Thoughts on Safari 4’s “Tabs on Top”

I was discussing the Safari 4’s “Tabs on Top” with friends at MacCamp this weekend.

By 24 hours, my Wife had given up on it. Another friend actually liked it. Most didn’t like it at all.

I did surmise, as I have before, that Apple is preparing “Tabs on Top” for all Cocoa applications. You might be able to collect windows for a given application into one window. Or maybe you can collect windows from different applications into one window. The UI would remain the same because almost every application document window has a title bar.

On the other hand, Apple is taking a big risk at pissing off their users and doing so for (currently) a measly 20 pixels in the Safari window. Meanwhile, the Dock takes up much, much more room to display badge icons, such as new Mail or Urgent To Dos.

So, do any of you know of a utility that will take all badge icon notifications and put them elsewhere, like a growl notification?

I want something that pops up when I have not done anything with the computer for 45 seconds or so, or when I wake the machine from sleep/screen saver lockout.

Then I could hide the dock entirely and not worry so much about the few pixels the Safari tab bar takes up.

At least until Apple makes Tabs on Top more prevalent. Let’s hope they have a better solution up their sleeves.