Our love/hate relationship with Mac OS X's controversial Dock continues. On the one hand, we really want to love it unconditionally: it stores aliases, minimized windows, and running applications all in one convenient place; its magnification and Genie Effect features provide hours of entertainment to the easily amused; and above all else, it's gol-durned pretty. But unfortunately, every single time we switch back to Mac OS 9.1 or 8.6 after an extended Mac OS X session, we find ourselves a bazillion times more productive, and a big part of that difference can be described in two words: tabbed folders.

Yes, we admit it: we are confirmed and unrepentant tabbed folder junkies. If you're using Mac OS 8.5 through 9.1 and you're not using tabbed folders, you're missing out on one of the greatest inventions since the pogo stick. Just drag any Finder window to the bottom of the screen, and voilà-- it turns into a tab containing just the folder's name and small icon. Click on the tab (or drag a file onto it), and the whole window pops up, ready for use; when you're done, the window automatically collapses back into a handy space-saving tab again. We find this feature so useful, we literally have tabs all the way across the bottoms of our screens. Most are windows containing aliases to various applications grouped by type and set to "View as Buttons," for easy one-click launch and for dragging files onto.

Sadly, Mac OS X is sorely lacking when it comes to such efficient use of space. Things have been improving, though, such as when Apple added hierarchical folder menus to the Dock. Back in the public beta, sticking a folder in the Dock gave you an icon which, when clicked, opened the folder. Whoopee. Since Mac OS X 1.0, however, clicking and holding on a docked folder produces (eventually-- it's pretty slow) a hierarchical menu of that folder's contents. That's a step up, but it's still not quite as convenient as tabbed folders-- primarily because you can't drag a file onto the docked folder and through the menu hierarchy. If Apple adds just that one little feature, we'll be a lot happier.

But who says Apple has to stop there? Despite our continued DSL outage, faithful viewer Jay Runquist of MacAnonymous.com still sought us out to call attention to a nifty little story over at Mac OS Rumors: reportedly Apple is playing with the idea of bringing tabs to the Dock in full force. If the rumors are true, then a future version of the Dock might allow each user to define tabs that alter what items appear in the Dock when each one is clicked. Personally, we're not entirely sure how well that would work (since aliases to applications and running apps are currently all thrown together), but we're all for any improvements that will allow the Dock to hold more stuff in less space. If a tabbed Dock feature surfaces in Mac OS X 10.2 next year, we'll eagerly take it for a spin; maybe by then we can stop feeling guilty for preferring Mac OS 9's functional interface to Mac OS X's, despite Aqua's dazzling good looks.