First off, each to his own, matter of taste, etc etc, standard disclaimers about not representing some kind of objective opinion, etc....


a) It takes up screen real estate. On that grounds it's a non-starter for the same reason the old MacOS 8 "Launcher Control Panel" was a non-starter. No way in hell I'm having some stupid thing floating around getting in my way like that. And yes the Dock does get in my way, even set to the tiniest size + auto-hide turned on... I get the mouse anywhere near it and the titles float up and don't always go away when I mouse-away. I have some window maximized and it has its own widgets at bottom (or left, right, wherever Dock has been pushed to) and I go to make use of them and OH HELLO you can launch SAFARI TEXTEDIT oh go away go away go away, drag window away from Dock-zone and try again...

b) It gives me the impression it was designed by someone who thinks I'm going to run, I dunno, maybe 4-5 apps at at time, and that I will as a general rule make use of only 9-10 apps at all (with rare exceptions or something). The design becomes increasingly user-hostile as you try to add your 8 favorite word processors and text editors, your 12 graphic and art apps, your 10 sound and audio editors, your 10 video tools & apps, your 40-60 utility apps, your 25-30 internet apps, your 5 emulators, all 24 varieties of FileMaker and FileMaker Server and Dev Tools, 7-8 other database spreadsheet and other info management apps, etc etc and then go back and add in the individual documents you like to launch. Yes, yes yes, of course you can create a hierarchy of all that mess by putting things in folders. The point is, that converts the Dock from a Dock to a hierarchical menu. Which is what I like, but it makes the Dock as Dock irrelevant, it then becomes a big blue stripe that occupies a chunk of my screen in order to house some hierarchical menus. Keep the hierchical menus and get that damn Dock off my screen. I like my hierarchical menu in a MENU, like the Apple Menu, where it isn't taking up screen real estate except when I explicitly invoke it.

c) Things move around, so you have to peer at it to figure out where things went before you can click. And I don't like mixing the "apps that are running" motif with the "apps that you might wish were running".

d) I'm a FileMaker geek and -⌘Tab is owned by FileMaker to move from layout to layout when you're in Layout Mode, or record to record when you're in Browse Mode. Yes, I'm well aware that nowadays PullTab lets you disable ⌘-Tab app switching but by the time Unsanity came out with PullTab I'd long since nuked the Dock. I prefer the old-fashioned application menu. Sometimes I don't wish to switch apps, I just want to see what's running. Recall previously mentioned comment about not liking the running-apps-mixed-with-apps-you-like-to-run motif.

e) There's something entirely too Romper Room, too PlaySkool, about apps bouncing up and down in the Dock like a kindergartner who needs to go potty trying to get the teacher to call on the raised hand.

f) Some of it is admittedly just muleheadedness: Apple decided I was gonna have to use the freaking thing, and provided damned little customization. Made it so it's not a normal app you can just quit. Made it so it always invokes on mouse-over even when you've got it hidden, instead of invoking only with hotkey. Didn't give you a choice about the keystroke ⌘-Tab. Didn't give you an option for putting the Trash Can on your Desktop. Well we'll just see about that!

Calling the Romper Room
 

On that we agree.

For real!? Then I can see why the Dock would annoy you.
I can also see that you belong to a veerrrrry tiny minority.

... in fact I hardly know anyone who has 150+ apps installed on their Mac, let alone are actually using them on a daily/weekly basis.
That sounds very, uhmm, Romper Room. ;)

:D ...’nuff said.
Seriously: Hidden Dock and pulling the mouse away immediately after clicking Hogwasher, means I don’t have to watch the little piggie icon jump up and down.

Agreed! That would have been nice.

-- ArcticStones

that article is complete crap. technology changes and if your product does not adapt its as good as dead. Back in the good old days computer technology was completely different. Also the earlier versions of Mac OS kind of sucked IMO, and if it wasn't for OS X I probably would not even want to deal with old stuff like apple talk, crappy network support, a basic boring gui that classic was, etc.

OS X is great its just like someone saying, oh man I miss the days of windows for workgroups 3.11, it was so much better back then because there were smiley faces.....now they should no longer call it windows because there is no dosshell...WAAAGH!!!!!!!

What a totally invalid complaint about how the mac is dead, I'd maybe settle for resurrected since Apple had a huge fall in sales and their stock plummeted to about $11 USD per a share right before OS X came out. It's still the same company and it is still the same product. It's just new and improved.

Another comment on:That is a feature that can be disabled in Dock Preferences. Let's not blame Apple for forcing us to have to live with that one.

