When One Dock Just Won’t Do
Posted by Mark Armstrong on 06/5/08 in Applications, Featured, Organization, Utilities
Even though I’ve got a nice, big, 20-inch iMac, my dock always seems to stretch the full width of the monitor. In addition to all of the usual apps, like Mail, Address Book and iChat, there’s all the stuff I need for work, such as InDesign and Photoshop. Then there are essential tools, including Skype and Parallels, and then there’s the fun stuff — Civilization IV and a spot just waiting for Spore. And that’s just what I keep in the dock. Finally there are the programs that always seem to be open, like Flock, iTunes, Pages and the recent addition of Times. There’s just too much stuff here.
Of course, it was just a matter of time before someone came along and decided that what we need is more docks.
iDock is the latest application from Samuco, and what it does is simply allow you to create custom docks and switch between them. Make a dock with just games on it, another with just work tools and maybe one with communication apps. Organize each one anyway you want and there you go — custom work spaces for whatever you are in the mood for.
The first time you run iDock, you begin on dock zero. Click Change Dock, select the next dock and if one doesn’t already exist iDock will offer to create a new dock. The new dock will be the default for OS X with Safari, iChat, iTunes and all of the standard applications. This won’t effect any running applications, which will show up but won’t be locked in the new dock.
After you’ve customized iDock to the way you work and live, you can click Go To Dock and the number of the dock you want to switch to.
Just how many docks can you create? Well, if the help documentation is to believed, it’s more than a billion.
iDock is a handy tool and a cool idea, but it does have a couple of shortcomings. For starters, the program must be running for you to switch between docks. The are no options to run it in the background. Also, there are no keyboard shortcuts to switch between docks, and whoever heard of a Mac application without convent keyboard shortcuts?
Switching to a new dock also seems to affect some of your preferences — Spaces, for example. Although I have Spaces turned on in my system preferences, when I create a new dock Spaces is turned off by default for that dock. My only other complaint is that you cannot name your docks, so you have to remember what numbered dock is for work and which one is for play. However, this is version 1.0, so there are very likely to be improvements in the future.
iDock is only for Mac OS X 10.5 and up (sorry Tiger users) and it costs $5. You can download a 10-day trial here.
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