Hopes for 10.5.2 and Beyond

As we’ve already seen, 10.5.2 has fixed some things that many users complained of, most notably in the dock. You can now completely turn off Stacks, or show Stacks in a list view, among other things. Unfortunately, the ability to change from 2D to 3D anywhere, of which a screenshot was forged, is not an option, at least in the latest 10.5.2 builds.

Apple needs to continue to move towards bringing spaces back up to where it was originally in the developer builds. Most notably, there needs to be an option for making a random selection into a stack. This means being able to select 5 items from your desktop, one from Applications, and 2 from the Documents folder, dragging them to the dock, and having them form a Stack. This was present and, as far as I know, stable in the developer builds, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why they decided to remove the feature. It was the only real “improvement” that Stacks offered over the old “folder in the dock” from Tiger, besides the arguably easier browsing.

If Apple doesn’t re-instate that feature, then they absolutely must put this one in (though it would be great to have anyway): If there is a folder inside the stack, clicking on it should not open it in the finder, it should fan out, replacing the current stack.

Elsewhere in the System, Leopard needs to get a hold on Airport. I pretty much expect to have to reconnect manually each time I wake from sleep now…

Front Row also needs some attention… It’s crashed a few times.

Luckily, 10.5.2 looks to be very helpful, packing a list of over 30 fixes, including fixes in Data Detectors, Dock, Finder, Grammar Checking, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Quick Look, Rosetta, Safari, Time Machine, AirPort.