Danny Novo
Dashboard, the widget interface for OS X, has always been a strange beast to me. Equal parts useless and obnoxious, I just didn’t understand why Apple would revive Control Panels. For those of you unfamiliar with Dashboard, this is an application screen in OS X that you call up with a key combination. On this layer are little widget-apps, small applications that do one thing, usually with an Internet connection. Like a package tracker. Or a weather forecaster. Or a flight tracker. Etc.
I think they’re stupid.
But now I get it.
Dashboard is the application interface for Apple’s upcoming thin client hardware. A cell phone. iPods with real ability. A tablet. Instead of gutting Aqua down to this level, they are building up the ability of WebKit to serve as the UI layer. WebKit is already present on Nokia’s S60 phones.
It is not that much of a leap. Your thoughts on my half-baked, uninformed musings?
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I guess I have a more positive view on widgets. I have a hot corner that calls up the Dashboard. I can pull up weather radar in a hurry.THere are a couple gallery sites that give you a random art piece on the dash board. I use couch potato to see what is on satelite networks. Another widget play guitar cords. Another a rift of blues per day.
I guess I am dispointed that there aren’t more widgets.
It was news to me that the Dashboard relates to future thin clients like cellphone and the ipod.
It would be news to me, too. This post is pure speculation, with a veneer of confidence to get people talking.
I’ve always felt Dashboard took up too many resources, and the really useful stuff (like the weather) was still a click or a mouse flick away. If it’s that important, I want it in my menu bar (like weatherman).
Thereis no doubt that most dashboard widgets are pretty, but I don’t get the metaphor. Some items are persistent, some require you to enter a query, some provide useful information, some provide a time-wasting function. It seemed so… haphazard for the new Apple. But if, and I say if, Apple plans for this layer to be an interface layer for a thin client, then this broad set of capabilities/broad lack of focus makes sense.
So that’s what I think.