This isn’t really what the mac does wrong, but things I want it to do, but can’t. Maybe my PC-centric way of thinking is the problem, maybe the mac does it some better way, that’s just not obvious to me. If anyone can help me understand the “Mac way” of doing these things, please let me know.

1. Manage photos on a shared server - With my PC, I like to leave all our digital photos on a shared network drive, sorted into folders and viewed and manipulated with something like Picasa. For the life of my I can not find an equivalent program for the mac. iPhoto seems to be good, but it wants to “import everything” to the local drive. I don’t want this, I want other computers to see the pictures too, plus they are backed up nightly on the server.
2. Manage my music on a shared server - I was able to import my MP3 folders to iTunes, and I told iTunes to NOT copy everything I import, but rather leave it on the original disk. That worked great, but now I have some new MP3’s on the drive, how do I import just those new ones? Does iTunes have a “monitor this folder for new music” feature?
3. Track Forward/Backward from anywhere - I installed Steermouse as recommended by Scott Moschella and I tried to configure my tilt wheel to do prev track, next track in iTunes. The hot-key for doing this while in iTunes is OPT-Right Arrow and OPT-Left Arrow. But I want to do this when I’m in other applications, If I have to switch back to iTunes, I might as well click the next track button anyway. I’m sure there’s some easy way to do this, but I haven’t found it. And If I haven’t figured out how to do something in like 5 seconds on the Mac, then it’s taking too long. It’s not that the Mac isn’t easy, but I’ve set some very high expectation on how easy it should be.
4. Active Docked Applications - I don’t know what to title this, but let me try and explain what I though to be the default behavior. If I minimize (is that still the right term?) an application to the dock, and the app is doing something, I should see the mini window doing something. This doesn’t happen, at least not with the Remote Desktop Client, so if a pop up box were to show up on my PC I wouldn’t know it until I restored the application. Is this an application specific feature or do I need to turn something on?
5. Spotlight - How do I add additional search locations? I think its great that it will cover my whole mac, but like I’ve mentioned before, the bulk of my files are located elsewhere. Is there any way to do this? I can’t find one…
6. Security - I know the OS is secure, but my first impression is that it’s an afterthought, and here’s why. The default setting is to not use Filevault and to not ask me to login to my pc. So, if I were to leave the out of box settings, my computer is vulnerable to anyone walking up and moving my mouse. Yes, I know windows works this way too, but in this day and age, even at home, all our data and pc’s should be secured! Also, why is bluetooth set to ON and discoverable by default? Ease of use once again trumps security, but would it have been so hard to just turn it on when I need it?
7. Widgets - Sometimes they don’t save settings. The default quote.com widget had all of my stocks yesterday and the default set today. Where did my settings go? Not sure, but these aren’t my stocks. It would take like a minute to fix, but that’s besides the point.
8. Why are hide and minimize two different things? If i choose to hide an application it goes away, but doesn’t sit in the dock, if i minimize it, it still hides, but shows up in the dock. It seems like the OSX designers just threw one of these in last minute, its very confusing.
9. Uninstalls not always as easy as installs. I tried uninstalling Symantec Antivirus by dragging it to the trash. Not a good idea, there are still control panel preferences left behind as well as a tray (?) icon on the top right. The only way to repair these things was to download a unix script uninstallation utility from Symantec. The fact that they even offer this shows that I’m not the only one who’s had this problem!