Remember the early days of OS X when one of our evaluations of the upgrades was how many bounces it would take to open an app? I remember 22 bounces for Eudora (OS X 10.0) on my old Powerbook gradually diminishing to two by the time Jaguar came out.

A quick trip to ⌘-F says I have 967, but of course many of those aren't "apps" in the usual sense. OTOH, lots of X11 and other unix apps, and apps buried away in diskimage-files that run only under an emulator are hidden away from the OS X Spotlight, so it probably evens out.

Just for the record, I like the dock bounce! :(.

Okay, so it's not for everyone. But it is a very "OSX" sort of thing now. It's a good sales point to, come to think of it. When I worked in sales, people thought the dock was just the coolest looking thing. It popped up, would zoom in, the icons bounced. While it had no practical value, it was far more aesthetically pleasing than just clicking on an icon (a la Windows). Who can blame Apple for wanting to make their computers more sell able? (Is worrying about the aesthetics of one's computer, rather than the practicality, "Thinking Differently?")

i love the dock, and i love things like this

http://patrickhaney.com/thinktank/20...megaman-effect

ha, 1,483 apps for me...take that! :p :D

Essentially, the Intel macs are the equivilent of taking a G4 case and dropping an Intel mobo inside, and running OSx86 on it.

It looks like an Apple, it operates like one, but under the hood, all it is is a PC.

It uses an intel processor.

It uses an intel SATA controller.

While we are on the subject of what's unique about Macs, I noticed the laptops still have one button.

Holy mofo!

Are you guys on a drug called "versiontrackerinsanity" ??

Do you just trawl version tracker and mac update and click and download every single app thats released?

I have about 80 apps, including full CS2 suite, final cut express, and every other app i think i'll ever need.

First off, keeping over 40 apps in your dock for starters is absurd, just go through them and how many do you actually use?

Second, if you really need 1500 apps, then there must be some element of overlap in features and usability?

did you guys just do a spotlight search for anything ending in .app? I have no idea how many apps are on my macbook pro.

Spotlight search - 116 .app

Looking through them, I see lots of redundancy -- and a few I didn't even know I had. :)

when I do a search for .app files I get 525 results. I have a lot of little things installed here and there I don't use on a daily basis but will probably use once in a blue moon. I have buku networking apps and Fink commander installed with a lot of my favorite linux stuff installed, parallels, and some cross over apps. I also run 4 OSes on my macbook so i think that search may be a bit bloated.

I've got 224 Apps all-in-all, beside, shouldn't somebody starrt a new thread about this, we are digressing from the original subject.

I keep all the apps i install in the one folder , is has 38 in it, although 18 of them were all from my HP All-in-one printer.

i couldn't run a system with that many apps on it, i like to keep my system tidy and i delete anything i do not need/is out of date. I just can't stand having loads of crap lying around that i don't use, it builds up and one day, and one day maclova will have to tidy his system because his HDD is full/spotlight turns slow because of all the results it has to pull up. I may be wrong though...

**and yes my system is the only thing i keep tidy**

Somewhere between 1000-2000 here, including also the X11 (from fink), Windows (in Parallels), and Classic (in SheepShaver) programs. :)

ha! so I'm not alone :D although it is a bit confusing how you just said you have 116 apps here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showpo...0&postcount=32 :confused:

lol I keep my system tidy too...still plenty of disk space left as well...my secret? A lot of those apps are from my collection of vintage software ;) :p :cool: :)

lol...no...that would require a insane amount of disk space...most of the apps are from my vintage mac software collection which thus results in a high amount of apps appearing when doing a Spotlight search for all apps while also keeping disk space relatively low (when compared to the disk space that'd be consumed by that many of todays modern apps) :)

yeah...the mac may not be as unique hardware wise as it once was but to me the most important part is the fact that they still have a great unique OS that's secure and very easy to use...it doesn't require you to dink around trying to get what you want done, it just does it without hassle which is a great model for the rest of the OSes out there IMO (linux is getting up there although there still are some parts, especially wireless and guis on some computers, where quite some fiddling is required in order to get the desired task done right) (with Mac OS X installing updates is painless, installing OSes is painless, installing apps is a matter of drag and drop, installing hardware is just a matter of inserting it into a usb/firewire port or into a pci slot, booting up and enjoying the new hardware (no booting up required though if it's firewire/usb though of course), good security and as of yet no viruses, etc...just so simple, so hassle free...that is why I chose Macs over the rest)....the nice looks of the macs externally isn't as important although it is nice