Mac Shmack. Dock Shmock. 11-24-09

As the rest of my blogs have likely made very clear, I am a fan of the products designed by Microsoft, especially the more recent, “shinier”, products. This continues with Windows 7’s new Taskbar.

First, let’s get something out of the way. It is as close to a rip-off of the Mac OS X dock as Microsoft could do without it being a one-to-one port of it. Part of me appreciate the gusto necessary to make that drastic of a design choice, going so far as using a feature of a competitor and acknowledging their good design decisions.

With that out of the way, I’d like to touch on the differences and what makes it such an expertly designed feature of Windows 7. The biggest difference is that it takes up less vertical space than the Dock’s default setting and the “background” is wallpaper unlike OS X’s “platform.” Also, by giving the user a set area to place icons gives a better idea of how much space he or she can use, as opposed to a smaller size that a user must discover its ability to stretch on his or her own.

From personal experience, a reason I have never been interested in switch to Mac from Windows has been the differences in UI design theory. However, with the Dock-like taskbar in 7, Microsoft may end up biting themselves in the butt. Windows 7 on a whole is a very Mac-like experience, where it is aesthetically appealing while also being fast and easy to use. With Apple being more and more aggressive with their pricing, Apple may be able to make in-roads to Windows users thanks to none other than Microsoft.