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Apple's Dashboard Widget Download Site for OS X Broken

I still find Dashboard very useful as a very fast overlay that brings up information without disturbing what you're doing in your main OS X interface. I especially get a lot of use out of the Dashboard clippings feature from Safari. I found a weather graphic I like a lot and made a clipping of it, and when I want to see it quickly I hit one button on my keyboard and it's there. No fishing through tabs, no switching to my browser. One button.
 
portishead said:
Good I never used them, and it was a waste of a feature. Glad Apple realizes this and moves on instead of being stubborn. It's a good sign and gives me hope even if it's just a small thing.
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Yes, so just because YOU don't use them, Apple should get rid of them? I use many widgets every day. Calculator, dictionary, stickies, converter and color picker, plus others. All these features are just a gesture away.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
I used to use and make widgets, but then I discovered that menu bar apps can offer the same functionality of widgets without the inconvenience of having to open the entire dashboard just for a single widget.
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Yeah, but that starts to get cluttered fast, and the available real estate in the menu bar is severely limited to begin with. Also a lot of stuff doesn't need to be ALWAYS in your face. As far as "the inconvenience of having to open the entire dashboard" — you're aware it's a single button?
 
Widgets are so dumb, i would much rather use a fully functional app that takes the same amount of time to open, i haven't used widgets since playing with them when they first came out
 
Still not fixed?

It's been down at least 2 weeks now. I noticed it when I installed an SSD into my iMac and was doing a clean OS install. I couldn't seem to download my old widgets so I just assumed it was user error or browser issues.
 
I like being able to hit one key on my keyboard (using wired aluminum) and being able to see Radar in Motion. Very useful and quick!
 
I wish Apple would stop being so fickle. They keep introducing useful things and then discontinuing them. This leaves those of us who use tools or data related to these things in the lurch. Apple is not to be trusted with anything that matters. They are becoming just an entertainment company and not all that great a one at that.
 
macs4nw said:
I'm confused too! I regularly use several myself, and find them quite useful.
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I like them on my desktop a la Windows [ducks]. There is a widget to take any widget out of Dashboard and places it on your desktop. Love it.
 
Feed Me said:
I still use dashboard frequently for weather and world clocks.

I hope they don't let it die, or kill it!
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Agreed. I like having my dashboard with weather widgets and stock widgets and no windows at all, and I peek at it many times a day.

But that widgets site has been "broken" for a long time. The redirect behavior for the links is new, but many of its links have been broken or lead to dead sites for years.

I hope this is just a refresh situation, but widgets and the Dashboard have had the whiff of death about them for a while now. A pity.
 
The problem with Dashboard widgets is that they're hard to find, not updatable, difficult to find cool and interesting widgets.

All of these can be fixed by moving widgets to its own section on the App Store.

I use Dashboard to monitor my deliveries with Delivery Status by JuneCloud, Dashcode to monitor a specific area of our company site, weather and calendar.
 
Amazing Iceman said:
i use it too:

- Weather
- Time Machine Buddy
- Calendar
- TV Show Tracker
- EasyEnvelopes
- Translation

So yeah, I would miss it too. My best guess is that Widgets will be improved and distributed through the AppStore for safety.
I would expect this change to happen in 10.8.4 and 10.9
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Thank you for posting your widgets names. I never knew there was a Time Machine Buddy, and since my TM has been acting a bit weird lately, this will help me log what it's doing. Just downloaded it.
 
If Apple decide to keep Dashboard widgets support, I hope they add a section to the Mac App Store, where developers can upload widgets. It would be a much more convenient and better place to download them rather than from the Apple website.
 
curmudgeon32 said:
As far as "the inconvenience of having to open the entire dashboard" — you're aware it's a single button?
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Yes, but it involves your entire screen being taken over by dashboard and having to load every widget that you currently have open in it. I like having a 20x20 icon in the corner that gives me a little bit of info and expands when I click on it to tell me more. I used to use the calendar widget, but now I use fantastical. I used to use the calculator widget and converter widget, but now I use other menu apps for those. The weather widget got replaced with my iPhone which has some nice weather apps on it.
 
iStat and Post-it's are reason enough for me to keep it.

And what am I gonna do without PetLobster?? :O :O

"Come for the freak, stay for the food." :D
 
DavidLeblond said:
Simulator can't run ARM binaries, which is what the app store apps are. They would all have to be recompiled to support both architectures.
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Or emulated. I think we've seen that happen a couple times before... ;)

Simplicated said:
Unless Apple comes up with a very creative way to run (maybe stream?) apps that are on the App Store, it is not possible. Apps in the iOS Simulator are compiled for Intel.
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Not that creative: just an ARM emulator on Intel. Just like they had a PPC emulator on Intel and a 68k emulator on PPC. (See above.) I imagine this would be even easier since they're emulating mobile-on-desktop rather than desktop-on-desktop. (Emulating Intel on PPC, as I recall, was not very fast. I don't think PPC on Intel would be very fast either, except Rosetta was quite tolerable for me, possibly because by the time Apple switched, Intel was way ahead of their old PPC choices.)

EDIT: I'm not saying that I think this will happen, just that it's not that far-fetched. Of course, if it does, I envision the ultimate solution being "univeral"/"fat" binaries compiled for both architectures--also something we've seen happen before.
 
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Works for me

Don't know what Apple is going to do with Widgets, but right now, the download site seems to work. Just another temporary outage maybe?
 
Hoping it's just maintenance of some sort to prepare for a Dashboard related announcement during the WWDC festivities in 10 days. I rarely use widgets at home but to be fair I usually use my iPhone or my Mac mini TV, rarely am I doing proper work at home. At work though I keep several widgets up that I check quickly throughout the day by three finger swiping on my Magic Trackpad...
  • Weather
  • Calendar
  • World Clock - Set to Cupertino time for scheduling with our Apple rep and to plan for keynotes
  • Stock Tracker
  • Converter
  • Daily Joy of Tech comic

Sure I can get by without all this but it would be great to see Apple improve and breathe some life back into this neglected feature.
 
Habberkuk said:
No they aren't. If you try to download a widget you will get redirected to Apple's download page (http://www.apple.com/downloads/)

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Apple please don't kill the dashboard :( I use it everyday with a lot of widgets...
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Just downloaded Radar In Motion without issue.

I personally use Weather, Convert, Stocks (quick glance at some global indices in the morning) and Calculator (for quick calcs) regularly.
 
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