Membranophonist’s Ramblings

A few ideas to improve the alignment guides in Apple’s Keynote presentation software, based on version 4.0.3.

1. Allow users to simultaneously create intersecting vertical and horizontal guides by dragging from the upper left corner between the rulers. This halves the number of drags needed to create a bounding box using guides.
   1. Click…
      
   2. …drag…
      
   3. …release at desired position.
      
2. Consistent with the above, allow users to reposition existing intersecting guides simultaneously by dragging from the intersection. The current behavior seems to default to just the vertical guide.
3. Allow users to copy and paste guides between slides using commands available in the Format menu and a contextual menu that appears when Control- or right-clicking on an individual ruler or in the upper left intersection of the two. The copying and pasting of guides would exist independent of the clipboard, similar to how styles are handled. Including a ruler unit selection sub-menu would make some sense.
   
   
4. Bind Control-Command-G to Show/Hide Guides; how to bind a shortcut to this menu command using System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts is not obvious since it has to be bound twice — the command label changes from Show Guides to Hide Guides. Thanks to Rob Griffiths of Mac OS X Hints for the information on how to bind a single shortcut to a dual-state menu command.
5. Evaluate the colors of the slide canvas and objects to determine a highly visible and distinct color for guides. The default yellow is rather hard to see on a white canvas.

Based on iPhoto 7.1.3.

General

1. Clicking the bottom left Info pane while viewing a single photo switches back to the library/album view rather than allowing input.
2. When viewing a day with multiple events, dropping one event poster on another should combine the events.
3. Due to the distance of the search/filter field from the Library source list items, it would be nice if the magnifying glass was displayed at the right of the item being searched to make it more obvious that a search or filter was in effect. A small touch I find helpful in Contactizer.
   
   
4. When viewing individual images, it is not clear when videos are presented, possibly leading people to believe they are simply out-of-focus still images. Displaying the video camera icon within the photo pane would help.
5. When viewing an event, Command-Left and Right Arrow should navigate through events in the sorting order selected in the View menu > Sort Events.
6. Control- or right-clicking in the bottom toolbar area should present the same Show in Toolbar sub-menu found in the View menu.
7. The kerning of event titles is poor with some letter combinations. Notice the space between the T and o in “Toy”.
   
   

Keywords

1. The Keywords search is generally good, but you can’t type in Boolean queries once you learn the syntax. I’d like to be able to just type “Seattle or Tacoma” rather than having to click Seattle, depress the Shift key, then click Tacoma. The point-and-click cursor-based interface is nice, but should augment a keyboard-based one.
2. Keyword letter shortcuts should be displayed and function when filtering via keywords.
3. A flip-around animation of the Keywords window would be nice when switching between the assignment and editing modes.
4. Displaying a small x next to applied keywords on the palette would make it easier for those with color perception abnormalities (particularly monochromats) to differentiate applied and non-applied keywords.
   
   
5. The default button on the confirmation dialog that appears when removing applied keywords from the available set should be relabeled “Remove”. Though I understand why this dialog is displayed, it really isn’t necessary given Undo support. Suspenders and a belt!
   
   

Fullscreen Mode

1. When in fullscreen viewing mode, the bottom toolbar should appear when the cursor touches anywhere along the bottom of the screen rather than requiring the user to scrub over the actual toolbar area, making it consistent with the Dock’s hiding behavior.
2. Rating assignment keyboard shortcuts (Command-1 through 5) do not work in fullscreen mode when the Information HUD has keyboard focus.

During my holiday visit to Seattle, I helped two people address disk space shortages on their Macs. While purchasing additional storage was not the solution I recommended in either case, it got me thinking about the issue.

There are many places to buy storage online, and a few of them allow you to filter the options based on the Mac the drive will be in or attached to. This is helpful, but it would be better to filter the list automatically based on the known system configuration without requiring user input.

1. The Warning Dialog
   
   I didn’t have a screenshot of the actual current dialog, so I had to work off an old screenshot I found. Regardless, the only important difference is the addition of the Additional Storage button.

   

2. 1. Compatible Storage List with Item Details
      
      The list is generated based on your hardware. For example, if you have added an eSATA controller, eSATA drives would also be shown.

      Showing the formatted capacity makes it easier to determine exactly how much additional storage you will get. The filesystem type in parentheses could be a pop-up menu to select different formats.

