Anyway, unlike other operating systems, Apple is very secretive in what new innovations will be coming out with their next OS. I think this is a good thing, in a way, since Apple will not commit features to the users and then later decide not to include it; remember WinFS? :D With that in mind, we cannot do anything but speculate as to what will be in the next OS. I have blogged ( http://rom.feria.name/blog ) about it before but maybe I can share it with you here - everything that I hope Apple will bundle in their next great OS that will compete against Microsoft's next OS, Vista.

On the system level, there are lots of innovations that I wish Apple will include. First and foremost, I hope that they change their file system from HPFS+ to ZFS, the file system used by Solaris 10. This new file system is designed to have unlimited scalability, faster performance, higher data integrity and simple administration. For more info, see Sun's webpage on ZFS ( http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/ feature/ ).

With a new file system, utilities that will allow the easy deletion of applications, including their preference files and other associated files, similar to how AppZapper does it, should be bundled. This will also make it simpler to include a System Restore/Rollback utility - something which is missing on the Mac and Linux. Maybe Apple's Backup utility will be beefed up to support this.

Navigating through the new file system, a tab-enabled, meta-data displaying, customizable views new Finder should be implemented. Along with the new Finder, Spotlight must add both boolean search capability (AND, NOT, OR) as well as regular expression support. Organizing your files into subdirectories will be a thing of the past. :D

Further improvements to the system, maybe Apple can bundle CodeWeaver's CrossOver for Mac or DarWine so that users can run Windows-based applications without installing Windows. Apple BootCamp will still be the best solution for gamers and Parallels Desktop will be better for non-Windows OS such as Ubuntu Linux. However, we cannot discount VMWare yet - they might just come up with a much better solution in the future. Nevertheless, I hope Apple will include some sort of virtualization.

With multiple OS running alongside Mac OS X, maybe Apple can also include VirtueDesktop as a virtual desktop solution. I don't know if you have seen the video on how Parallels Desktop and VirtueDesktop work together but it looked like you have several computers sharing one set of keyboard, mouse and display, all running on a single computer. Try to search for it - use 'smackbook' as your search key.

How about the bundled applications? Let's start with Mail.app. My wish list for Mail.app is short. First, I hope that it will bundle GPG (GNU PGP implementation) to allow users to sign and encrypt their mail. Call me paranoid but I'd recommend that you encrypt your e-mail especially if you use public hotspots.

Next, I wish that Mail will support MailTag-like functionality to make sorting and organizing your e-mail easy. Smart Mailboxes exist but it is just not enough. Better spam handling similar to SpamSieve would be nice, too. One last thing, I hope that Mail will use a standard file format for its mailboxes.

Next stop, iChatAV. There are rumours that iChatAV 4.0 will support VoIP. I wish that it is true. iChatAV should support tabbed-chatting like the Chax plug-in and VoIP that is compatible with Asterisk (SIP) and GTalk (SIMPLE). What I do not want to see is for Apple to offer another non-standard protocol for their VoIP like how Skype does it. However, if iChatAV is Skype-compatible, I probably can live with that. :)

Speaking of networks, Apple's built-in firewall can be strengthened by bundling an application similar to the LittleSnitch. Although the firewall that comes with the Mac OS X is powerful enough, being able to easily tweak it to your needs would make it even better.

One of the Mac's powers comes with its super-easy to configure wireless networking. However, I prefer being able to simply flick a switch to change my Location and all settings such as smtp server, proxies, printers, shared drives, etc, will automatically be configured. Can't be simpler than that.

Although we have Firefox on the Mac, Apple's Safari web-browser is still faster than Firefox because of its advantages of being optimized for the underlying operating system. However, Apple can still learn a lot of tricks from the Mozilla  and Opera community such as session management (save/restore sessions, etc.), mouse gestures (ala Opera), automatic proxy configuration based on URL, themes, tab management, better download manager and better RSS/ATOM support. If only Safari came with a better looking RSS/ATOM reader, then I wouldn't need a third-party app such as NetNewsWire or endo. And lastly, Safari can benefit from the Firefox plug-in support. Imagine if Safari supports Firefox's plug-in architecture, then almost all those Firefox plug-ins will work! COOLNESS!

On the multimedia front, I hope that Quicktime will support Divx natively, i.e. no more plug-ins! Although I wish that Quicktime can support other file formats such as Real Media and Windows Media but I'd rather that Quicktime leave that to third-party developers. Besides, I try to avoid viewing media in those formats anyway - non- standard and not open! :)

One last addition to Quicktime is the ability to create screencasts similar to how the third-party Snapz Pro with Video does it. This is very useful for educators specially when bundled with iChatAV, Apple Remote Desktop as well as pod/vodcasting.

So there - just my short wish list for 10.5. I am sure that there are other features that are nice to have which I have missed here. If you have your own list, please do send it to me so we can compare notes. Who knows? I might just be able to attend the WWDC this year and witness first hand if our wish lists come true.