Change the Look of the Dock

I really dislike the new appearance of the Dock in Leopard -- the new 3D low-contrast glassy appearance. From what I hear, this was a matter of bitter debate at Apple, and that's good, because there's a built-in way to change it.

You may have noticed that the Dock changes when it's on the side of the screen. I like that appearance much better. It has better contrast and a much cleaner look, so I can recognize the icons more quickly.

You can get the dock-at-the-side appearance all the time by setting a preference from the command-line.

mike$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
mike$ killall Dock

Enjoy.


p.s.

Hey, SJ, if you're listening ... this choice belongs in the preference pane for the Dock, so that users who want (or need) higher contrast in the Dock could more easily improve their Mac OS X experience.

"Vote Robot Overlord: Like You Have a Choice."

Kung Fu Monkey:

John: ... No.
Tyrone: Listen, all I'm asking is that you give the idea a decent --
John: Robot overlords. You are "pro-robot overlords".
Tyrone: They bring world peace, universal health care --
John: At the cost of our freedoms!
Tyrone: MY POINT EXACTLY. We're already giving up our freedoms -- our right to privacy, gone. Warrantless arrest, gone. Right to have your vote counted is super-gone depending on the state you live in, right to stand trial, gone -- we have torture. We already have all the downsides of a supposed robotic takeover, but we're being cheated of the upside! I say, if this is the world we're gonna live in anyway, at least let the robot overlords have their shot. World peace, technological utopia -- and no crime! The robot overlords' crime control is swift and merciless.
...

There's more.

At Will Employment

This is the funniest thing I've heard all week.

Engineer: What is a "Performance Improvement Plan"?

VP of Engineering: That's HR covering their ass. It's a documented procedure to make sure that an employee knows what they must do in order to not be fired.

2nd Engineer: I thought we were "at-will employees".

VP of Engineering: You are. Get back to work.