How to make OS X better: taking hints from Ubuntu

02 01 2008

How to make OS X better: taking hints from Ubuntu

Posted by: in Productivity

Filed under: Internet, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Search, web 2.0

There’s a bit of an OS fanboy in all of us, but we’re not all computer programmers. So when it comes down to arguing which OS is “better,” we may not always have our facts straight. Andy Matuschak, on the other hand, is an OS X fanboy with a level head on his shoulders, and he believes OS X would be much better if Apple took a few more cues from Ubuntu.

Matuschak believes an operating system is only as good as its ability to avoid or solve problems, and that’s what Ubuntu’s really good at. For example, in Ubuntu, if a user tries to watch a video and doesn’t have the proper codec to do so, the open source OS will attempt to find and install the codec.

But there’s a solution on the horizon, or Matuschak would like there to be. He believes the answer is in Spotlight, a commonly underused but very powerful OS X feature which can be adapted to be a general problem solving tool.

Coming back to the video codec problem, if the user would like to figure out what’s needed to play the video file, he types the file extension into Spotlight. The service would return a variety of options including codecs and programs. The suggested codecs and programs aren’t necessarily installed on the personal, but, with one (or two) clicks, the user can then install whatever programs or codecs came up as a result of the search. It’s merely a concept at this point, but Matuschak would like to make it a reality. If you’d like to help him out, make sure to check out his site.

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