The letter headings on the right side of the contacts. Click on the G group for last names that begin with G. Saves a lot of scrolling time.
Or you can simply type it in the search box that is on top. I can see that clicking a letter to show every lastname starting with that letter can be quicker at times.
Dyn,
Maybe I can clarify why remembering window position and size is important.
That would be a waste of time since I already know this and wasn't asking for clarification. I was pointing at the fact that what you are requesting has been part of OS X for ages and that not remembering the window position, size, etc. is a bug in either OS X or (more likely) the application itself. Where Console disregards window size and position, Safari, Mail and many others will remember it.
For some crazy reason, many apps insist that they open every time on top of each other. Finder and Preview are two of the worst. Microsoft apps also do this periodically.
That has got nothing to do with it. What you are describing here is focus stealing which is a problem with ALL apps. Unfortunately it is also something that is extremely difficult to solve. It would require that the computer is able to predict our behaviour which is impossible to do. Guesstimating is as close as we humans can get, our AI isn't at that level yet (which also leads to a discussion if we should get that far because there are some dangers that come with this; there are scientists that warn about that situation).
The problem in this lies in the fact that we start apps and when waiting for it to load we switch to something else. We could always start apps in the background but this causes issues for when we want to start the app and then use it and thus not switch to something else. Predicting if we do A or B is what is very very complex.
However, the windows will open in the same spot and with the same size as last time.
Apple needs to take control and give the user the ability to set the app window size and location on the desktop.
They do, it's in the HIG. If apps don't do this then you should report this as a bug to whomever made it (e.g. Microsoft in case of Word and not Apple!). Apple even went further with this feature as of OS X Lion and added the option to save whatever is open on your desktop and load it back up when you log out, reboot or shutdown the machine (either by hand or by installing an update). They've also added this on an application level where you can store the opened windows and load them backup when restarting the app. You need to press cmd-option-q to quit the app without saving the windows This behaviour can be disabled in SysPrefs > General > Close windows when quitting an app (cmd-option-q then becomes the shortcut to save the windows when quitting the app; the functionality is reversed).
The only case where this can be a problem is with setups that use more than 1 display. In most cases this is caused by the fact that people hook up different displays (workplace 1 uses a 20" display, workplace 2 uses a 24" display). Again, this would also require predicting which display you're going to hook up or remembering the windows sizes/positions per display. The latter will cause similar issues as how things are now since you may want to have the window sizing/position of the previous monitor (which could be the bigger/smaller or similar sized display).
The other problem is with the use of Spaces or Desktops as it is called as of OS X Lion. For that we need to have the settings we had with Spaces so we can predefine the Desktops and which app opens on which desktop. Size and position will be remembered since this is part of OS X.
TL;DR: you are now requesting a feature that is already part of OS X just because some apps don't work properly with it. Instead of requesting it as a feature of OS X you should file it as a bug with the app maker.