Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System Experience

Why can I dock and undock tabs in my web browser or in my file manager, but I can't dock a tab between the two apps? There is no technical reason why this shouldn't be possible. Application windows are just bitmaps at the end of the day, but the OS guys haven't built it because it's not a priority.

Why can't I have a file in two places at once on my filesystem? Why is it fundamentally hierarchical? Why can I sort by tags and metadata? Database filesystems have existed for decades. Microsoft tried to build it with WinFS, but that was removed from Vista before it shipped thanks to internal conflicts. BeOS shipped it twenty years ago. Why don't we have them in our desktop OSes today?

Any web app can be zoomed. I can just hit command + and the text grows bigger. Everything inside the window automatically rescales to adapt. Why don't my native apps do that? Why can't I have one window big and another small? Or even scale them automatically as I move between the windows? All of these things are trivial to do with a compositing window manager, which has been commonplace for well over a decade.

Limited Interaction

My computer has a mouse, keyboard, tilt sensors, light sensors, two cameras, three microphones, and an array of bluetooth accessories; yet only the first two are used as general input devices. Why can't I speak commands to my computer or have it watch as I draw signs in the air, or better yet watch as I work to tell me when I'm tired and should take a break.

Why can't my computer watch my eyes to see what I'm reading, or scan what I'm holding in my hands using some of that cool AR technology coming to my phone. Some of these features do exist as isolated applications, but they aren't system wide and they aren't programmable.

Why can't my Macbook Pro use Bluetooth for talking to interesting HID devices instead of syncing to my Apple Wait. Oh wait, my Mac can't sync to my Apple Watch. Another place where my desktop plays second fiddle to my phone.

My can't my computer use anything other than the screen for output? My new Razor laptop has an RGB light embedded under every key, and yet it's only used for waves of color. How about we use these LEDs for something useful! (via Bjorn Stahl, I think).

Application Silos

Essentially every application on my computer is a silo. Each application has its own part of the filesystem, its own config system, and its own preferences, database, file formats and search algorithms. Even its own set of key bindings. This is an incredible amount of duplicated effort.

More importantly, the lack of communication between applications makes it very difficult to get them to coordinate. The founding principle of Unix was small tools that work together, but X Windows doesn't enable that at all.