Agreed. Apple is never going to support terminal commands because its not Apple friendly way to do things. Undocumented... If MAN pages are there technically Apple put them there:) and did document that far.

I still think the main point is Apple delivers very stable and configurable environments that do not require modding for most users.

I think the first step if you have a concern or need or problem is to research it... or go to the genius bar or call Apple... And of course we all post and share info here and perhaps elsewhere.

I'm not sure, but I don't think many of these settings are documented in man pages. Sure the commands that change the settings are documented but I'm talking about the settings themselves - the names and values of the plist entries.
E.g. if Apple doesn't document that there is a setting for the Dock called 'autohide-delay', then it can be considered as unsupported to change that setting.

Your probably correct.... Probably mostly only the the BSD stuff is in MAN. No idea where people find other commands documented, at least by Apple.

Typically people snoop around in System-related plist-files or run binaries through the Unix strings command to figure out undocumented options, then give it a whirl to find out.

Obviously, you're on your own as you don't know whether it's really working and got yanked from the GUI last minute or whether it's a half-baked attempt meant to show up in the next version when it's fully debugged.

I think that answers the question I was about to ask and that is whether, yeah, you can enter the commands into Terminal and get the single behavior you're after but you run the risk of unintended consequences because that terminal command can affect other things in a painful, nasty way.

You'd think that after 13 years of OS X, Apple would finally offer more control over that dock. I guess it's to just filling out the OS X feedback page.. I and many others just want control over when the dock appears...doesn't seem like a ridiculous thing to implement.

Thanks!

a

I looked around a bit for you. I think instead of modding the dock you should move it out of the way (make it small at put it on the right side) and use another Launcher.... I listed a few below.

Tablauncher

I played with tab launcher (comes in free, paid, and App store version so semi apple blessed). The free version is nice its just an App so it does not mod your system. The free version give you 3 tabbed dock like launchers. Its nice. The paid version does not limit you to 3 tabs.

http://tablauncher.com/index.html

LaunchBar
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

Hyper Dock
http://hyperdock.bahoom.com

Good Luck

Thank you that's kind of you to grab that info..I'll keep those alternatives in mind.

a

NP...... The Last one Hyper Dock appears to be more in the mod category since it Mods the Apple Dock. Not a lot of details on what besides window previews.

I think I would stick to tab launcher or Launchbar.

Good Luck