I know what I said in the video I made this last weekend. I thought that Leopard’s new Dock was really growing on me. Then I thought about the things I really like about Apple; the powerful simplicity of their technology mirrored in simple appearances. So I looked at it again with slightly older eyes and decided… I wanted to return to the Dock in 10.4 “Tiger”.

Well, I looked around the hacking forums and found out a few things. I tried some of the suggestions and came up recently with a good step in the right backwards direction. So far, it looks good, but not quite the way I want it. It’s much more simple, though, and easier on the eyes. I’m also going to post this query in some of the forums and sites I frequent, like I did in the Facebook Mac Users forum:

I’ve tried to mod the Dock file in CoreServices to look more like the Dock I know and love from Tiger. It involved using the “defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES” command in Terminal, then scrapping some PNG files. Here’s my results so far:

http://esoterik72.net/images/chrisw357dock.jpg (Click to see image)

Anyone have suggestions on how to get rid of the dark background? I couldn’t find corresponding image files for that. I’ll be changing the divider stripe to a solid thin line, but I do like the blue-white indicators.

I’m trying to get the Dock to the way I had it in Tiger; totally transparent. That way, the icons just float in space. I almost had it today, but the stupid reflective surface they hardwired into the dock’s glass “defaults write” option just kills the effect! Ah well… I’ll keep pluggin’ away at it.

This took me a long time to do today, so I hope someone out there appreciates it! At over 15 minutes in length, I can’t upload the video to YouTube so it will have to make its home here. The program I used to do all the video screen capturing is Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software. They’re like Rogue Amoeba (another good software company for Mac), only better cause they have games!

Well, I must say I’m stating to really like the new OS! The only really bad thing that I can say is that I’m starting to see the need for more RAM. With iTunes, Mail and Safari open and running, everything’s fine… even with Time Machine, Quicksilver, Twitterific and iClip running in the background. With all that going, I accidentally opened a movie file with QuickTime. The music coming from iTunes started stuttering and I saw in the system monitor that the CPU was going bonkers trying to multitask two media players with the added strain of everything else. Free memory blocks were non-existent.

With the ugliness out of the way, here’s my list of the good and the bad:

GOOD
- Faster startup time
- Dock functionality (the new Dock kinda grew on me!)
- Time Machine makes backing up your computer a no-brainer (literally!)
- Spaces: the less memory-intensive alternative to VirtueDesktops
- More ways to organize your stuff
- System Preferences is even more user-friendly, especially with networking and sharing
- Oh, and Screen Sharing: when you have to help a friend understand what to do.

BAD
- Quick Look uses waaaaay too much RAM and CPU for mostly eye candy; use it sparingly and when needed.
- No way to modify scheduling of TM backups (unless you do some Terminal diving!)
- Folders look very drab (but it is fixable!)
- The wireless Mouse and keyboard are acting a little weird. Hoping for an update soon to fix this!

I’ll talk more in-depth tomorrow, hopefully!

Update: I was slightly off what Quick Look really is. What I meant is really about CoverFlow in the Finder using too much RAM (CoverFlow really IS eye-candy!). Quick Look is just another way to inspect files in the finder without opening another app, and it can be invoked with the space bar when you have a file selected in any view mode. It really is another “plus” to be added above!

We’re on Day 3 of the new operating system and so far things are good. Except for just now. It seems Christine has experienced her very first “kernel panic”. These are rare and I think we’ll see even less occurrences of this bad boy when Apple posts the next couple of system updates. (Click here for more “kernel panic” info… very interesting stuff!)

Speaking of helping her out, I discovered a neat-o thing that they decided to give Leopard users: Screen Sharing! This feature was only previously available on OS 10.4 Server, called Remote Access. I actually took control of her screen and even started this blog entry using her computer, but controlling it through mine! This is going to be great, especially when we’re both on the computers and she’s asking me for help with something. Although it is nice to actually get up and go to help her physically.

Well, until tomorrow! C-ya!

Just when I thought that 320 GB hard drive was big enough for Time Machine backups and my iTunes library, I find out that both used up nearly 120 GB’s of the space! Wow!

You just never know how much music, movies and pictures you actually have until you’re looking at the raw numbers. 16 GB of audio, 14 GB of movies and vid clips, 10 GB (roughly) of ST:Voyager and Doctor Who episodes (and that’s not including the episodes that TM backed up that aren’t converted for iTunes/iPod use!) and 2 GB of pictures. All the other GB’s include vidcasts that I made, including the raw data (iMovie files can be huge suckers!) and other PhotoShop and media projects.

Maybe I should have gotten that 500 gig drive after all!