Create a folder, and place aliases of all the apps you want to open at once, your "suite" of apps. Set the folder to icon view.
Place the folder in the dock.
Now, to launch a single app, right click.
To launch all of the apps at once, left click, and a window of the folder in icon view will appear. Hit "Apple-A" to select all of the apps, then double click on one in the group. All of them will launch.
True, it's not as easy as it could be, but it's not hard at all IMO.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, it's a not a nightmare or anything -- what you've described is what I currently do, and it works fine. It's just not as elegant as it could be. (I was trying to avoid the "e" word, but there it is.) It's like currently how you can't drag and drop something into a Docked folder. It's not awful to click the folder open first, navigate, then move the file, but not great either. It can clearly be better. Same here.
My interest in having dock groups, beyond saving the 3 steps of clicking a folder, hitting apple-A, and then double-clicking is having the abilities to open and quit an entire groups of apps at once, and -- addressing dock clutter -- shrink a group into a single icon when the group's apps aren't running.
There are probably other features that would be first priority (e.g. wacky window miniaturization), but I'm curious how Apple will address some of the Dock's other shortcomings. Nearly everyone -- that is everyone who doesn't just loathe the Dock and try to avoid it -- agrees it could be better, but there's a lot of discord and vagueness on just how.
BTW. Love LaunchBar, though personally I don't find myself using it as much I thought I would. But it's a great little app.
Comments
<strong>
Actually this isn't as hard as you make it sound.
Create a folder, and place aliases of all the apps you want to open at once, your "suite" of apps. Set the folder to icon view.
Place the folder in the dock.
Now, to launch a single app, right click.
To launch all of the apps at once, left click, and a window of the folder in icon view will appear. Hit "Apple-A" to select all of the apps, then double click on one in the group. All of them will launch.
True, it's not as easy as it could be, but it's not hard at all IMO.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, it's a not a nightmare or anything -- what you've described is what I currently do, and it works fine. It's just not as elegant as it could be. (I was trying to avoid the "e" word, but there it is.) It's like currently how you can't drag and drop something into a Docked folder. It's not awful to click the folder open first, navigate, then move the file, but not great either. It can clearly be better. Same here.
My interest in having dock groups, beyond saving the 3 steps of clicking a folder, hitting apple-A, and then double-clicking is having the abilities to open and quit an entire groups of apps at once, and -- addressing dock clutter -- shrink a group into a single icon when the group's apps aren't running.
There are probably other features that would be first priority (e.g. wacky window miniaturization), but I'm curious how Apple will address some of the Dock's other shortcomings. Nearly everyone -- that is everyone who doesn't just loathe the Dock and try to avoid it -- agrees it could be better, but there's a lot of discord and vagueness on just how.
BTW. Love LaunchBar, though personally I don't find myself using it as much I thought I would. But it's a great little app.