I have a vision for Object Desktop. I have always had an idealized vision for it. What stops it from becoming a reality is that my vision involves a lot of work that is not economically feasible.
Part of the problem is that what I think is super cool isn't necessarily what other people think are super cool.
Let me outline things in Object Desktop that bug me today:
- I want to see Theme Manager massively updated. I'm not talking about MyColors. I don't want to see MyColors replace Theme Manager. I want people to be able to take a snapshot of their desktop and I want to see MyColors themes that don't use licensed IP include a .suite file option.
- I want a consistent user experience between all the programs.
- I want to see TweakVista get a LOT more features so that I can do a lot more surgery on my computer.
- I want to see more productive features integrated into Object Desktop that extend the OS.
- I'd like to see DriveScan re-introduced,
- I'd like to features that extend the windows shell to be more useful but without having to get rid of explorer,
- I'd like to see Object Package (from the OS/2 version) brought back so that I could press a button, get a big giant .package file and take it to a new machine and press unpackage where it reinstalls all my stuff.
- I'd like to see features that speed up my system. Why isn't anyone doing anything that can speed up perceived performance of Windows anymore? If I have 2 gigs of RAM, why can't Object Desktop have some feature that better manages the swap file or something like make sure all shell related stuff stays in memory or whatever?
- I'd like to see a feature that better handles my Windows start up. It's crap right now. I'm not talking about something that lets me kill off stuff that loads up, I mean something that lets me get to my desktop quicker and has an explicit loader for all the other crap that can load later in a low priority state?
- For that matter, why doesn't Object Desktop have features that make Windows use the priority settings for processes better?
- I want to see DesktopX re-imagined completely so that I can build fantastic shells and user experiences using .NET, WPF, etc.
- I want to see cloud computing features integrated into the Windows shell. If I have multiple computers, on a high speed connection, why should I give a crap where a folder physically resides? Let it invisibly sync everything together. I don't even want to know it's doing it (other than at a technical level). Just make sure I have my stuff wherever.
So why don't we do this? This is where the vision and reality collide. A lot of the coolest features rarely get used and sell terribly. Keyboard LaunchPad, for instance, is insanely useful but it's not very popular. Same with RightClick.
A lot of cool features are hard to market and get people to understand or not be afraid of.
And a lot of cool feature are simply very difficult to develop and there just aren't a lot of developers capable of making this kind of stuff well at any price.
But the above are some of the things I'd love to see make their way into Object Desktop.