This article pulled me in immediately because I simply can't get enough of tweaking, customizing, and beautifying my system, and I find it equally captivating to see how others choose to tweak, customize and beautify theirs. Just this morning alone in fact, I spent nearly 3 hours on creating my newest wallpaper and scouring my favourite sites for new icons. This has become quite an important ritual for me. I do this at least once a month.

I wholeheartedly agree that as core component of any mac, the dock is a window to it's user's soul. There are few things so (nerdily) revealing as the collection of items people choose to place here; the items they rank as among their most oft used programs, apps and tools. It says so much about how they use their machine and what takes precedence in their day-to-day life (both professional and personal). Even further, I believe the icons they choose offer an even deeper insight into their personality. Be it for better, or for ugly.

Now, even though you'll never catch me EVER saying that Apple does anything halfway, I do have to sorta admit that the dock doesn't quite perform in all the ways that I personally wish it would. So, about a year ago now, I downloaded Workstrip. And though it resembles a dock, it's serves as much more, allowing me to organize workspaces, quickly retrieve and instantly view my most relied upon documents and files without having to launch their respective native programs. It was a little tricky toget the hang of, and I'm quite sure I still am not using it to it's full capacity, but it's proven itself useful enough that I have chosen to use it instead of my system's Dock.

With that being said, what do I choose to keep here? What icons represent my precious collection of programs and folders? Allow me to bare all:


(from left to right)

1. Workstrip file (containing recent apps, items and documents, and Workstip prefs)
2. Finder (well, hello happy mac!)
3. Home (I've attempted to switch up this icon, but always revert back to the original)
4. Adobe Creative Suite 2 folder (housing all CS2 program folders)
5. Illustrator CS2 (yes, they're also inside my CS2 folder, but the icons are so pretty!)
6. Photoshop CS2 (used almost daily)
7. my Bridge Collective folder (contains my design work, hence the pantone book)
8. my W.D. folder (my "day job" involves dealing w/$$$, therefore, a calculator icon)
9. the not-so-sweet suite that is a necessary evil: Microsoft Office
10. personal folder: holds passwords, icons, reading, writing... ergo Moleskine)
11. tools-that-help-when-i'm-busy-as-a-bee folder: (iSnip, snapNdrag, minuteur etc)
12. Preview (kept handy to drag files to featuring an everso attractive loupe)
13. Text Edit (for personal writing mostly... anything to keep from opening Word)
14. my music folder w/ iTunes, Limewire, Audio Hijack Pro, and so on
15. my movies folder holds torrents, movies and tv shows (loving my VHS tape icon!)
16. my pictures folder (don't you just love the little polaroids?)
17. iPhoto (with an alternative, cheery green icon)
18. Safari (I still use it periodically for viewing RSS feeds only)
19. Address Book (never was crazy about the original icon so I switched to this one)
20. Mail (why have a postage stamp when you can have this jolly-good red mailbox?)
21. my IM folder holds iChat, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL (but I really only launch Adium)
22. FireFox (was NOT a fan of the orange & blue fox-around-the-world icon)

(My fabulous icons are courtesy of a variety of talented icon designers, and can be downloaded at such rockin' sites as: pixelgirlpresents, interfaceLIFT, pixelpress media design, the icon factory.)