The Shiny little dots in Mac Dock .
I was wondering at my Mac Dock. There were some Shiny dots at the bottom of some of the applications. I didn’t have any clue what they meant . I played around for sometime and later realised that the shiny dots were there only at the bottom of Application icon which were open . Basically the Applications wth shiny dots were running at that moment .
So this forms a new tip ( does everyone know it ? , i didn’t know it because i have macphobia ) - Shiny dots at the bottom of Application icon at Dock indicate that the particular Application is running ( foreground or background ).
In windows its pretty simple to know which appilcations are running by simply looking at the Windows task bar mostly. Or there can be background running programs in windows which lie in System Tray . Some other programs can be found at Windows Task Manager window .
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Do you really think navigating to the Task Manager and finding out whether Firefox [or any other App] is running is better than having a shiny dot on the dock ??
Of course, the features of Task Manager and Activity monitor can be compared side-by-side, but a shinny dot is definitely a visual indicator not available in windows.
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@ Above . First really a good Name - appreciate that. Even in Mac to know which background task are running you need to open Activity monitor. The point is in windows the Foregound applications are seen at the Task bar ( at the bottom of windows screen ) and not the Task manager . the Task bar contains only the open foreground Programs . But in Mac The Dock ( Task bar equivalent ) has applications which may not be running foreground . To know which Apps are running we need to take care of these shiny dots . The Dock Application icons in mac doesn’t mean that its running or open . I had to use mac for some 4-5 months to find out that these dots are indicative of the application running foreground ( quite late though ). So i can say that its not as easy and simple as windows to find out open / running applications in mac just looking at the screen .
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I hear you now… The Mac ‘Dock’ it not an outright equivalent of the Task bar. I like to think of the ‘Dock’ as a combination of features of the ‘task bar’, ‘desktop-shortcut’, ‘Running Application indicator’ and a placeholder for minimized apps
I agree that it is definitely not a smooth transition for some people who have never used anything other than Windows. Esp. since there are things to be un-learned which Windows has taught us.
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I agree that Dock is not the exact equivalent of Windows Task Bar . But for a new user of Mac it seems its equivalent . May be because of its location .