Andrew Heinzman
Why play a fullscreen game when you can do everything from the macOS Dock? iOS engineer Neil Sardesai recently showed off a version of Pong that’s fully playable inside its own Dock icon. Moving your mouse up or down adjusts the Pong paddle, and a small counter keeps score during gameplay.
The Pong macOS icon port takes advantage of Big Sur’s NSDockTile tool, which adds functionality to Dock icons when an app window is minimized. Neil Sardesai has experimented with the NSDockTile tool for other projects, including the Mouse Finder, an animated replacement for the macOS smiley face Finder icon that follows your mouse with its eyes.
Who says you can’t play games on a Mac 😌 pic.twitter.com/GNVDUd59bQ
— Neil Sardesai (@neilsardesai) February 19, 2021
But why stop at Pong? Neil Sardesai’s Twitter post inspired another developer, Chris Jones, to shove a playable version of Doom in the macOS Dock. I guess that answers the world’s greatest mystery—will the macOS Dock run Doom?
Anway, Neil Sardesai hasn’t released the Dock Pong app, but you can find some of the iOS engineers’ applications, including Mouse Finder, on GitHub and neilsardesai.com. You can also follow Neil Sardesai on Twitter to keep up with the developer’s antics.
Source: Neil Sardesai via Gizmodo
