But I suspect that if they'd originally put the Dock on the left then it'd probably be there today. Even for right-handed people.

WM has a Clip which functions a little like a dock but the app icons are local to each screen. The Clip is, by default on the left. I left it there and put things on it, too. The value of the Dock was that the apps were there in every screen. The value of the Clip was that the apps weren't.

I may have been more inclined to get used to WindowMaker's Dock because a) I'm right-handed and b) it lives on the right of the screen but the reason I choose to mimic it there has less to do with the fact that I'm right-handed than that I had gotten used to it there and found it useful and convenient.

Besides, because of how we read (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), our brains associate different importances and roles to things on the left and right edges. With the left-aligned text usually in use in applications, one's attention tends to be towards the left. Having the Dock on the right helpfully and automatically dissociates it with the main content on the screen. I'm not as convinced as you are that mere right-handedness can be used to explain such a preference. :-) OTOH, the vast majority of the population down through the ages being right-handed has undoubtedly influenced the writing system in use in European languages... (-:

Wade.