Ignoring Apple’s current and enormously successful “I’m-a-hipster-Mac-and-I’m-a-loser-pc” advertising strategy, I’ve come up with 6 items that I think should be included with with every Mac to make the system easier for brand new users and particularly for older new users. These issues come from my real-world attempts to teach my dad how to use his new Mac and the frustration he experienced with an operating system that—to his newbie eyes—behaved inconsistently.
Steve! Pay attention here, please! New users are feeling left behind with the MacOS!

1. Put the labels on the keyboard (OR enable the menu system to show natural language shortcuts)
Apple engineers have come up with an ingenious series of symbols to represent the various function keys on an Apple keyboard. Everyone knows Command (cmd), but there are half a dozen more, from (shift) and (option) to (esc) (delete) and (forward-delete). It’s nearly impossible for new users to take advantage of the quick-key combinations because in addition to having to learn what the combinations are, new users have to remember the language of these new symbols. Solution: put the labels right on the keyboard, OR, switch to natural language keyboard shortcut hints on the menu system.

Where are these symbols on my Mac Keyboard?

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html to see a few of them.
http://www.matias.ca/osxkeyboard/index.php

2. Fix Dragging and Dropping in Finder Column View
Don’t get me wrong, here. Column view works great in finder. New users need a small leap of understanding to understand column view (understanding that the next column shows what’s inside the folder). My dad took to it quite quickly. The problem for new users is that click+drag on items in column view behaves erratically. Because the column view jumps around, new users just can not get items moved into the correct folders. Apple, I don’t know the answer to this, but get your UI engineers on the task; it needs to be fixed.

3. Fix the shift+arrow key problem
I teach new users to hightlight things using shift+arrow keys. For older users who may be unfamiliar with trackpads and mice but who have used typewriter keyboards their whole lives, keyboard selection is an easy easy way to ensure precise selection in the Finder, in documents like Word, and even in apps like iPhoto. It’s like learning how to drive an automatic after driving standard for most of your life. Three buttons and you’ve got it. However, shift+arrow key selection is broken in OS X Finder.
Try this in Finder:
<ol><li>open any of your folders that have a long list of items.
<li>Click on one item somewhere in the middle.
<li>Now, hold the shift key down with your left hand, and use the up-arrow key to begin selecting items one at a time upwards.
<li>Pretend you’ve selected one to many, so you want to go back one–> Keep holding the shift key down and press the down arrow.
<li>What the $%$# happened? Instead of just retreating by one, the range of selected items is <italic>increased</italic> in the downward direction.
</ol>
Not only does this behavior not make any sense, but it’s contrary to the way these same shift+arrow keys behave inside documents. Try this above example inside TextEdit or iPhoto or iTunes, and the behavior is more intuitive and yet <italic>different</italic> from Finder.

4. Add a cut/paste feature in finder.
Every application has cut/paste. Why doesn’t Finder?
I’ve read a lot of blogs and forums on this issue. The basic objection from current Mac users is that this feature exists in windows, so Mac doesn’t need it. However, the lack of inclusion of a Cut/Paste feature in finder is a basic violation of Apple’s own user accessibility guidelines for providing mouse functionality

5. Allow copy/paste into the same directory in Finder.
Every other application in OS X allows you to copy and paste into the same region. Why finder disallows it is beyond me. Yes, Finder has the Duplicate command, but curiously, when you “Duplicate” something, the resulting file is labeled. “Copy”. This is a UI guideline violation of the first degree.

5. Get together with Canon and figure out how to fix the problems with the camera. Whappened to “it just works”

6. Create put forward–> and backward <– arrows in the Preview application so that you can easily see the next and previous pictures in a folder.
This one was suggested by my Dad. He has used computers a total of about 2 hours and already can see that this feature is missing. I daren’t explain the complicated method of selecting all the photos he wants to preview and then dragging them together onto the preview icon. This is difficult for him (the work-worn callouses on his fingertips make the capacitive-sensitive trackpad slow to respond) and invites mistakes such as accidentally dropping all the photos into a random folder.

7. Add Rename to the Edit Menu in finder.
I tried to explain to my dad that anything he wanted to do in any application, he can find if he searches through the menu system. Not true. Rename is not in any of the Finder Menus.

8. Image Capture straight to iPhoto.
This one seems so obvious, I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet. Why is this necessary? I’m not sure why the mac mantra “it just works” doesn’t apply to a whole range of Canon digital cameras, but at least for my Dad’s Canon S3-IS, iPhoto will not import videos and often refuses to import all the pictures. My dad is therefore forced to use Image Capture, and then find all the files and drag them into iPhoto. This is ridiculous and should have been fixed many years ago.

How to start a flame war
Suggest an improvement for OS X
How to start a bigger flame war
Suggest an improvement for Apple hardware.
How to start an even bigger flame war
Suggest a new feature for OS X that no one has heard of.
How to start the biggest flame war
Suggest a new feature of OS X that Windows already has.
How to set loose hell on Earth.
Suggest a new feature for OS X that Windows has had since windows 95.

My Basic list of complaints with OS X:
1. Inconsistent keyboard support
2. Beautiful, sleek, hard-on-the-eyes interface that gives me brushed metal fatigue in under an hour.
3. Must pay to release full-screen functionality in Quicktime.
4. Like Quicktime, Finder functionality is limited. Yet there’s no option to buy Finder Pro.
5. Inconsistent menu item names across iLife apps.
6. Inconsistent Keyboard support (did I say that already?)