      Additional item details could include cache size, noise levels, power consumption and conservation features, seek times, etc.

      

   2. Compatible Storage List with Item Reviews
      
      The value of reviews really depends on the number provided, but even one can contain useful information not provided elsewhere.

      

3. Reviewing Your Storage Order
   
   
4. Placing Your Storage Order
   
   All credit card type logos would be fully opaque until the first digit is input. Once input, the matching logo remains opaque while the others become semi-transparent.

   Checking “Ship to a different address…” would vertically expand the window to accommodate another set of fields for shipping information. Billing and shipping fields would be auto-completed based on your address book.
   

The Mac Pro, FireWire, Internal, USB, and generic External icons are property of Apple. The Cuica hard drive icon is Metal OS from Carlos Reyes' Carlito Drives set.

An Alternate Approach

System information could be sent to a web-based store as part of a generated URL (similar to Google Charts) after clicking Additional Storage on the warning dialog.

Users should be able to quickly change the audio output device without leaving their current context. This came to mind because I regularly change my output from speakers to headphones so I don’t disturb my roommates and upstairs neighbors. Before bed during the week, I change the output back to speakers so that I can hear my alarm the following morning.

For output switcher quasi-mode activation and cycling, either Control- or Command-Volume Down/Up would be easy to remember. Shift-Volume Down/Up is already bound to changing the volume without the feedback sound and Option-Volume Down/Up/Mute opens System Preferences to the Sound pane’s Output tab.

Consider my icons placeholders.

Headphones

Line Out

Digital Out

Overall, I’m very happy with 10.5. The new features are mostly useful and intelligently implemented and I’ve experienced only minor upgrade-related problems with third-party software.

General & Miscellany

1. Spotlight results are nearly instantaneous for even very broad searches. A very impressive improvement.
2. The menu bar opacity is not as bad as I thought it would be. I believe it was adjusted before the final release.
3. The smaller font size in the Help menu looks a bit odd next to all the menus using the standard size, though it is consistent with the Spotlight menu.
4. Foreground/background window contrast is much improved by the increased shadow depth and source list background and window titlebar color changes. Although I was never a zealous advocate of the Grand Window Style Unification (functional consistency is more important), I’m glad it has been done.
5. More than ever, Lucida Grande needs a smallcaps variant — too many source lists yelling at once. Contact Bigelow and Holmes!
6. Command-Delete replaces Option-Delete as the means of deleting full words to the left of the insertion bar.
7. Wrap-around using the arrow keys has been removed from the Command-Tab application switcher, though it still works with Command-Shift-Tab. I suspect this was done to prevent users from overshooting the left- and right-most applications, but I believe it is a poor choice; it is more efficient (and physically easier than the Shift-Command-Tab sequence) to press the left arrow while on the left-most application to get to the far right when many applications are open (and likewise when the right-most application is selected). If four or five applications are open, it is easy enough to reverse direction. This also makes it harder to get to hidden applications, which are placed at the right end once hidden.
8. If arrow key wrap-around is not to return, a subtle bumping animation like that when an iPhone list reaches the bottom would make it clear that it is possible to move in only one lateral direction. Additionally, allowing selection of the left- and right-most applications by pressing the up and down arrows (respectively) would be nice. This is already possible using the Home/Page Up and End/Page Down keys, but they are on a different part of the keyboard, requiring that the user move their hand from the inverted T.
9. Being able to scroll background windows system-wide does a bit to reduce the inherent modality of applications. It’s a non-destructive action that is easily undone and reduces the need to flip between windows and/or applications.
10. In addition to Command-click, Right- and Control-clicking on a window title bar proxy icon summons the path menu. I’m not certain this is new.
11. Regarding the rounded screen corners, who cares? My only screen corner complaint is that the uppers still do not visually indicate that they have infinite depth for activating the Apple and Spotlight menus.
12. The iTunes “rip complete” sound is now played when Installer completes an installation. Conceptually sound, but what if you have a CD ripping and a piece of software installing? How do you know which one is done? This is compounded by Spaces. This is part of why the Dock and Growl are useful feedback vectors; they exist independent of whatever else you are looking at (unless you hide your Dock…).
13. The Movies widget needs an “Add to iCal” button that opens iCal and, if necessary, prompts for selection of a calendar to which the selected showing will be added.
14. Something similar to my spring-loaded Dock idea has been implemented as a hidden setting. The application’s windows do not tile automatically, but you can trigger Exposé yourself or use Command-~ to switch. The default out-of-the-box behavior is that apps only open or spring forward after tapping the space bar.
15. The print dialog (now with progressive disclosure, as I suggested) will make Alan Cooper happy, though I don’t think he uses OS X.
16. The sound output list now updates immediately after plugging in headphones rather than only once you select the Built-in Output item.
17. The revised Software Update process is nicely done. The new flow makes the installation of updates feel more like something you can do once you have time to take a break.

