Dell Dock....
Click to viewDell recently has started including a Dock with their computers. No I'm not just going to sit here, point at it and laugh. I'm not just going to say, "Dell ripped Apple, hur hur hur!". However, we have come a long way from Apple sending a ceast and desist order to Moby of Mobydock to Dell including a dock with their computers. Like I may have talked about before it's not like a launch bar is a new idea. It's just this style of launch bar is so commonly associated with Apple. Even the Wharf in Litestep was based on the parent OS of Mac OS X (NeXTSTEP). Which was also developed under Steve Jobs.
Anyway what I really wanted to do here is do a little comparing and contrasting of this dock with other docks such as the one in Leopard and other third party docks for windows. There are a couple of differences. The first and most major thing which you will see at 2:25 in the video. When you drag an icon off the Dell Dock it gives you the option of putting that icon on the desktop or delete it. Apple's only has one option.. delete it in a poof. I'm sure some people may like that function to be in the Apple dock.
The Apple dock doesn't group Applications by type by default. However you can make stacks that can do that function if you wish. Personally on OS X I use fruitmenu instead to put catagories into my Apple menu. You can do that with your right click desktop menu as well. The grouping in the Dell Dock is something that makes me think of the old Litestep Wharf (or NeXTSTEP Dock). The docks that went on the right side of the screen did that except they slid out in a straight line not fan out in a grid. Objectdock also has a similar feature and it also has tabbed docks to organize your applications into different sections. OS X only has that with the application called "drag thing" which I used for a while. I found it to be a little heavier on the resources than I would like it to be though. That too was based on an application\feature for NeXTSTEP (they added it in later revisions).
If anything rather than ripping Apple what dell did here is more like. They looked at what people where doing with freely available software for Windows such as RK Dock... and went in that direction. Before anyone wonders I don't think they ripped one of the freeware dock makers however. That dock looks more than just a resource hack of a free dock. Most other docks are made to ape apple's dock and you can't just resource hack in other features.
There's a couple of things that the Dell Dock doesn't do. It doesn't have the same kind of magnification effect as the Apple Dock. It just magnifies each icon individually. It also doesn't seem to do tasks although it's redundant to do so when you have the windows task bar.
So what do I think of it? Eh, it's just another bundled piece of software that the end user may or may not use. Like I said before the knee jerk reaction would be to just proclaim it an Apple rip. However lots of people had already done it. So it seems it's now fair game. Also face it, not everyone wants a Mac but they may like certain things like the dock. Some people may think it detracts from the Mac experience if others had a dock but I don't agree.
It reminds me of kids on the playground and one getting upset because they think little Johnny owning a fire truck toy means one less fire truck toy for them. So they get upset. There's enough toys, fire truck or otherwise for everyone. ;)