Get a Mac-like dock for Windows with ObjectDock or RocketDock

A lot of people like Macs because of its stylish desktop design and look for ways to emulate certain design elements in the Microsoft environment. One major difference between the Apple and Microsoft operating systems is the Macintosh dock. Fortunately, there are two programs that bring the Mac dock to the Windows system: ObjectDock or RocketDock.

What is a dock?

In case you don’t know what a dock is, let me explain it to you. A dock is like the taskbar in Windows but only with icons of programs installed on the computer. You can click on the icons and the program which belongs to it will start. Additional features are pointers below the icons that show which programs are running or an extra space at the right side which includes active documents or programs. It is also possible to install widgets on a dock that show you the weather, stock prices or your current system performance.

Windows dock with RocketDock

RocketDock developed by Punk Labs and is a free, smoothly animated, alpha-blended application launcher with good performance and a lot of addons. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. You can download additional icons, skins, docklets and lots of other stuff on the official project site.

Windows dock with ObjectDock

Another great dock for Windows XP and Windows Vista is ObjectDock by Stardock. The software enables users to organize their shortcuts, programs and running tasks into an attractive and fun animated dock. Same as with RocketDock, there are plenty dock extensions and themes available for download. ObjectDock also has a Plus version for $19.95 with even more features, but you should be fine with the free version.

Conclusion

While these two programs will allow you to get a Mac-like dock on your Windows PC, you have to check them out for yourself and make a comparison. They are both highly customizable and will certainly bring you a more Mac-like computer experience.
If you prefer the real deal, take a look at our Apple laptops and get more information about Macs and currently available notebooks.