Re: Early History of Mac OS X Dock

On 2025-01-12 21:17:09 +0000, Your Name said:

On 2025-01-12 07:44:08 +0000, Liz Tuddenham said:

Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> wrote:

On 2025-01-11 12:30:59 +0000, Liz Tuddenham said:

D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> wrote:
 

article by James Thomson January 4, 2025
https://tla.systems/blog/2025/01/04/i-live-my-life-a-quarter-century-at
-a- time/
 ---
 So, we are coming up on a little anniversary for me this weekend. On
the 5th of January 2000, Steve Jobs unveiled the new Aqua user
interface of Mac OS X to the world at Macworld Expo.
 Towards the end of the presentation, he showed off the Dock. You all
know the Dock, it's been at the bottom of your Mac screen for what
feels like forever (if you keep it in the correct location, anyway).

 I'm sorry to add a note of dissent, but the Dock was one of the main
things which made me decide not to install OSX.  The Launcher and
Windowshade were far more useful and intuitive - things stayed where you
put them so your fingers always knew where to find them.  That is why I
am still using a Beige G3 with OS 8.6 as my main office machine.

 You can get Dock apps for Classic versions of MacOS. "A-Dock" is
perhaps the best of them.
<http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/a-dock-301>

 That's the last thing I should want to do, why ruin a good operating
system?  I want to completely remove the Dock from OSX and use a
combination of Launcher and Windowshade.

 Potentially having a Dock in Classic MacOS helps to get used to using it in newer MacOS versions.
  

'Minimising' things into the Dock is like having a dilligent but stupid
secretary who removes every sheet of paper from your desk except the one
you are reading and files it away in an ever-changing filing system that
you have to search by pictures to get it back.   With Windowshade you
just rolled up the window so you could see what was underneath it - then
you knew exactly what it was and where to find it when you wanted it
again.

 You didn't mention minimizing in the original post, although I don't think A-Dock does that anyway.
 There are Windowshade apps for MacOS X, but I've never used them:
    Deskovery
   <https://www.neomobili.com/products/deskovery/>
    WindowMizer
   <https://www.windowmizer.com/windowmizer>
  For older Macs / MacOS X versions there is:
    WindowShade X
   <http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/windowshade-x>
  You can't remove the Dock from MacOS X because it is expected to be there by the OS and many apps. Best you can do is hide it. Many of the "Dock replacement" apps simply hide the Dock.

I've been a fan of a more elegant solution ever since Apple quit letting you customize the Apple Menu with OSX -- the XMenu extension. It lets you easily access your favorite apps and files (with their own mini or large icons, or no icons if you prefer), just like the Dock does. Put an alias of your HD at the top (with a space before it) and you can drill down to every folder on the computer.
If I want a quick look at the Desktop, just Command-F3 (or on earlier versions of OSX just F11).