Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Dashboard Exposed
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
drewbert said:I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the videos posted on this thread were taken at 640x480 resolution. Just by the looks of the icons, menu bar, and dock. So yeah, the widgets are gonna look huge in this case. I'd expect they'll look nice and tiny on that 30" LCD.
granted that, but I did try to take that into account before posting and I just watched the keynote and they are huge there too.
of course im just going to shutup anyway, cause almost everyone here at the office pointed out that i like everything on my desktop small anyway (icons and dock as small as possible) and should quit whining
.
macfan76 said:
They'd better get moving fast! Mid-2005 is fast approaching
That ocean ripple effect is TOTALLY unnecessary and just shows to me unfortunately that apple makes things pretty but not always useful...
No, sometimes merely fun, and optional. Not unlike desktop pictures and animated screen savers and iTunes Visualizer
Dashboard does not equal Konfabulator
K is still superior. It has all the functionality of Dashboard plus more.
For example, let's say you want to develop a widget that sits on your desktop and shows you the currently playing iTune? Dashboard can't do that.
What if you want a widget to always display the current temperature all the time? Dashboard can't do that.
What if you wanted the stock-ticker to be always visible? Dashboard can't do that.
In these instances with Dashboard, you'd have to press a button or move your mouse to the corner. K gives you the option.
And what if you wanted to develop a little application launcher widget? K can (and has) but again, with D, you'd first have to press a shortcut key.
I do expect, possibly by the time D comes out, that it will have the option of always visible widgets, but for now it doesn't.
And for that reason K is still superior.
edit: geez my typos are bad today!
K is still superior. It has all the functionality of Dashboard plus more.
For example, let's say you want to develop a widget that sits on your desktop and shows you the currently playing iTune? Dashboard can't do that.
What if you want a widget to always display the current temperature all the time? Dashboard can't do that.
What if you wanted the stock-ticker to be always visible? Dashboard can't do that.
In these instances with Dashboard, you'd have to press a button or move your mouse to the corner. K gives you the option.
And what if you wanted to develop a little application launcher widget? K can (and has) but again, with D, you'd first have to press a shortcut key.
I do expect, possibly by the time D comes out, that it will have the option of always visible widgets, but for now it doesn't.
And for that reason K is still superior.
edit: geez my typos are bad today!
wnurse said:
Thanks for proving the point.
Correct: nothing is truly "new". Any "new" thing will have bits and pieces of "old" things. That is precisely the point.
As konfabulator did not spring forth from Zeus's mind fully formed, neither did Dashboard. Of course there are similarities with existing products. However, from what I've seen of Dashboard, the fraction which is similar to Konfabulator is minimal, and, for the most part, just as similar to previous efforts by Apple, Microsoft, and others. The most striking similarity is in the gaudy look of the widgets, frankly. And that's also the most likely feature of Dashboard to be overhauled before Tiger's release.
mudflapper said:
This kills me.
Little applets like this have a limited variety of common names:
Applets, Widgets, Desktop Objects, Desktop Accessories. In current use, they are generally referred to as widgets or applets.
When Safari put tabs into their interface, I suppose you think they should have called them "Web-Site Handles" or "Quick-Page-Flip Doohickies", right?
Of all the petty complaints ... not to carp on you, but I've seen at least a dozen posters make this same silly comment and I can't take it any more!
***Cupertino, start your photocopiers!***
***Cupertino, start your photocopiers!***
http://www.konfabulator.com/
Their homepage seems to ressemble someone else's fun and jokes...
***Cupertino, start your photocopiers!***
http://www.konfabulator.com/
Their homepage seems to ressemble someone else's fun and jokes...
jeez
That is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen. All these effects are just gonna have us all requiring dual 2.5ghz g5s to run a ripple effect smoothly. Apple used to be famous for function so ever elegantly masked with aesthetics. Now where's the function? (Yes, yes, the Stickies' flip serves a function, but that doesn't make my point.)
That is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen. All these effects are just gonna have us all requiring dual 2.5ghz g5s to run a ripple effect smoothly. Apple used to be famous for function so ever elegantly masked with aesthetics. Now where's the function? (Yes, yes, the Stickies' flip serves a function, but that doesn't make my point.)
