OS X dock

The Dock, displayed at the bottom of the screen or vertically if changed under the Dock preferences, functions to organize and access programs, folders and files. This is a lot more elegant, clearer and is better organized than icons that appear on what can otherwise be a cluttered desktop.

Programs (or shortcuts to programs) such as Finder, Dashboard, Mail, Safari and so on are represented on the left of a dividing line whilst open items are represented on the right of the dividing line (providing the default position of the Dock hasn't been changed).

Programs in the Dock can be opened by clicking on them once. Double clicking is not required.

The general appearance and behaviour of the Dock can be modified in many ways by clicking on the Apple menu (Apple icon at the uttermost left of the screen) followed by 'Dock', Here the position of the Dock can be changed from default to 'position on left' and 'position on right'. Other preferences that can be accessed through Dock Preferences include 'Magnification', a nice feature that magnifies icons that the cursor hovers over (making them easier to differentiate between un-selected icons) and, Minimize using either 'Genie effect' or 'Scale effect'. Genie effect minimizes open programs or applications by shrinking them in a way similar to a genie going back into its lamp.