I find your interpretation of the dock interesting, especially because I've never used the dock.
- I don't use it to launch applications, I use launchpad for that.
- I don't use it to open files in a given app, I right-click and use the contextual menu for that.
- I don't use it to delete files, I use command-delete for that.
- I don't use it to get to downloads, I use the Finder for that.
- I don't use it to switch applications, I use command-tab for that.
- I don't know what else it's good for, or what I do instead.
I say this as someone who has used Mac OS X since it launched: the dock is useless to me; I have it hidden, and if there were a way to permanently kill it, I absolutely would.
Here 100 is how many seconds you will have to keep the cursor on the edge of the screen before the Dock appears. You could set it to 3 or 5 should you need the Dock sometimes but don't want to trigger it by accident.
[Edit: Autohide can be toggled on/off also with ⌥+⌘+D. You can use the combination to show/hide the Dock, paired with a high autohide delay.]
Thanks! Yep, I used to set the delay to a long time, but I gave it up because my post above is a slight lie -- when something pops up in the dock to notify me, I go to the dock to see what the heck it was. That one use case caused me to give up setting a long delay because of how f'ing annoying it is for something to pop up, and then need (I think I set it to) 5 seconds to figure out what it was.
