Also, with the Dock hidden, you don't know where your click target is until the mouse arrives at the relevant screen edge and you've waited for the icons to slide in, at which point you still have to locate and click the icon you want.
It sounds like a small thing, but it annoys me enough that I never hide the Dock.
That's an interesting point, and thanks for the key-combo (I didn't know that). But what I like about being able to see the dock is that I often randomly notice that too many apps are running, without specifically looking for it. It's sort of like when you notice the task-bar getting cluttered with windows in Windows... I probably won't remember to hit a button to see how many apps are running, but occasionally I'll just notice the clutter.
I find it useful. It makes it easier to see where your mouse cursor landed from the corner of your eye (my Dock is on the left) when you move the mouse really fast, and it makes the target you're trying to hit bigger.
A top or bottom dock (the default) doesn't make any sense since all screens are 16:9 or 16:10. So you must put it on the sides. Which side? The default is Right, look at any OpenStep screenshot, damned heretics! I didn't even need thinking about it.
I'm afraid that I don't see your point about a bottom dock not making sense because of the screen aspect ratio. As far as I am concerned it makes more sense to have the dock at the bottom precisely because the 16:9 aspect ratio means that the bottom edge of the screen is wider than the left or right edge is tall.
This allows me to have a longer dock with bigger icons, and I just turn on auto hiding to keep it out of the way when I don't need it.
If you don't use autohide (I do, however), a bottom dock on a Macbook screen just eats up much too much screen height unless you're using microscopic icons.
For this reason I keep my browser tabs on the side too.
My objection to that is almost all content (like a browser document) is going to vertically scroll almost always anyway, so what's another 50-ish points lost.
Compared to placing the Dock on the left or right, where that eats up window tiling space. I'll take vertical scrolling over horizontal any day.
You shouldn't have to horizontally scroll with most content on a widescreen monitor if you have the window maximized (which is when your argument applies).
I keep mine on the bottom and hidden, it works fine. Average pointer travel distance to the bottom is always less than one of the sides in any standard resoution, so you can "fling" the mouse to the bottom quicker (just like the menubar). I also use OSX on a laptop the most, where moving my hand on an imaginary Y-axis of the touchpad is more natural for me than the X axis, which requires more arm movement since my fingers can't curl left and right.
I'm probably not the average Mac user, but for me, the dock is more of a status bar for me to see download progress, which apps are still running, etc, so it doesn't matter what maximizes screen space. I don't use it to store icons to launch apps (Spotlight instead), and when first logging in it only contains the Finder, Trash and Downloads folder.
To be frank I hardly use the dock: I simply use it as a shortcut for the "Download" folder and to re-launch the three apps I'm actually using (Firefox, X11 and Songbird). I use it as a status bar on my Linux desktop (running WindowMaker) but I only ever click the email icon :)
I do pretty much everything you do, except I do have a few applications explicitly in the dock (Chrome, a Gmail SSB, Terminal, and iTunes). The reason being I often use the dock to switch between applications, and it helps for them to always in the same location. And no matter what I'm doing, these applications are always open.
Only marginally related: Why does the website think it should tinker with my browser's font rendering (-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;) when I have configured my system for the best possible font-rendering already.
And why does it think it should mess with my selection color (::selection { background-color: #E12000; color: white}) making my habit of selecting the text as I read it really painful because of the way too flashy color?
I'm all for trying to create good design, but just because you can override sensible OS defaults, it doesn't mean you have to. IMHO, this is CSS doing too much.
When Compiz first came out I had a widescreen laptop with a GNOME panel fixed to the right hand side. With some compiz whizzery I was able to show different panels for different cube sides, so I had my media side, internet side, programming sides and so on.
Why modern operating systems don't do stuff like that I have no idea. It was great.
Using the dock is a smell. Using Launchbar/Google Desktop/Quicksilver (or whatever) is always going to be faster to open things. If I could turn the dock off completely on my mac without hackery I would.
Slightly off-topic here but... in light of this type of confusion over usage of the Dock, I don't get why so many people think that Mac's UI system is better than Gnome/KDE/Windows'. When I approach Mac lovers without making any mention of Gnome/KDE/Windows and I go straight to complaining about the Dock, many of them agree.
If I complain about the fact that in OS X, windows just resize themselves off the screen, many of them agree that it's annoying. (Try it out yourself. Bring up System Preferences and position it's bottom edge near the Dock. Now start moving through categories and watch the window resize itself.)
When I complain about only being able to resize windows from the lower right corner or the single menu bar for all apps, I get many agreements.
The people that don't agree with me either A) get offended that I'm questioning the greatness of the OS and tell me to go use something else if I don't like it, B) ask me WHY I'd want to do such a thing and try to use Jedi mind tricks to convince me that there is no NEED to do things any other way or C) they say "it's just different than what you're probably used to, not better or worse".
So many people complain about the Dock, the Finder (what's _your_ favorite replacement) and other aspects of OS X, I just don't get why they're using a system where the fundamental aspects of it are so annoying to use.
24 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadIt sounds like a small thing, but it annoys me enough that I never hide the Dock.
If you're also just wanting to see what's running, Cmd-Tab like you were going to switch apps, but don't cycle it, it shows the running app list.
This allows me to have a longer dock with bigger icons, and I just turn on auto hiding to keep it out of the way when I don't need it.
For this reason I keep my browser tabs on the side too.
Compared to placing the Dock on the left or right, where that eats up window tiling space. I'll take vertical scrolling over horizontal any day.
I'm probably not the average Mac user, but for me, the dock is more of a status bar for me to see download progress, which apps are still running, etc, so it doesn't matter what maximizes screen space. I don't use it to store icons to launch apps (Spotlight instead), and when first logging in it only contains the Finder, Trash and Downloads folder.
And why does it think it should mess with my selection color (::selection { background-color: #E12000; color: white}) making my habit of selecting the text as I read it really painful because of the way too flashy color?
I'm all for trying to create good design, but just because you can override sensible OS defaults, it doesn't mean you have to. IMHO, this is CSS doing too much.
I really hate that.
Why modern operating systems don't do stuff like that I have no idea. It was great.
does 5% represent 2 people?
If I complain about the fact that in OS X, windows just resize themselves off the screen, many of them agree that it's annoying. (Try it out yourself. Bring up System Preferences and position it's bottom edge near the Dock. Now start moving through categories and watch the window resize itself.)
When I complain about only being able to resize windows from the lower right corner or the single menu bar for all apps, I get many agreements.
The people that don't agree with me either A) get offended that I'm questioning the greatness of the OS and tell me to go use something else if I don't like it, B) ask me WHY I'd want to do such a thing and try to use Jedi mind tricks to convince me that there is no NEED to do things any other way or C) they say "it's just different than what you're probably used to, not better or worse".
So many people complain about the Dock, the Finder (what's _your_ favorite replacement) and other aspects of OS X, I just don't get why they're using a system where the fundamental aspects of it are so annoying to use.