My New Mac?
I am one of those Apple anti-fanboys. While I like the design of the Mac computers, I feel that they are over priced for what you get. And come on! $1000 for an update from 4 gig to 8 gig of RAM? Are they smoking crack over there on the Apple compound?
And don’t get me started on the iPod and iPhone! I had an iPod, and I really liked it at the time, but since getting my Zune and using the Zune software, I will never buy another iPod.
But there was one thing I really liked about using the Mac that I own, which is now nothing more than a doorstop since the battery died for the 5th time and it won’t run off the cord: the Dock!
That dock at the bottom of the OS X desktop was one of the best things I have ever used on a computer. Put the programs and folders you use most often down on the dock and with a single click it opened right up. And I believe it was the upgrade to the Leopard release of OS X (I could be wrong) that the dock was changed so that if you clicked on a folder in the dock, instead of opening it showed a fanned-out list of items inside that folder, so you could click on the item directly to open it rather than have to open the folder and then open the document from there.
Windows has the Quick Launch toolbar within the taskbar at the bottom of the desktop, but this system had some rather bad limitations. For instance, the Quick Launch takes up space on the taskbar, and if you run out of space you either lose space for your open program links, or your icons get hidden in the Quick Launch section.
But since I prefer a PC over a Mac, what choice do I have? Quick Launch is the best thing out there for Windows.
Except, it’s not!
One of the websites that I read once in a while is called Smashing Magazine and they had this article about why there really is no need for a web developer to buy a Mac. I am not a web developer, of course, but I wanted to know what advice they may have, so I read the article.
In this article they listed some programs that Windows users could get to make their PCs a little more Mac-like, and one of those programs caught my eye completely.
Called Rocket Dock, this program puts a Mac OS X-like dock onto a Windows machine. Of course, knowing that the dock was the best thing I liked about OS X, I was going to get that program.
And as I read the article more, I discovered that there was a plug-in (called a Docklet by Rocket Dock) called the Stacks Docklet which gives Rocket Dock the same folder functionality as the OS X dock. I was definitely going to get that one as well!
So I downloaded and installed Rocket Dock and Stacks and as soon as I literally started to bounce in my chair!
This is what Windows had been missing all this time! This was what I really liked about OS X, now on my Windows Vista desktop!
I, of course, changed my desktop around, so now my taskbar is at the top of the screen, and Rocket Dock is at the bottom, the same layout as OS X without the horrible brushed metal-ish look.
Click on the picture below to see a full size picture of my desktop, and you will see just what I am talking about. The green smudge in the lower left corner was done by me to hide the one folder on my desktop that cannot be moved until another program finishes with it. Otherwise, I no longer have anything on the desktop.
My New Mac-like Vista Desktop
The installation of Rocket Dock itself was simple, quick, and straight forward. The Stacks Docklet, however, was another matter altogether. Make sure to read all of the comments on the download page, as the steps for making it work correctly without having the folders disappear upon a reboot are buried within all of those comments, and the actual steps are split up into several different entries.
While this part of the installation was a royal pain in the ass, once I figured out the read/write/UAC issues and made the necessary changes to their properties, Stacks worked like a charm.
I am so happy!