The Finder

1. The Spotlight results window is no longer an orphan.
2. Alternating row background colors in List view. Finally!
3. Still no contextual menu on List view column headers to toggle column display.
4. The new Dock menu commands are nice additions, in part for reasons mentioned in the Dock section.
5. The Finder claims my iDisk has 1.36 TB of total space with 360.77 GB free. The .Mac System Preferences pane gives accurate information.

The Dock

1. The default look is not for me and I feel it is an inferior visual design. I like the simple, high-contrast alternative.
2. The opacity of Dock item text labels should be increased just a bit to improve readability.
3. When given keyboard focus using Control-F3 or Control-D, Dock type-ahead selection should search the entire object name for matches rather than just the beginning. This would be less of an irritation if marketing zombies at Microsoft and Adobe didn’t insist on prepending all their applications’ names with the company name.
4. I’m not yet sold on Stacks, but I do like the gradient selection background that appears when moving through the contents with the keyboard.
5. Dock menu commands to create new documents are all the more useful when using Spaces. Otherwise, you first have to switch to applications that are on other spaces, create the new document, then move it to the previous space. Note that space-application bindings interfere a bit; if bound, you will be switched to the app’s space after creating a document via the Dock menu, possibly moving you away from the space displaying information needed for your document, message, etc.
6. “New Thing” Dock menu commands in document creation applications such as the iWork suite and TextEdit would be nice for the aforementioned reason.

Spaces

Spaces is very solid for an initial release. It feels like a more evolved version of a little noticed application by Mac Murrett called Workspaces that was basically Exposé for virtual desktops. Alas, it broke with 10.4.

1. Space placement of windows should be retained across launches. If the number of spaces changes between launches, default to wherever the application is launched.
2. I would really, really like to be able to click on a window’s titlebar, invoke the birdseye view quasi-mode with F8, and then drag the window I grabbed to another space without having to re-grab the window.
3. Another way users should be able to move a single window from one space to another: hold a modifier key while selecting the window from the application’s Dock menu.
4. When removing a space-application binding, I do not think the application’s windows should be moved to the first space. You are not moving the application, just specifying that you don’t always want it to appear on a specific space.
5. To help with spatial orientation, the OS should route sounds generated by applications on inactive spaces through an appropriate audio channel. If you are viewing space 1 and iTunes is done ripping a CD on space 2, the completion sound should come from the right channel. This would only map cleanly along the horizontal axis, but audio perception experts may know how sound can be manipulated to seem as though it is coming from above or below.
6. The drag-and-drop method of moving single windows between spaces is great, but there is no way to relocate several of an application’s windows. A Dock menu command “Move All Windows to Space” with a sub-menu listing all spaces is basically how GNOME and KDE handle relocation. This command would of course only appear if Spaces is enabled. For drag-and-drop relocation of all of an application’s windows, holding Option while dragging a window would be consistent in scope with how Option is used in conjunction with the Close/Minimize/Zoom widgets. Windows would be moved as a group, retaining their spatial relationships. I am wrong. All of an application’s windows on one space can be moved by holding Shift or Control.
7. Edge flipping works as a means of moving windows between spaces. Excellent. You can also grab a window with the mouse and, while holding the window, use the keyboard to switch using Control-(Arrow or Number). It would be nice if diagonal switching was direct rather than moving in one direction (horizontally or vertically) first and then the other.
8. Edge flipping should also be triggered by dragged objects held at the edge of the screen.
9. Showing an outline of the Dock while in Spaces’ birdseye view would save users from having to reposition windows they accidentally place behind the Dock. Either that or using the same automatic repositioning as when a window is placed in the menu bar area. This behavior should be aware of Dock hiding.

Preview

Now with more Acrobat functionality!

