I know I’m late to the party, and this is perhaps a bit meta.

But I have enviously seen the way that mutt (unixy mail reader) handles its configuration: most settings can be set to yes, no, ask-yes, or ask-no. The last two allow prompting, with the corresponding default!

My single change to “default settings” would be to change all applications to offcr this kind of setting wherever it is meaningful to do so: let me set the default value, and let me also decide if I want to be prompted to modify it on a case-by-case basis. This should be the “default” methodology for application developers.

On an unrelated “note”, I would like the default ringtone on cell phones to be “vibrate”, and the default audible ringtone to be a simple low-volume, low-frequency “ring”. I can’t bear the stupid Nokia tune.

I always set web browsers to start with an empty window. I hate it when they open some lame start page by default. When I open a new browser window, it is because I want to open a certain web page, not wait a few seconds for the lame start page to load and render.

Sure, with some browsers you can move focus to address field and start typing even when it is loading and rendering, but sometimes the browser is sluggish or might even hang for a few seconds.

What really drives me up the wall is when I start typing the URL I want to go to and in the middle of that the browser finishes loading the start page and REPLACES WHAT I HAVE TYPED with the address of the start page!

I wish there was a default character limit on emails- that’d change things- real quick.

Every car’s computer should be programmed to flash the headlights when the owner locks the doors with the remote. Why on earth is the default set to blast the horn?

Not really productivity related (unless you count lost time powering your computer back on), but I always make sure, on portable computers, to change the power settings so that closing the lid doesn’t dump the computer into standby. There’s many an occasion that I need to drop the lid but need to keep the computer running.

— Pauley

‘Reply All’ should not be so prominently displayed in every envelope by default. We should make this a tad more effort causing folks to think about it for a second before blindly replying to all when it’s often not nessassary.

Because it is always fun to pick on the Finder:

“Always open folder in a new window” should be the default behavior.

And Safari:

Tabbed browsing on by default.

I would set Office to only copy text (not formatting) by default.

For a quick demonstration of the power of the default setting, just do a web search for “Untitled Document”.

One of the first things I do with a new Outlook setup is to remove the “Reply to All” button from the main screen. If I want to reply to all, I simply open the relevant email, where the “Reply to All” button remains.

This avoids the perennial problem of replying to all by mistake, plus it makes me ask myself each time “do I really need to reply to everybody, or just the sender?”

And personally I remove the envelope icon and minimise to tray. I have icons on my desktop for new mail, new calendar item, new note, etc. So I can do a lot of things in Outlook without being distracted by incoming mail - until I choose to see it.

Illustrator: I’m really sick of having to double-click on the ‘pencil’ and ‘brush’ tools and turn off either ‘keep selected’ or ‘edit selected’ to make them usable. One or the other works fine, but having them both on (as is the default) makes these tools absolutely useless.

Photoshop: I gotta agree with Brad about apple-Z/shift-apple-Z not defaulting to ‘forwards/backwards in history’.

Flash: And what’s with Flash thinking ‘apple-Y’ makes sense for ‘redo’? Every other program I’ve used in my life uses ‘shift-undo’ for ‘redo’.

Is the Mac screengrab still defaulting to PDF? I can’t remember.

@ Jesse

Slightly off topic, but why set the default space after a period to two spaces? I was under the impression that this was outdated since typewriters and dot matrix printers went by the wayside.

Does anyone else follow the “two space” rule anymore?

Everytime somebody calls (phone, skype, whatever) should have to decide: leave a message OR talk… with “message only” as a default.

The same applies to IMs. Chat = talk. It’s not hyper-important - USE mail.

I wish my 1 month old MacBook (my first Mac ever!) defaulted to ‘works’ instead of ‘works for a minute then shuts down’ :(

Can someone please explain to me why applications have different keystrokes to show me the “most important” window for the app?

Examples:

Mail.app: Command+1 opens a mail viewer window iChat: Command+B opens the buddy list

Then the number of modifiers increases: iTunes: Command+Option+1 to show the iTunes window

For some apps, there’s no way to bring the app’s main window to the foreground. iCal: no keyboard shortcut for iCal’s window. iMovie: Windows menu has “Bring all to front”, but no keyboard shortcut.

