Apple Two unrelated thoughts for Monday

Dock Placement and Moronic Survivors

I’ve been toying with dock placement on my two desktops for the past few days and have discovered that even with very similar set-ups, I’ve ended up with very different Dock placements.

At home, I have two flat panels (20″, 17″). The larger panel is straight in front of me with the smaller being on my left. In this set-up, the Dock has gravitated to the left side of the smaller panel.

At work, I have one flat panel (17″) and a tube (21″). The flat panel is much easier to read than the tube, so it’s become my main window. The tube is on the RIGHT and, thinking my home set-up would work here, I put my Dock on the right side of the tube.

It took about ten minutes of usage to total annoy me. Because of the curvature of the tube, my Dock looks like it’s off in the horizon. Multiple monitor adjustments showed no improvement, so now it’s on the left side of the flat panel… which I kind’a dig.

The question is: where’s your dock? and why?

Context switch.

This will be my first and last Survivor post. I was literally yelling at the TV last night during the premiere of Survivor All-stars and I need to vent. Some of these folks are, supposedly, the best Survivors in past shows, but, on the show, it’s DAY #4 and NO ONE HAS STARTED A FUCKING FIRE.

Anyone who has watched Survivor in the past know that in the initial days, one of the first challenges is getting fire to boil water and cook food. Invariably, they get fire from a challenge or from tribal council. ONE WOULD THINK that former contestants who were invited back to the show would spend an afternoon or so figuring out how in the world to start a fire… maybe practice a few times? Learn the ins and outs?

No. No fire. All-stars? Idiots.

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14 Responses

  1. mark 21 years ago

    On a 15.2″ PowerBook I have it on the bottom. I just can’t get used to it on the side. At times I have it set to hide, but most of the time it is visible.

    On those rare occasions when I have a dual monitor setup, the second screen is a 19″ CRT that sits on a low shelf behind the laptop. With the top/bottom arrangement the logical placement of the dock is still at the bottom of the screen for me.

  2. ted fortner 21 years ago

    on my 12″ ibook, it’s firmly on the left side of the screen, auto-hiding. i am completely in love with auto-hide, keping my small amount of screen real estate as uncluttered as possible (making it that much more possible for me to clutter it up as i see fit). after much trial and error i settled on the left side. it tended to get activated by accident far more when on the right side, which was highly annoying. the bottom of the screen was…i dunno. not aesthetically pleasing for me. or something.

    so yeah. on the left, autohide on, slight magnification turned on.

  3. Erik J. Barzeski 21 years ago

    Always at the bottom, for both my 23″ on a G5 and my 12″ PB.

  4. Chris Clark 21 years ago

    Bottom of the screen on both my 17″ eMac and 12″ PB — residual Windows taskbar syndrome. The 17″ tube I (sometimes) use in conjunction with my 12″ PB doesn’t actually see a lot of use, It’s in a funky position that makes it difficult to integrate into a normal workflow and I’m still figuring out what I’m *doing* with the extra desktop space.

  5. xfrosch 21 years ago

    right edge of the right screen, a 19″ Studio Monitor. (left screen is a 19″ VGA). Force of residual habit from years of having the Windows toolbar over there.

    Last week I hacked together a directory full of links so that I can open apps from alias contextual menus, like the start button on Windows. Until I finished that and had used it for a couple of hours, I didn’t realize how annoyed I had been at all those Finder windows.

    My wife’s desk is in the den with the TV. She claims she’s not watching all that idiotic reality TV that’s on in there. All I know is that I’m not the one turning it on.

  6. Lloyd 21 years ago

    It’s on the bottom of my 12″ Powerbook set to not hide. I realize there’s a good chunk of screen that doesn’t get used but the auto hide thing always bugged the crap out of me. Going down to the bottom of the screen to adjust a window would pop it up and piss me off to no end.

  7. Jeph 21 years ago

    On the bottom, set very tiny on both the iBook and the 20″ LCD. On the right or left it would interfere with my Photoshop and Quark toolbars.

  8. Damien Martin 21 years ago

    I keep my dock close to the waterfront. I have tried moving it closer inland, so that I wouldn’t have to pay so much for transport to the warehouse, but you know how unions are.

  9. Ryan 21 years ago

    Mine is top right. It’s closer to the scroll bars that way. I use commands for most menus as well as minimizing/hiding apps.

    My screen is also wider than it is tall, so there tends to be some extra space to the left & right that might as well be functional. Putting it on the bottom would be like shrinking the size of my screen by an inch.

    I also keep it fairly small in size. But it is not hidden, I don’t want to wait a millisecond for it to load if I want to click on it.

  10. Jeffrey J. Hoover 21 years ago

    I keep mine to the right and down. Originally, I wanted to do this to keep the trash can inthe same place. Now I like it because things grow upward from a fixed point rather than out fromt he middle. Another question is, what do you keep in your dock as opposed to not? I have found that there are very few apps that I keep when they are not running. That way I can tell at a glance if I’m running a bunch of stuff because my dock is full. (I use LaunchBar to, um, Launch things.)

  11. M. Boeh 21 years ago

    I keep my Wharf up in the upper right, including on dual monitor setups.

  12. Matt Henderson 21 years ago

    Bottom right, auto-hiding. I find that an upper-right corner open-processes menu (via MaxMenus) works great for application switching (or command-tab with LiteSwitchX), and LaunchMenu works great for application launching. About the only thing I go to the Dock for anymore are special application dock menus, and access to the trash.

  13. Soren 21 years ago

    Left side of my 15″ AlBook. The screen is far wider than it is tall, and I don’t want to lose even more vertical space and make the usable area even shorter. That leaves the left and right sides, and I prefer the left because the icons on the desktop fill from right to left, so you don’t get icons trapped under the dock.

    Personally I think the dock sucks.

  14. HONK 20 years ago

    Bottom right, auto-hiding. I find that an upper-right corner open-processes menu (via MaxMenus) works great for application switching (or command-tab with LiteSwitchX), and LaunchMenu works great for application launching. About the only thing I go to the Dock for anymore are special application dock menus, and access to the trash.

    Post by Matt Henderson on February 4, 2004 08:46 AM

    Left side of my 15″ AlBook. The screen is far wider than it is tall, and I don’t want to lose even more vertical space and make the usable area even shorter. That leaves the left and right sides, and I prefer the left because the icons on the desktop fill from right to left, so you don’t get icons trapped under the dock.

    Personally I think the dock sucks.

    Post by Soren on February 6, 2004 12:59 AM

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