1. The static size of the PDF Info window (Tools > Info or Command-I) means you cannot read long text strings in the General Information section; they do not wrap and there are no tooltips.
2. The Print button on the print preview window does not visually indicate that it is the default button mapped to Return or Enter.
3. Contextual menu commands for printing and exporting selected pages would allow users to more directly select pages to print rather than having to input page number ranges.
4. The Preferences window still looks like someone closed their eyes and hoped for the best while dragging widgets in Interface Builder.

Mail

1. You had it right the first time — Data Detectors belong at the system level! Mail is a logical choice for a testbed implementation, but they should be available system-wide.
2. The “Verify Certificate” dialog now includes a check box to add self-signed certs to your trusted list. Much easier than the “drag-and-drop then import” process required previously.
3. The Erase Junk Mail confirmation dialog now uses proper button labels rather than No/Yes.
4. I still don’t understand why the Erase Junk Mail confirmation is a floating dialog while Delete Messages is a sheet.

iCal

I generally like the redesign of iCal, but I will return to Contactizer once a 10.5-compatible version is available.

1. The Mini Month pane size is not retained across launches, always reverting to the default of two months. Having only one calendar (Contactizer uses Category metadata to differentiate items within one calendar) and a large display, this is a rather irritating bug.
2. A large “Today” text button rather than a small mysterious diamond! Raskin said something along the lines of “I’ve often seen text used to describe images, but never images used to describe text.”
3. The use of Helvetica is odd, but not something I mind. It’s consistent with the iPhone, but Helvetica is the iPhone system face.
4. The inline information overlays require too many clicks to view, edit, and dismiss. The Info drawer or floating window were far from perfect, but I prefer either one to the new method.

More as I explore.

When importing, iPhoto should use the date and time the photos were taken and your calendar to suggest event names. For days with an all day event (such as a holiday) and time-specific events, the default suggestion should be the more specific event. Overlapping events could be handled by suggesting one and presenting other event titles as options.

Bonus points awarded for allowing embedding of location data (XMP address, city, state/province, ZIP fields) if present in the calendar event’s location field. This embedding would probably be off by default for privacy reasons.

Some people (such as myself) would like to know more about the pictures used as desktop backgrounds. Photographers would probably appreciate it if the interface exposed a path to their self and/or portfolio.

Fortunately, images can carry useful information such as the photographer’s name, e-mail and web addresses, et-cetera in various metadata forms (XMP, EXIF, IPTC).

Basic Information Displayed

1. The photo title (XMP Title field).
2. The author’s name (XMP Creator field) formatted as a mailto: link with their e-mail address (XMP Creator: Email field).
3. The author’s website (XMP Creator: Website field) as a web link.

Extended Information Displayed

1. A description of the photo (XMP Description field).
2. The place the photo was taken (the XMP Location, City, State/Province, and Country fields).
3. The date the photograph was taken (EXIF digitization date).
4. The camera used to capture the photo (EXIF make and model).

Though the photo is not actually by him (as far as I know; all metadata is stripped from the default desktop pictures), Art Wolfe is a great photographer.

