What's wrong with Dock and how to fix it?

Tonazzini Bruce (Bruce Tognazzini) a wide range of users is virtually unknown, although usability specialists and interfaces of him certainly know that he was the 66th in a row Apple employee, the company worked for 14 years, during which participated in the creation of Apple Human Interface Group.

Tonazzini convinced that a good interface is distinguished from the bad that they can use, and beginners and experts. Doc, inadequate "Advanced" users, and therefore not ideal, says Bruce. And I must say - in his criticism, he is very stubborn and consistent: the first publication indicating the shortcomings Doc came back in 2001 (Top Ten Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks). Among the main problems Doc called its large size (which can be changed, by the way), the identity of the icons, the lack of labels (labels) the objects, incorrect location of the basket and, importantly, poor scalability - the dock is not suitable to work with a few hundred objects (in the case of Bruce - there are about 500).

Solutions?

Third-party developers have proposed several solutions, which either replace the functionality of Doc or supplement it. For example, ASM application adds a menu bar program selector. With it, you can switch between applications, see a list of running programs, and go a new mode of Single Application Mode, (in the mind there is only one application, and the rest hiding).

website Developer: ASM
Price: €12,49

The second program, which strongly recommends Tonazzini, - DragThing. Basically, this is an extended version of Doc. All objects - documents, folders and applications - can be combined into several groups-tabs. DragThing, by the way, you can create multiple docks, but hardly anyone is required.

website Developer: DragThing
Price: $29.

Fantasktik - similarity of windows taskbar. The developer promises the most easy switching between windows of all. This is probably the most bizarre solution that fits except Switchers, not wishing to give up old habits.

website Developer: Fantasktik
Price: $9,99.

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In my opinion, Doc criticized in most cases, without a valid reason. With the advent of stacks it is quite a handy tool.