Clearly you haven't as the similarities between the two are superficial at best. Collapsing multiple instances of an application into 1 slot in the Taskbar is not new, it has been an option for quite a while now, XP does it, Vista does it, Windows 7 just does it better(I kept it off because until now the implementations have been absolutely terrible).
Ironically I mentioned that I know about the ability to enable grouping similary windows in the taskbar before I saw your reply to my post.
And No1451 acknowledged that, but he said the similarities between the taskbar and Dock are superficial, and it's very true.
I think the OS X dock is quite lacking, and it really should take a few features from W7's new taskbar, as it seems to try and address its flaws, as well as the flaws in Vista.
And yeah.....No1451 should calm down.
Well then I will leave, no point getting myself banned just because half-baked logic frustrates me.
You're right about the logic of that post, but calm down.
No1451 said:
@Melrose - Yeah it is strange behaviour isn't it? Thats why I am excited for the new Taskbar, it feels like the Dock and Taskbar mashed together to reach the middle ground.
Me too.
As a past Windows 7 Beta Tester I can say that it has potential but overall it's a clumsy implementation. There are lots of Beta Testers in the Microsoft forums that think just the same and other's who quite honestly detest it. But some, I admit, do like it. Good luck to them. Not my cuppa though.
Perhaps, but it's a beta that will take suggestions into consideration. If this was the final product, then we can bash the overall implementation. Until then, I guess we can only bash the new feature(s), their usefulness, etc. I think it has the potential to be far better than the Dock in OS X. The features and tools that make it better than OS X are present, but I think it'll take some tweaking to make it more useful.
The Ars article is right, as it points out that the Dock doesn't handle multiple windows of a single document at all (well, I guess you can right-click on the Dock icon), while handling minimized windows in the same way as Windows, but slightly worse. Windows had the opposite weakness of being a window switcher but not great for switching applications. It's also bad because it eventually evolved into a hodge-podge of ideas that tried to address EVERY flaw by doing nothing particularly well. It has shortcuts to the apps of your choice (like the Dock), all open and minimized windows, and all background and notification apps that don't close when you close the application's window. OS X has many of these things in the main menu-bar at the top of every screen (near the clock), but also on the Dock. I guess the Dock is also a hodge-podge of ideas that weren't well implemented either.
