Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Chapter 4. Dock, Desktop, and Toolbar

You can't help reacting, one way or another, to the futuristic, sleek looks of Mac OS X the first time you arrive at its desktop. The environment owes most of its distinctive, photo-realistic looks to three key elements: the Dock at the bottom edge of the screen, the toolbar at the top of every Finder window, and the shimmering, sometimes animated backdrop of the desktop itself. This chapter shows you how to use and control these most dramatic elements of Mac OS X.

The Dock

Most operating systems maintain two different lists of programs. One of them lists unopened programs until you need them, like the Start menu (Windows) or the Launcher (Mac OS 9). The other list keeps track of which programs are open at the moment, so that you can switch among them easily, like the taskbar (Windows) or the Application menu (Mac OS 9).

In Mac OS X, Apple combined both functions into a single strip of icons called the Dock.

Apple's thinking goes like this: Why must you know whether or not a program is already running? That's the computer's problem, not yours. In an ideal world, this distinction should be irrelevant. A program should appear when you click its icon, whether it's open or not—like on a PalmPilot, for example.

"Which programs are open" already approaches unimportance in Mac OS X, where sophisticated memory-management features make it hard to run out of memory. You can open dozens of programs at once in Mac OS X.

And that's why the Dock combines the launcher and status functions of a modern operating system. Only a tiny triangle beneath a program's icon tells you that it's open.

In any case, the Dock is a core element of Mac OS X, and it's here to stay. Whether or not you agree with Apple's philosophy (and not everyone does), Apple has made it as easy as possible to learn to like the Dock. You can customize the thing to within an inch of its life, or even get rid of it completely. This section explains everything you need to know.