So who the hell uses Magnification, anyways?

billybob

Registered
Just got 10.1 this morning, overall, very nice. I feel sorry for all that didn't get it. Apple really screwed up on this one...

However, one of my main disapointments with 10.1 is that the dock we have come to love and hate at the same time, is the exact same dock we've had since march. The only difference being that there are now "official" preferences for where the dock is (although apple for some reason left out the pinning preference.. very stupid in my opinion, I prefer the dock anchored to one end.. luckily tinkertool lets you still pin it).

ANYWAYS... Am I the only person disapointed by no improvements to the dock? I've read so many threads over at the macnn forums, and several web pages all loaded with great ideas for the dock. And apple managed to implement exactly zero of these. I sent them feedback with every good idea I came across, along with links to various sites that talked about what would make the dock better.

And here I am, looking at the dock prefs, and I got to thinking... Who in all hell uses the "Magnification" option?? Ok, it looks *really* nice, I admit that. But it's very... erm... inconvenient to use (for lack of a better phrase). Does anyone ACTUALLY use it? I mean I would seriously be surprised. When I first started using OSX last september (public beta), i had magnication on, but only very slight magnifaction, so that the dock items didnt go all over the place when you moused over them. But there's really no point to magnifaction if youre going to have it on really low. The problem being, when its on high, the icons move all over the damn place and its really hard to hit your target

And now im thinking.. wouldnt it be cool if you could turn on magnifaction only for minimized windows? That would be helpful. I dont need to see my app icons at 128x128, but seeing my minimized windows (since theyre hard to distinguish from one another when theres lots of them) at that size would be nice.

What would be even better is if there was no horizontal movement (or vertical if you got the dock on the side). Icons just grew bigger as you moused over them, but stayed stationary. Icons would overlap... but so what. maybe they couuld turn slightly transparent or something... or the one the mouse is currently over would be in front of the others. Or the only icon thats magnified is the one your mouse is currently on, and all the others are their normal size.

This post is getting ridiculously long... but what does everyone think? Is this a good idea? And shouldn't apple have made atleast SOME improvements to the dock?
 
I use magnification! So does everyone running OS X that I know! It's not that difficult to use with magnification slightly over half.

-JARinteractive
 
Originally posted by jarinteractive
I use magnification! So does everyone running OS X that I know! It's not that difficult to use with magnification slightly over half.

-JARinteractive

You lie! :)

j/k... ok so that makes one person...

I guess im really more interested in what people think of the "one icon at a time, no movement all over the damn place" idea (particularly when applied to minimized windows).
 
Originally posted by billybob
Who in all hell uses the "Magnification" option?? Ok, it looks *really* nice, I admit that. But it's very... erm... inconvenient to use (for lack of a better phrase). Does anyone ACTUALLY use it? I mean I would seriously be surprised. When I first started using OSX last september (public beta), i had magnication on, but only very slight magnifaction, so that the dock items didnt go all over the place when you moused over them. But there's really no point to magnifaction if youre going to have it on really low. The problem being, when its on high, the icons move all over the damn place and its really hard to hit your target

I use magnification, and like it. I set my dock icons to be tiny, and then when I need to use something, it explodes out so that I can see it (or to look at the CPU usage in detail, or to get a close-up on some minimized document). Then, when I'm done with the dock, it hides back down out of my way.

As for your only-magnify-minimized-windows idea; it's a good one, but not that much better than simply having magnification on as it is currently implemented.
 
Hello,

I had magnification on full at first for the cool and show-off factor. It got quite annoying after a while. I totally turned it off but sometjing was missing. It is now turned on ever so slightly. The magnification gives me mouse movement feedback - similar, God help me for saying this, to M$'s button hilghight stuff.
 
I use magnification, with a twist. I leave mag on, but set smaller than my dock size. This means that if my dock gets really teeny (from lots of items in it) it will magnify up a bit. This can be handy when there are lots and lots of apps running with minimzed windows.
 
I hide my dock so that I have the biggest, cleanest screen possible.

I use magnification.

I love it.

I think it is brilliant.

Most of all, it is an option. If you don't like it, don't use it.;)
 
It makes me dizzy... It's like some crazy roller coaster... :eek: I prefer not to use it...

And since we're on the topic of using dock features or not, does anyone animate their icons on startup? :p
 
Back
Top