https://www.stardock.com/objectdock/odock-nov02.jpg

This week.

Basics about this beta:

# Freeware

# Should be vastly faster than anything out there.

# Supports two engines: GDI+ / Custom (so even on a crummy S3 laptop like mine it's lightning fast because I can use the custom engine).

# Lots of little polish niceties. When IM wants you, it bounces. When you drag something far enough off of it, it puffs into smoke. Drag things not so far away they fly back into place smoothly. Lots of other things like that. Launched apps bounce while being loaded.

Why create this?

Stardock's had this in its internal labs for 2 years. Basically for learning what could and couldn't be done with future parts of Object Desktop visually we wanted to see if Windows was capable of doing "the dock". So we made it. But we never bothered to release it since it is so heavily influenced by the Mac and contrary to what some Mac fanatics say, we don't try to make software that exploits their innovation.

But since there have been several other of these dock-like apps released and Apple hasn't seemed to care about that, we thought we'd release this as freeware so that others can give it a try.

If you really like working like this, I strongly suggest you consider getting a Mac. The latest ones are quite affordable. I now have an iMac for instance. I think that's probably one of the reasons Apple hasn't gone after these dock programs is because it's free advertising. But anyway, it does offer a different way of working.

I can't imagine though using this without using Object Desktop together with it (for at least using ObjectBar for a replacement Start bar).