My two biggest complaints about OS X.

[840quadra]

Funny thing -- I had none of those on XP, but it took a lot of work to fortify my machine. I had better things to do than fool around w/ HOSTS files and manually configuring firewalls.

Heh,

I work in a Data Center with 100's of windows servers, our DNS works well, but when a customer has a "strange" app that Wins and DNS don't work on, we have to dig into the world of hosts files.

I hate them to this day!!

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

What *I* do is configure my Recent Items (Apple Menu --> Recent Items (I think?)) menu to show only applications (and NOT documents), and show the maximum number of applications possible (I think 25 [...]

Hey, now there's an idea.

I wonder if I can somehow add that menu to the dock instead of (or alongside) my right-click Applications folder.

Thanks.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

It sounds like Quicksilver would suit your needs. I'm not sure what your argument against it is. [...]

Aside from the fact that it's yet another program that's always running in the background, I've tried it and was generally unimpressed with it.

Thanks, though.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

At the risk of offending minimalist sensibilities, have you looked into add-ons [...]

I haven't, as I generally dislike third-party launchers (even on my old Palm OS handheld!), but I'll check those out.

Altough, I have to agree with the others who suggested Quicksilver.

One of the kids I know around here lives and dies my Quicksilver. I may give it another go. We'll see what happens.

Thanks.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I work in a Data Center with 100's of windows servers, our DNS works well, but when a customer has a "strange" app that Wins and DNS don't work on, we have to dig into the world of hosts files.

I hate them to this day!!

I've adored hosts files since the day I realized I never have to remember another IP. Ever.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I'm guessing this won't satisfy your Dock issues, but why not just use the key combination Command-Shift-A to open your applications folder? No extra folders with shortcuts to manage, no dock required. Doesn't get much more minimal than that.

I didn't know about that shortcut, so thanks for that.

I still have nearly 60 items to scroll through in /Applications, though, which is one of my original complaints.

Thanks again.

 

[wordmunger]

I didn't know about that shortcut, so thanks for that.

I still have nearly 60 items to scroll through in /Applications, though, which is one of my original complaints.

Thanks again.

I guess I'm not quite grasping your problem. You like Windows' start menu because all the apps are there and the menu "automatically" gets updated whenever you install a new app. Yet you refuse to add the apps folder to the dock, which, as far as I can tell, does the exact same thing. And now you say you don't like scrolling through 60 apps, which is what you have to do on the Windows Start menu.

I can understand liking the Start menu, but I can't understand why you wouldn't want to modify the dock to behave the same way.

Personally I like having my most-used apps directly on the dock, and then an alias "other apps" folder, also on the dock, for my less-used apps.

 

[yellow]

Knowing that I'm not the only person with this frustration (and more than one person suggested such an arcane work-around) makes me wonder if Apple's bothered to address this for their power users yet.

Careful there.. Just because you think of yourself as a "Power User" doesn't mean that others of that ilk follow or agree with your reasoning.

EDIT: Give Butler a shot.

 

[XNine]

Funny how no one has mentioned DOCK EXTENDER by Codetek Studios. This handy little PreferencePane will create an icon (IT CAN BE ANTYHING, JUST NEEDS TO BE AN ICON FILE) in the dock, where clicking on it brings up a list. This list can either A. be sub-folders, or B. be apps/files etc. Not only that, I have SEVEN of these in my dock. One for Audio/Video, one for Web/Net, one for Photo/Graphics, on for Publication, one for System Utilities, and on and on.

So, you jsut click on the icon in the dock, it pulls up a list (that you specify in the preference pane) and you click on the app/file you want.

Handy as hell and every other launcher sucks compared to it.

I've ran it for three years now.

Can't beat it.

 

[munkle]

Handy as hell and every other launcher sucks compared to it.

I've ran it for three years now.

Can't beat it.