In no particular order…

1. The lack of full resolution independence (or at least mention of it) is not entirely surprising given that there is really only one Apple display (that of the 17″ MacBook Pro) that could really use it.
2. I’m hoping the menu bar background’s opacity can be adjusted using a command line switch. I don’t want the menus to be harder to target due to lower contrast. My desktop picture is covered most of the time anyway.
3. The the new Dock item text labels provide better contrast against light backgrounds such as the bottoms of windows that are stretched to full screen height, abutting the top of the Dock.
4. Is the ADD-like parsing shown in Mail available to all applications that display text, similar to the pop-up dictionary? I hope so.
   • Will users be able to send detected phone numbers to their Bluetooth cell phones directly without syncing? You don’t necessarily want to create a contact for every number you dial.
   • Will users be able to directly add bookmarks of detected URLs that are not formatted as hypertext links?
5. iCal allows natural language input of dates and times. Finally.
6. I like the binding on multi-page PDF thumbnails.
7. Safari 3 allows Private Browsing to be engaged in the same manner as the Restart/Shutdown/Log Out commands in the Apple menu; hold down Option to make the ellipses disappear, indicating that the confirmation dialog will be skipped and the command executed immediately.
8. The confirmation dialogs in Safari 3 are annoying. Why these when you could implement Undo? I’m guessing this was considered but discarded for technical reasons. If so, it should still be the goal. Confirmation dialogs suck.
9. The default Download stack is a good idea and something I’ve done for years, though in the form of a simple list-view folder on my desktop with a custom icon, sorted by date.
10. Looks like Apple might finally be getting serious about gaming. In keeping with the Bungie Halo premiere tradition, Microsoft should now (attempt to) buy Id and make their next game an XBox 360 exclusive, then release a Windows version a year or two later.
11. The pseudo-3D reflective Dock is downright silly. Also, it means the perspective of many Mac OS X application icons is wrong when sitting on the Dock. The HIG has recommended for years that they be designed as though the user is looking at them from roughly a 45° angle. Now the Dock presents them as though they are (more logically) standing in front of you. Look at the Keynote, Pages, and iMovie icons. They just don’t look right. Utility icons are supposed to be designed as though they sit on a shelf, so most of those should look fine.
12. Gitta Salomon must be happy that Apple is finally implementing something similar to her Piles Stacks research.
13. At first glance, the new Finder folder icons are very bland and less visually distinct from one another, particularly in ~/. They do not leverage color as a preattentive variable, relying instead solely on shape, whose effectiveness is reduced by being enclosed in identical forms (the folder itself).
14. Where is the ability to apply your own metadata to files? Spotlight is vastly more useful when you can actually use its metadata capabilities. Eli pointed out in conversation that metadata isn’t really sexy enough for a demo. True, but I don’t see any info about it on the site either.
15. The Finder and QuickLook info sections are misleading on the value of document thumbnails. Beautiful, unique Apple iWork templates and PDFs are shown, not the zillions of very similarly formatted simple Office documents that most people actually work with. Believe me, it’s not as useful as it looks on the site.
16. No virtualization. Good. Apple should not be expending their limited resources to largely support running other operating systems. Also, the market seems to already be well-served by the two existing virtualization products. Sorry, Rainer!
17. The poorly named Back to My (.)Mac is welcomed. I find .Mac useful, but the functionality increases over the last several years have been, by Jobs’ admission, trivial.
18. Another standards-compliant and supportive browser on Windows is a good thing. I do like it as a way of subverting Microsoft’s continual efforts to dominate the software frontier (witness Silverblight). Frankly, I think John Gruber is right that the primary motivation is search engine revenue.
19. I find it amusing that Jobs touted desktop development in the D5 interview, saying the iPhone’s Google Maps app simply could not be done using web technologies (probably true), now tells third-parties that they have to use… web technologies.
20. iWork and iLife announcements will probably be made at the time of the 10.5 release. New consumer software is needed to show off the already announced capabilities.
21. The largest benefits to me will probably not be the interface, but the re-architected threading, filesystem, network, and memory management systems. Higher performance in all those areas will boost my efficiency.

Regarding the title of this post, I’m only 62% serious!

I’ve been very happy with Skim as my default PDF reader. It feels faster and more elegant than Preview.

Kudos

1. The Magnify tool is very useful, particularly for vector-based drawings such as the New York City subway map. I can leave it zoomed out fairly far and use the magnify tool to see details of areas of interest, which blow up smoothly because they are vectors. This helps me keep my bearings and cuts down on fiddling with zoom controls. The tool could use a little more visual flair, but it works well as is. The modifier keys provide additional magnification functionality.
2. The search result circling makes locating matches much easier than simply highlighting the text.
3. The search cross fade is a nice visual touch.

Suggestions

1. The View menu should be immediately right of Edit (File, Edit, View is the order recommended in the HIG, though a number of Apple apps order them otherwise).
2. Being able to select multiple pages (the last selected always being the one displayed) and use contextual menu commands would be great:
   1. Save Selected Pages as PDF…
   2. Print Selected Pages…
3. Provide a contextual menu to quickly change the color of the Reading Bar to one of a few high-contrast colors.
4. The Preferences make some of the same assumptions that Preview does; what does the 3 for the default Greeking threshold mean? What is Greeking? (Given the targeted users, this might be less of a problem, but a brief note about Greeking would still be useful.) What is anti-aliasing? My redesigned Preview preferences have alternate wordings.
5. Individual document scroll positions, pane visibility, and window position should be retained across openings. The pane visibility and window position are retained across launches (quitting Skim once you have each document displayed as desired). I’m guessing this has to do with writing the settings to a file that is only changed when quitting Skim.
6. The Reading Bar would be more useful if it could also be dragged by grabbing it outside the page using a visual affordance. This would also allow positioning of the reading bar without having to switch to the text tool (less modal).
   
