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Worried about the 10.7 dock - no running apps indication

mabaker

mabaker

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 19, 2008
1,217
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I do love all the cosmetic changes in Lion and absolutely LOVE the new Expose feature that brings back proper window management but the status indicator of applications running in the dock seems to be gone. :eek:

Mac OS X is RAM hungry as it is. Lion with its instant on features may be crawling even more if all apps in the Dock are pre-loaded into the memory.
 
With the dropping price of RAM, bring it on. The MacBook Air can just launch everything out of the SSD.
 
They still have a lot of time before release. I'm sure there will be changes to the GUI. This was only a first peak on the new features.
 
No matter how fast the SSD is, it won't be quicker than RAM.

Unless they are applying the iOS “multi-tasking” model to the Mac (i.e. no paging in/out — hence why applications will restore state when reopened). This would ensure that the current app is always responsive.

However I don't see it being practical.
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure there will be some major UI changes..

Things I hope to see
- New Application & System Icons
- New Theme - Trash Aqua :p
- Customizable Dock
- Uninstaller
- Cut Feature
- Window Snap Feature - similar to win 7
- Even Faster Boot Times and OS performance

I actually really like the aqua theme, but its been around for a long time, ever since the first OS 10 release, although it has evolved over the years, a lot of it is still very similar to the previous versions of OSX, Its about time to drop aqua..
 
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To get back to the topic: there will probably be a simple tweak to make the indicators appear, just like vertical stoplights in iTunes 10.
 
mabaker said:
Mac OS X is RAM hungry as it is. Lion with its instant on features may be crawling even more if all apps in the Dock are pre-loaded into the memory.
Click to expand...

You are misunderstanding the implications of this change. The point is supposed to be that (ideally) you won't be able to distinguish between an app that is loaded into RAM and running vs. one that is loaded into RAM and not running vs. one that isn't even in RAM yet. Very little will actually change in terms of how and when apps are loaded into RAM (i.e. not until you try to run them the first time). It is likely that the OS will automatically remove idle, backgrounded apps from RAM if the user runs a new app that needs more RAM than is free.
 
Considering the amounts of RAM most computers have these days it doesn't matter that much what you have running unless it's big productivity suites like Photoshop, Maya or Final Cut.

What OSX needs is some kind of indicator showing how many windows are open. I find that is very useful in Win7.
 
admanimal said:
You are misunderstanding the implications of this change. The point is supposed to be that (ideally) you won't be able to distinguish between an app that is loaded into RAM and running vs. one that is loaded into RAM and not running vs. one that isn't even in RAM yet.
Click to expand...

The whole point of the indicator underneath the dock icons is not that the app is loaded into RAM etc, it's to let you know which apps are actively running (ie, doing stuff, whether that be Mail running and checking for mail periodically etc).

I can understand Apple wanting a sort of 'instant-on' feature to apps, there should still be a way of knowing which apps are actually running and which are suspended. No indicator on the dock is going to make that very difficult.
 
NATO said:
The whole point of the indicator underneath the dock icons is not that the app is loaded into RAM etc, it's to let you know which apps are actively running (ie, doing stuff, whether that be Mail running and checking for mail periodically etc).

I can understand Apple wanting a sort of 'instant-on' feature to apps, there should still be a way of knowing which apps are actually running and which are suspended. No indicator on the dock is going to make that very difficult.
Click to expand...

I understand, I was just trying to explain Apple's apparent point of view on things, assuming the lack of dock indicator actually happens.
 
I think it'll be as easy as changing a PList file to get back the dock indicators, I'm sure Apple wouldn't completely remove a feature like that.
 
NATO said:
The whole point of the indicator underneath the dock icons is not that the app is loaded into RAM etc, it's to let you know which apps are actively running (ie, doing stuff, whether that be Mail running and checking for mail periodically etc).

I can understand Apple wanting a sort of 'instant-on' feature to apps, there should still be a way of knowing which apps are actually running and which are suspended. No indicator on the dock is going to make that very difficult.
Click to expand...
I can imagine they're implementing a push * notification feature that will silently track new information taken online (such a s mail, updates, news, etc.) which will be indicated as usual and clicking on the app will boot it into full mode.

I believe they did mention that apps never really shut down and run on very low RAM until you make them active again, hence they can remove the indicators so you won't be constantly trying to determine whether a program is running or not.

And when you do run it, it will continue where it left off.
 
I'm worried about this too. And i'm not worried about the indicators not existing, im worried about changing established mechanisms of handling open applications. People say that it will just take a tweak to bring the indicators back - but are you sure? I mean, if indeed they move onto a 'every app is running but not running at the same time' philosophy then there's no real way to actually indicate which apps are running, because there will essentially be no difference between running apps and not running, in a sense, no running apps at all. I don't know, maybe I'm old fashioned, but i really like managing myself what's running and what's not. I don't want certain apps to get suspended when i change focus to another app. If i need to, I'll quit them myself. And how would that work in the first place?? I mean, certain apps like iTunes will still need to be running. Are they gonna make it like iOS, like having applications only sending certain data, like audio etc? Just some thoughts on this. I still want to believe that the missing indicator was just a presentation thing and that it's not gonna happen. We'll see soon.

Also, i would love push notifications on the mac, maybe using growl. This way i won't have to run apps like Mail if i dont' need to.
 
Last edited:
I'm hoping for a whole new notifications UI across iPhone, iPad & Mac.

Something that does away with modal popups for notifications and is something akin to growl's music video theme. Fades in, fades out. But with a list view of all the notifications recieved that can be filtered by application/type and searched.
 
i hope they don't add i multitasking bar like they have in ios. its so much more convenient to close the apps from the dock
 
pfjellman said:
or get bettertouchtool -- does the same thing and it's free. highly customizable with the animation that accompanies the resize as well. and if you use a trackpad you get the added bonus of being able to define and create gestures to do stuff. i love it, works a treat.

http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=1722
Click to expand...

Hyperdock is also free and does the same thing Cinch does, in addition to win7 like previews when you hover over dock icons.
 
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