The Dock may not be perfect, but with the new Exposé in Leopard, I think it is quite better than the task bar. But then again, both are clumsy. In any case, I don’t think paying $US15 for uBar—which on top of that is 32-bits and crashes badly in Snow Leopard—is the solution. But if you are into bondage, domination, sadomasochism and the whole “Start” menu thingie, by all means please get this. [Brawersoft]
Ian
September 7, 2009 at 6:51 AM
@s8ist:
“but the icon just looks like a folder holding my address book”.
Agreed, this is really, really stupid. It makes the stacks feature more or less worthless in my opinion, and originally I thought it was a bug, because it looks so bad. However, you can right-click and change to “Display as: Folder”. This appears to be the default behavior for new installs of 10.6 (at least for the Apps folder).
“Also, it does not categorize my applications.”
Sure it does. Create multiple folders and put them in the dock, or create sub-folders in your apps folder and drop your apps in them,
“If I tried to do that, my programs would be broken unless I built a folder of aliases”
Why? One of my favorite things about OS X is how the apps are self-contained and 99.99% don’t CARE where they are. Just put them wherever, and they work.
Besides, even if this was true, how is this different from the Windows method, where the Programs folder(s) are just a collection of aliases that you have to create? (And yes, installers will create aliases manually, but then they’re not “categorized” automatically. The best you can hope for is that some apps from the SAME COMPANY are grouped together by default).
BTW, make sure you set your folders in the dock to View content as: List.
However, I agree that it’s not extremely intuitive. But Windows is less intuitive. Come on, the Mac way is super-flexible and elegant. You just put your apps wherever you want using folders and put whichever folders you want in the dock. You can do as many sub-folders as you want, and you CAN use aliases if you really want.
The main reason I think why you’re having a problem with “Mac app-menus” is because you’re used to the Windows way (where if you take a step back and think about it, it makes less sense). And because Apple doesn’t exactly advertise this feature very well. And because “Display as: stacks” (the default) sucks big time, and because “View Content: ” setting for folders makes sense as “List” for 90+% of folders, but that’s also not the default, and most people don’t know how to change them.
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