Filed under: Software, Hacks, Mods, iPhone
Dock gets a spiffy new update
Things go fast in the iPhone world. Yesterday, I posted about Nate True's scrolling dock application. Today brings an entirely new generation of Dock. Dock 2.0 introduces a sunshine-bright hot spot on your iPhone's lower right corner. Drag out from there and the iPhone presents you with a curved selection arc. Move your finger along the arc to choose an application to open. The currently selected application echos just below the arc so you know which item you're selecting. It's a lot easier to use than it sounds and feels a lot like picking a name in the address book using the A-Z slide control.
And now the downside. The iPhone has little tolerance for running more than one non-Springboard application at a time. (For whatever reason, it refers to these applications as UnknownPurpleApps.) When more than one purple app attempt to launch, they conflict and the new app will not run. So what does this mean? When using Dock 2.0, you cannot use my screen shot utility or many other command-line apps.
You can easily enable and disable Dock 2.0 by using my launchctl GUI. Select com.natetrue.dock and choose unload -w to toggle it off or load -w to switch it back on.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kazumashell said 6:58PM on 8-31-2007
I don't like what they did with this. I wish they could have just fixed the bugginess of the scrolling one.
How do I run those command line apps? I don't know much about terminal, can anyone tell me what I enter?
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Jon Stieglitz said 7:01PM on 8-31-2007
i agree with kazumashell- the scrolling one is alot more functional had it been cleaned up
that said this one is still pretty cool
maybe dock 1.0 could still be an option in installer.app
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amiga_tone said 7:23PM on 8-31-2007
Okay, since the iPhone and the Mac are built on Mac OSX, why are we not seeing some of these ported to the Mac? No touchscreen on a Mac, duh, that's what a mouse is for.
I really think some of these basic apps are quite ingenious and there is room on the Mac for them.
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Daniel Lyons said 7:42PM on 8-31-2007
What's up with the Truth or Consequences, New Mexico tags?
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Bryan Law said 8:52PM on 8-31-2007
I've got an iSkin Revo for my iPhone, and with the case on, it is impossible to use this version of the dock. I can't touch the tiny corner because it's too small, and the corner of the case is right there. If it was a bit bigger, it'd be useful, but I can't even use it at all as it is :(
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Alex said 9:24PM on 8-31-2007
hmmm... purple apps... EPICS! SJ and the crew have been playing too much WoW and incorporating it into their products... see the keynotes he has it in his dock.
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Cycomachead said 9:35PM on 8-31-2007
Hey TUAW what about these:
http://code.google.com/p/mobilestudio/
those seem truly useful.
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SalizarMarxx said 9:42PM on 8-31-2007
Yes the iSkin Revo cover make this Dock unusable.. Sorry mate, I really enjoyed the 1.0 version, but sadly I had to uninstall 2.0...
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tino said 10:54PM on 8-31-2007
isnt this this a Leopard feature?
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Phreak said 10:31PM on 8-31-2007
hey erica i tried unload -w on dock 2.0 and my terminal still crashes. any idea why unload -w didn`t solve my problem?
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Cameron Hunt said 11:21PM on 8-31-2007
@Cycomachead
MobileStudio is nice but:
MobileFinder isn't very useful without MobileTextEdit and MobilePreview ... and thosedon't work very well yet. And MobileRSS crashed a lot, doesn't supprt ATOM, etc.
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Samuel said 10:08AM on 9-01-2007
anybody got a video working on this?
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seth exis said 11:11AM on 9-01-2007
The purple apps thing is an error message referencing LibPurple.
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will said 3:17PM on 9-01-2007
I was really enjoying this for a while but it looks like the latest "update" reverted it to the old style. Lame!
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bmoney said 3:26PM on 9-01-2007
Yep, Dock 2.0 is no longer available via Installer.app and I foolishly thought it had an "update". Now I don't have this cool app anymore. Dev, please repost it!
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