How do I change dock design in Mountain Lion?

Question

Hello Everyone,
    I am new to the support community so pleae forgive me if I do not know all the rules of posting.  Here is my question.  When my MacBook Pro just had Lion on it, I was able to change the design of the dock.  I had a beauty wood-grain dock with rounded ends almost like a coffee table.  When I upgraded to Mountain Lion, I lost my dock design and was unable to apply my favorite wood-grain design to the dock.  My question for this community is how can I change the appearance of the dock on Mountain Lion? I would love to be able to apply some other dock designs than just the apple Mountain Lion default.  Please note that I am not a computer wiz, so lament terminology would be most appreciated for your response.  Thank you in advance for your help.

Answer 1

Dear cgn1026,
"Dude", I'm chilled out..just stating my opinion".
I admire you optimism, however it shows me that you're not a professional user. As programmer and someone who has been in the business long enough, I wouldn't consider Linux complicated. Linux is heading into the right direction. They adapted the business model of their Unix family member OS X (Linux is Unix-Like). Mac OS X is based upon the Mach kernel, certain parts from FreeBSD's (Open-Source) and Part of and NetBSD's implementation of Unix were incorporated in NeXTSTEP, the core of Mac OS X. So technically speaking OS X is as complicated as FreeBSD & Linux, the only difference is that Apple has developed it to be an "everyday user" friendly OS. Under the hood, for pro user's like me it's the same powerful OS that we need, to do our daily tasks and I'm not talking about syncing our iOS devices .
Linux has gotten the message and Ubuntu is a good example, they are working towards a user friendly Unix-Like environment. Indeed, it is not perfect, one shouldn't forget though that it is open-source, meaning it doesn't cost anything and highly customizable both in use & desktop appearance. Imagine what they could do, if they had the means of a company like Apple.
I totally agree with you when it comes to Windows, I am not a big fan, but at least their users get a few colors to choose from.
Now regarding the dock, the new OS X dock is rendered by your graphics card's GPU, in order to apply a custom dock, one would have to develop an application which disables dock rendering by the graphics card, but this will most-likely interfere with your desktop experience, since dashboard (and a few other functions in the new OS) depend(s) on the new rendering process. Both the dock and dashboard have been rewritten from ground up. Even if one dares to develop an app to address this problem, it wouldn't be just a tremendous amount of work, but also a certain violation of Apple's software agreement.
CandyBar does not modify your system, it only replaces icons and images, thus in compliance with Apple's software agreement. The app that we would need in order to change the dock in OS X Mountain Lion, is not replacing icons/images but rather modifying the system itself.
Thanks for your input, it's much appreciated! And I'm happy for you that the new OS is to your liking.
Have a nice day,
Stu