   1. The handles would remain a stable size regardless of the line height of the highlighted text. The ones in the mockup are 20px wide by 16px tall, but those are not necessarily best.
   2. The handles could be made semi-opaque unless the cursor is over them to keep the visual focus on the document itself.

Contactizer does a lot, but there are many small rough edges that add up to significant frustration.

General

1. When the Download button on the Contactizer version update information window is clicked, the window should probably close.
2. The precise view state should be retained across application launches; this is particularly annoying in Tasks, where I almost always want “Uncompleted Tasks” as the view.
3. Dock menu commands for creating a new task, event, contact, or communication would allow users to open a new creation window without having to first bring Contactizer forward, then arrange the windows so that they could see the e-mail or web page that contains the information they need for the new item.
4. The mouse wheel does not zoom in and out when viewing a Google map.
5. An “Empty Trash” contextual menu command when clicking on the trash would save some mousing for those with large screens.
6. The Category Inspector requires a click to acquire focus and then a click to use. The first click is unnecessary and should be removed.
7. The Category Inspector window should be resizable, at least vertically.
8. When multiple objects are selected, the right details pane should display their names and the Categories menu to allow bulk assignment.

Contacts

1. Nicknames should also be considered when looking for the cards of related people; if I set Bob Smith as a friend, Robert Smith’s card should appear in the pop-up.
2. When adding an associated URL, it would be great if the domain name was autoselected; rather than highlighting “www.example.com”, just “example” would be selected. This saves a tiny bit of work by allowing the user to begin typing without having to first adjust the text selection.
3. It would make sense to automatically check the enterprise membership box when creating a new user while viewing the enterprise group.
4. If two people are members of the same enterprise (perhaps matching company names and work e-mail domains), create links between the two as colleagues.
5. When viewing an Enterprise Group, the organization’s address should have an arrow that opens a map.

Tasks

1. New tasks should have a default status of “Needs Action” rather than “None”.
2. If I select a start date in the future, then choose a due date, the due date calendar widget should default to a date after the future start date. The next day or a week after the start date, perhaps.
3. If I click the Add Task button while viewing a category-based Smart Filter view, the new task should have the same categories assigned by default.

Calendar

1. If I change the start time from AM to PM after setting start and end times, update the end time to PM rather than presenting me with an error dialog. Even the monstrosity that is Lotus Notes 7 does this! Obviously, it would also be necessary to handle instances where the end time will be in the morning of the next day if the start time is changed from AM to PM.
2. After clicking the plus button to add an alarm, the number text field should be given focus with the contents highlighted for immediate editing.
3. What is the difference between Optional and Not Required status for attendees? If you are Not Required, aren’t you Optional?
4. If I do create an event for the current day, it would make sense to set the start time to the nearest hour or half hour rather than the start of the day; I’m probably going to create an appointment for later today, not one that has already occurred.
5. If I select a future date for an event, the End box should automatically update to that day instead of stupidly staying at Today. I’m not an expert on the science of space-time, but I do know that an event cannot start in the future and end in the present.
6. As in iCal, “Create New Event…” should be available in the contextual menu when clicking on a day/time.
7. Show the Type icon next to the event title! The icons are fairly distinctive and are more glanceable than the text name:value pair.
8. If I set an event’s status to Canceled, why show the alarms? They should be retained in case the event is rescheduled or the status change was accidental, but they don’t need to be shown if the status is Canceled.
9. Alarms relative to an event’s start time do not automatically update. I moved an event several days, but the alarm went off 10 minutes before the original start time.
10. Contact addresses and previously input strings (such as room names) should be presented using auto-complete in the Location field.
11. The ability to drop contacts from the People Picker HUD to the calendar to create events is great. Extending the interaction to allow drops to existing events (either in the calendar grid, the Invitations tab, or the right details pane) would make it even better.
12. Items with no specified end time (such as those imported from last.fm) appear in the list view, but not the calendar view. I think automatically assigning them a one hour duration would be safe and helpful.
13. The attendee names included in the title of an event created via drag-and-drop from the People Picker should be comma separated (“Meeting with Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Percy Heath, Connie Kay”).

More broadly, I’d like to see a lot of the form controls replaced with more natural text input. Stikkit does a pretty good job of parsing dates and times without users having to play with spinboxes and other widgets.