For others, there’s not even a menu item in the Windows menu! iPhoto: Windows menu, but no “show me the iPhoto viewer window”

Mail format -> plain text Emoticons -> off Windows Explorer view -> details Windows Explorer -> do not hide file extensions Email receipts -> never request, never send Cookies -> ask Third party cookies -> don’t even bother to ask Browser history -> this session only Text editors -> tab = 4 spaces, scan and replace on load

system font -> webdings (er…wait…)

Oh, and email clients should check the to: and cc: fields of outgoing mail. If more than one domain name is found, all addresses should be moved to bcc:.

I think what really bugs me with certain apps is where it downloads stuff. Usually everything feels comfortable with just pooping on my desktop.

I think this might change with the default “Downloads” folder coming up in Leopard, but will Applications follow suit and actually default their apps to use that folder?

We’ll see.

This isn’t exactly a default (because we can’t change it), but I would dearly love to see the “Subject:” input box in email programs displayed BELOW the text area where you enter the body of the message. It seems that 99% of the email I receive has appallingly uninformative Subject lines, such as “Question” or “Web Site”. As any writer will tell you, one of the hardest things to write is the first line. Quite often, when I start writing an email, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to say. Also, I quite often end up writing about more topics than I originally intended. Asking the user to create a title for their email AFTER they’ve written it would result in much more useful subject lines.

Tables in Word should have “allow row to break across page” set off to default, not on. Every single time I have to turn it back.

I wish I could remember all of the details, but Adium is a wonderful IM program, once you’ve spent several hours configuring the damn thing.

What I remember most clearly was that notification was a constant nag. Every time a friend dropped on- & off-line I’d be interrupted. After installing Growl, and progressively turned off various notifications, it’s finally where I’d like it to be.

Actually, a lot of Growl-ready apps default to notifying you about every little thing - they’re flashing and they’re beeping. I can’t stand it anymore! They’re blinking and beeping and flashing! Why doesn’t somebody pull the plug?

I wish Adobe Photoshop would bring back Cmd-Z and Cmd-Shift-Z as the default keyboard shortcuts in “Step Forward” and “Step Backward,” respectively. Using the History palette to do the same thing is tedious.

Personally, I would make all presentation software default to a blank slide when you add a new one. Who knows what the world would be like without ‘title and bullets’ being within easy reach?

Two email features:

Once more than five recipients are in the TO or CC field, move them to BCC unless the user takes action. In fact, many email clients go out of their way to hide BCC, so lots of folks don’t even know it’s there until someone educates them.

We’ve all gotten those 2 megabyte photo attachments from well-meaning relatives who want to share their harvest festival celebration with the whole family. Of course, the better behavior is to post it on the web and send a pointer, or shrink it down. Some email clients do something like this automatically, but there’s a lot of room for improvement here with default behavior.

iPhoto’s slideshow default of the “Automatic Ken Burns Effect” is one of the most annoying things on my Mac. Even after I turn it off and then select a new group of photos for a slideshow, there goes that darn Ken Burns effect showing just the top of someone’s head sliding across the screen or staring with the lower legs and zooming to their shins. Worse yet are the midriff shots… especially when your midriff isn’t quite up to being examined up close and personal! If I want to see pictures sliding nauseatingly across the screen, I’ll turn on PBS.

Ok, you get a new Macbook/Pro/iBook/Powerbook. You move the mouse to the first button when you run setup first time. You tap. Nothing happens. You click the mouse button and “Success”. Trackpad clicking right out of the box. First thing I do. And tabbed browsing in Safari. And get rid of the language menu bar item.

I would add as default Firefox Extenshion “Faviconize Tab” - to create shorter tabs. The same thing would be great in Windows task bar (so there is still a space when you have 10 windows open)

Get rid of reply to all button in email

And even more important: Change the default ringtone of cellphones to something subtle and make it really hard to change it …

I’d like to see a default “dynamic message quota” to be set up by the following quotas:

1) user limit 2) daily limit 3) weekly 4) monthly 5) content driven - chain letters and ROFL = auto delete

While I’m sure I exceed my quota sending Merlin e-mails this would be very helpful.

The quota message would read:

“You have exceeded your daily limit of e-mails to X. Please revise the list of lined up e-mails below and use your quota wisely.”

If this seems to fascist then how about an interactive Netfilx-like star rating system. You could rate e-mails received with a click and this would be sent back to the sender. Avoids the time-consuming/awkward “Dude stop sending me crap” e-mails…

I’d also change the default Wordpress setting so that you can edit your own comments…ugh typos. I’m going to klil myself nwo.