Windows 7 Taskbar Problem

I tried out the Windows 7 public beta today and immediately noticed this ridiculous behaviour.

The following video illustrates what happens when you try to minimized a "pinned" (similar to XP/Vista "Quicklaunch") application to the tray. This shows how utterly confusing this common Windows behaviour is going to become once Windows 7 comes out. Hopefully Microsoft will rethink the taskbar before releasing the OS.

Another related side-issue:

You cannot (easily) open multiple instances of a pinned application (unless it minimized to tray, ironically enough). The "pinned" icon will become the actual taskbar window, so clicking it afterwards will toggle minimize/maximize, not open a new instance. The only way to open a new instance is to right click and then click "Open". This will be extremely annoying for users who are used to opening multiple windows of IE, for instance (those who don’t tab-browse).

I’m not sure if Microsoft forgot that in Windows (unlike OS X), programs can be opened multiple times, and in fact it’s quite common to do so. They seem to be trying way too hard to emulate Apple in this OS that they forgot Windows is not (and should not become) OS X.

Edit (01/11/09): Turns out the QuickLaunch still exists, I just didn’t realize it was so easy to get back. Read about it here. The solution to the above issue is to just avoid pinned apps altogether and stick to the QuickLaunch.