Comments on: Tiger Dashboard: First Impressions

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 03:29:39 +0000

James, I agree that widgets are slower to start up than I’d like–but I’ve still found a few widgets that are useful enough to me to fire up Dashboard for.

As for keyboards, I doubt Apple’s ever going to add many more special-purpose keys than they already have (volume, screen brightness, etc.). Rather than add an iTunes key, they’ll just ship the Front Row remote with every Mac at some point. If you do want a keyboard with more keys, Logitech sells several that have Mac-specific markings and loads of extra keys–I’m typing on one right now, as a matter of fact.

By: James

James — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 01:27:10 +0000

I find the latest dashboard toys slow and just an ugly alternative to having your web browser open. For things like the iTunes widget, it would be better to have the icon for controls at the top of the screen like you can get with third party plugins, (You Control iTunes). What would be a more beneficial update would be to the official Mac keyboard and mouse. Apple have only just got to a scroll mouse! There are no hotkeys on the keyboard for iTunes/Safari/Mail unlike keyboards aimed at PC’s. The latest Apple Keyboard is missing the Shutdown button which I so loved when I bought my first Mac. I know you can click ‘ctrl+eject’ but one button is better.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 25 May 2005 19:15:44 +0000

Definitely a matter of working style preference. I meet someone every day who has a different working style than I do, and it's always surprising.

Actually, I have found one useful thing - I have set up Weather widgets for several cities I regularly travel to, so that if I'm running out the door and want to know what to wear, I can just whack the keyboard, and boom, there's the weather.

Maybe it also has to do with the fact that my systems aren't that fast, so loading the widgets isn't all that fast each time I bring up Dashboard.

By: Joe Hughes

Joe Hughes — Tue, 24 May 2005 20:01:16 +0000

It's true that whether you like Dashboard's separate layer or not depends on your work habits. If you do want your widgets on the same screen, you can always use the debug mode, Amnesty Widget Browser, or Konfabulator.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 24 May 2005 19:50:17 +0000

Apple’s design decision to put Dashboard widgets on a separate “layer” that you can call up makes them much more useful to me than Konfabulator, because there truly is never enough screen real estate, and the Konfabulator widgets immediately got smothered under other windows when I tried to use them.

Interesting. This decision has the exact opposite effect on me. I find Dashboard Widgets almost totally useless because I have to stop what I'm doing in order to look at them. (I had a bit more to say on this topic elsewhere.)