Why I don't want to live without the Dock Launch indicators

One Lion feature that sounded very convincing to me, was the removal of the launch indicators of the Dock. If the Operating System can close and reopen cooperating applications at will, what good do the launch indicators ? Aren't they meaningless ?

But why did it interest me in the previous versions ? According to John Siracusa it would only have been of interest there at the times, when I am shutting down applications to conserve resources. But that almost never happens to me, because RAM is cheap and my CPU is powerful.

Actually as it turns out, I am really using the indicator for the information "is a window of that app open ?" and I am doing this consistently. I have a pile of partially obscured windows layered on top of it other, where I basically know where what could be where approximately (spatial memory). As an example my Address Book is usually somewhere in the top left corner.

A quick glance to the Dock tells me, if it makes sense to dig for it, thereby saving a length mouse round trip, or move to the dock and click the icon. Would I prefer two indicator dots, if two windows are open of the same application ? I don't know.

And then as a developer, it's really imperative to see if the application is really launching/launched or stuck/not launched. So I also need the "launching animation".