Hi there,
First post on these forums, so I'll start with a very quick intro! I'm Matt Gemmell, a freelance Mac OS X and iPhone developer, and long-time fan of NEXTSTEP (feel free to take a peek at my blog (
http://mattgemmell.com/), or my business site (
http://instinctivecode.com) to verify my credentials!). I chose this specific forum since my request pertains primarily to the functionality of the NEXTSTEP Dock.
I'm currently embarking on a personal project to create a new dock application for Mac OS X, which will hopefully combine the most useful functionality and principles from both the Mac OS X and NEXTSTEP Docks (a lofty and somewhat vague goal, I know). To that end, I've recently been conducting a survey of Mac OS X and NEXTSTEP users, to find out what features they like and dislike in their respective docks.
I've been fortunate enough to have more than 400 responses so far (you can respond to the survey yourself (
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cDNKWVVwVnpXLUVZYW9naUs4ekdxVFE6MA..), or you can take a look at the results so far (
http://mattgemmell.com/2009/02/18/dock-survey-results)), and one unsurprising thing I've found is that NEXTSTEP users are so far very under-represented. :) Thus, I'd invite your feedback, if you have any thoughts you'd like to share regarding what you enjoy about the NEXTSTEP dock (and/or Fiend, etc), and even what features you wish it had.
I've recently been refreshing my memory of NEXTSTEP via digging out my old NS 3.3 (and indeed Rhapsody DR2) installation CDs and installing them in VMware Fusion 2 on Mac OS X; I've taken a bunch of annotated screenshots (
http://quicksnapper.com/mattgemmell/) as I've been rediscovering it, and reminding myself of its elegance. I must admit I've been spending far more time in NS than strictly necessary, and even having a look around for black hardware.
The dock on NEXTSTEP does have its flaws, but there's a certain quality of modular simplicity that made a big impression on me. For all the Mac OS X dock's functionality, its effort to be all things to all men leads to it not doing any one thing particularly well; a criticism that can't be levelled at its ancestor on NEXTSTEP. I hope I can create something that has some of the best of both, and I'd welcome any feedback any of you would care to offer on the topic.
Cheers,
-Matt
Weird thing is that yesterday I was thinking of implementing my own Next-like Dock for Mac OS X.
While I love & use Mac OS X daily, if I had the choice of running Mac OSX or NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP w/ BSD 4.4 userland, I'd take the latter. :-) Personally I love the NeXT interface over Mac OSX. It's cleaner, & simpler. I never get tired of spending time using a NeXT. Take care.
Interestingly enough I was fielding some complaints from OS X haters that were related to the OS X dock just the other day. All of their complaints about the OS X dock would have gone away if they had been using a NeXT style dock. NeXTstep's dock is much more about function than eye candy and a lot of Windows users would be happy with a NeXTstep style dock imo.