And it's obviously been three years since you've tried any other launcher. For example, Quicksilver, will allow you to invoke any app and just about every document on your system via a hotkey combo, and on top of this it allows you to browse iTunes, iPhoto, Address Book, attach documents to e-mails, upload to FTP, etc etc. Oh, and all this without having to touch the mouse. If Dock Extender works for you, great, but to claim all other launchers suck next to it is a bit ridiculous

 

[MarkCollette]

Points well taken,

The auto populate is a part I do miss from Win OS, I guess someone may have an apple script to copy / update items in a sort of application folder that could be run every time you do an install, but again it wouldn't be automatic.

I will personally accept this shortcoming as opposed to dealing with Spyware, trojan applications, and popups like I had on XP.

Now if only Tiger had something to facilitate this. Kind of like a folder that's smart enough to show what's in /Applications, but update itself automatically. Oh well, maybe in 10.5 I guess...

 

[decksnap]

I don't know about 'dock extender' but you can do the exact same thing without it. I have four folders in my dock, each with a different genre of apps. I don't think the Windows menu does this.

But at the same time, I still don't understand the problem. Put your 'short list' of most used apps directly in the dock, and use docked sub-folders for categories of apps, or secondary 'short-lists', and use the apps folder to access the complete list.

Also, you can option-drag apps directly into the top chrome of your finder windows, so they'll be there at all times, or put sub-folders of apps into the sidebar of your finder window for instant access, etc...etc...

 

[daveL]

Tiger's smart folder function could be used to auto-update the Apps folder in the dock when something new is installed. Personally, I found the Start menu in XP to be an abomination - talk about having to mouse through dozens and dozens of entries, some of which have sub-menus. Gross. That's why I think you see a lot of XP users with a boat load of shortcuts on their desktop.

 

[decksnap]

Tiger's smart folder function could be used to auto-update the Apps folder in the dock when something new is installed. Personally, I found the Start menu in XP to be an abomination - talk about having to mouse through dozens and dozens of entries, some of which have sub-menus. Gross. That's why I think you see a lot of XP users with a boat load of shortcuts on their desktop.

That's so true. I never understood why every windows user has a big grid of icons on their desktop. Must be the Start menu forcing them out to graze... but even then, it becomes a hunt and peck game of memory.

 

[andrewfee]

While I just add my most used apps to the dock, and have my Applications folder added so I can access everything else like this, I've just coded up a (very) quick AppleScript folder action that probably does what you're wanting.

Here is the .zip file with the script. You'll have to do a couple of things to use it though.

First, enable folder actions by right-clicking anywhere in Finder and choosing the Enable Folder Actions option. (I've found it sometimes needs you to log out/in before it takes effect)

Unzip the file, and put the .scpt into:

"macintosh hd: library: scripts: folder action scripts"

I've found that for some reason, action scripts don't seem to run unless they're actually in this folder. (or an alias to them is) Strange that it lets you choose the file from anywhere, but only seems to work when it's there.

Now that you have the script file in the right place, we need to decide where we want our "start menu" items to be stored. Just for testing purposes I created an "aliases" folder in my home directory, and added that to my dock.

Create a new folder wherever you want to store these files, add it to your dock and then edit the .scpt file and add the path to it.

The path I have in mine is "Powerbook G4:Users:andrewfee:aliases"

Powerbook G4 is the name of my hard drive (defaults to Macintosh HD)
and the Users:andrewfee: is the path to my home directory
aliases is the folder I created there to store these files, but you can put it wherever you want, as long as you put in the correct path.

Save the file, and then go to your Applications folder. Right click here, and attach the folder action to your folder. Now whenever any file is moved into the applications folder, it will be added to your custom menu. You can just left-click on this to open it up and remove any unwanted ones, or customize it as you see fit.


Like I said, this was a very quick job, so it will add an alias to any file dropped into the Applications folder (although that should only be apps. ) I'm quite sure it could be improved upon, but it should do the job.

I hope this helps. I can't really help with the second issue though, as I've never had a problem with the way this has been done.

Now, it won't create aliases to items already in the applications folder, but you can easily add them yourself, and whenever anything new is added, it's done automatically.