of Windows users as friends, I'm sure you know that one of the top (if not the top) reasons why such a user does not want to switch to the Mac is the lack of big game names available to be played on OS X.
I know, most of the Mac users haven't bought a Mac to play games, but think of it this way: why shouldn't you be able to play the same games as Windows users play? The facts are as follows: the guys from Apple aren't exactly interested in this subject and, from what I know, they have rejected the companies that wanted to develop and/or port games to the Mac platform.
The second is the addition of a real uninstaller. Yeah, I know OS X allows you to uninstall any application just by dragging it to the Trash but have you ever been curious enough to take a look at your Mac's disk after the program is supposedly uninstalled? If you have, then you definitely know what I'm talking about here. The Trash is a miserable uninstaller because it will not delete all the folders created by the application while it was running and will leave all its preference files untouched wherever the app has created them.
After installing and uninstalling a sufficient number of applications your Mac will begin to look like an orphanage: directories and preference files will remain without an app to use them. What this means? The number of unused files on your Mac will increase and it will run slower.
The third one is the addition of a system bundled virtual machine application. Why would this prove to be a good move? Because people who were used to playing games on Windows or developing applications on Linux using programs that would not work on OS X will no longer have a reason to avoid the Mac.
Yes, there already are applications that do this (VMWare Fusion and Parallels to name the ones that are known by all Mac users) but they are not free to use and are not developed by Apple. If Apple took the decision to include such a solution, its integration with the OS X operating system would be superior and it would give future Mac switchers the certainty that they could still seamlessly run their favorite apps and play their favorite games without any hassles.
The fourth thing that the Mac should feature but it doesn't is a complete Office-like software package. Having it included in the bundled software list would most probably increase OS X's appeal to worldwide businesses, which would want to add the rock solid stability of a Mac system to the list of things that increase overall productivity.
Most of the necessary software already exists in the iWork package but, again, after buying a Mac and installing Leopard you still have to pay for it and it will still not cover all the areas that Microsoft Office does. Expanding the iWork suite and making it a free alternative to Microsoft Office will get Apple a big chunk out of the Windows user base (mainly businesses that buy site licenses and that would pay $100 more on an OS X system if it arrived with everything needed to maintain and maybe improve productivity).
The fifth feature that should be added to any Mac is an integrated system of applying themes to OS X. We all know this is possible (anyone remember Shapeshifter?) but Apple doesn't seem to care about its clients asking for it for quite a number of years. How will it affect the image of the Mac? Besides adding a huge customization potential to the system this would definitely make out of OS X one of the ultimate OSs.
Why would you need to run anything else on your computer (Mac in this case) if you can make it look exactly how you want it to look, play any game you want, and run any other OS on a virtual machine if you need to run a program created for another platform? (the last two, if Apple were to actually add the features already mentioned in this article).
The sixth, and the last, feature that I would want to be added to the OS is an application that would offer the user the possibility to deal with the Mac's maintenance, optimization and quick customization via enabling and disabling OS X's hidden features, all from a single location.
In this case, the number of free apps capable of dealing with all or parts of what I want is quite mind-blowing but the fact that they are developed mostly by independent programmers or teams of programmers means they are also not very well integrated with the system. Furthermore, not many users have the confidence to allow any app to mess around with the intricate insides of the operating system.
If Apple were to develop and include such an application to the suite of bundled software already available to users right after the install of the OS, the overall image of OS X would be that of a mature operating system that could offer its users everything they need to get the best out of the machines it is installed on.
I guess this pretty much sums up what I wanted to tell you from the beginning: if Apple listened to what its present and future users want and went on and implemented the best ideas in the OS, its user base would greatly increase.
Do you have any other things you would want Apple to include in a future version of its OS? Do you think other OSs already offer what Mac users want from Apple? If you do, share your opinion with us and the other readers in the comments.