ChrisH3677 said:
Bringing all of them to the foreground is useful because finding one of them is too difficult unless you adopt your workflow around keeping your K widgets always visible.
IMHO, if you ever really only want one of your K widgets, Konfabulator's the wrong solution for you. But more on that later.
IMHO, that's the key difference between the two, which reveals the underlying design goals. Dashboard is for getting to common utility widgets fast. And, oh, it can do stuff that you might want to monitor on occasion like stock prices and a web cam ... but it's not for something you're going to be staring at all day. Konfab is designed around the principle that there are lots of little bits of information you want to have in your face 100% of the time. It's awkward to start up new widgets, or close existing widgets (especially if they are in the "float" layer, which apparently disables all interaction, at least in 1.7). They aren't aimed at "quick utilities"; they are aimed at low-overhead monitoring apps.
Now, personally, if I'm going to be monitoring CPU usage or whatever, a small, lightweight app makes about as much sense as having a fairly heavy-weight toolkit with a super-lightweight widget running inside. It really only makes sense when you have multiple such widgets to run, where the savings per-widget makes up for the resources the toolkit itself takes up.
Again, personally, I just never have such a use for it. Weather checking? Yeah, that's nice too. But running a heavy-weight toolkit for something I just want to be easy to check on (I don't need the weather always staring me in the face ... if I wanted that I'd go outside!) is a bit beyond silly.
My desktop space is precious. Keeping things there that I don't need just doesn't make sense.
So, again, for me, Dashboard is the better fit. If Konfab is a better fit for you: great! That's kinda the whole point. You pick one, or the other, or even heaven forbid use both.
Dashboard widgets can do almost anything because they can get completely out of my way when I want. K will be limited by staying on screen.
Well, no crap!
K makes lots of sense if you have lots of widgets running all the time (and you actually monitor the widgets). Good for you!
I think K would be in some major trouble if it took more resources than Safari, which is a full-featured web browser which could just as easily host all those widgets itself! The whole idea of K is that those bits of information are too small to justify going through a web browser with all its overhead to get to.
However, I've got a Rev A dual-2.0GHz G5. Konfabulator is running, with nothing but the it-shipped-with-it weather widget right now. Activity Monitor shows that K is taking 1.5-2% of my CPU resources. Completely idle. That's insane, if all I want is a weather widget, or a CPU monitoring widget, etc. That's insane, if all I want is a calculator widget handy when I need it and a calendar to glance at every once in a while.
Is K a resource hog? It is if you don't use it as designed. If you just need one or two widgets, or just need them open on occasion, K is a poor solution for you.
goodtimes5 said:
Yeah and everybody complained when Quartz Extreme was introduced, but that turned out ok... if the GPU is sitting there, you might as well use it. Apple claims it scales down nicely.
From http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html
"The performance gains and features supported by Core Image ultimately depend on the graphics card. Graphics cards capable of pixel-level programming deliver the best performance. But Core Image automatically scales as appropriate for systems with older graphics cards, for compatibility with any Tiger-compatible Mac."
macfan76 said:I dont get it... They have a webcam viewer but they dont have a weather ticker yet. That ocean ripple effect is TOTALLY unnecessary and just shows to me unfortunately that apple makes things pretty but not always useful...
I don't think the ripple effect is useless.
Those widgets, despite how they look on a tiny screen, aren't big. When you open most apps, you have two visual indications: the menu bar changes, and the main window of the app (usually) pops up.
Neither of these things is true for widgets. They pop up, somewhere on your screen (wherever it was you last closed them from and/or wherever there is space for them to pop up). The ripple effect gives visual indication that (1) yes, you really did click on that widget's name, and (2) here's where the widget went.
IMHO, what this is a perfect example of is people dissing eye candy without having tried the thing out ... the eye candy is there for a reason.
gwangung said:
That's a good one, now just tell that to Steve Jobs and every freak who whines about M$ basing their products on Apple's 'ideas' all the time. Or for that matter, K with their mockery of the Tiger banners at yesterday's WWDC... (on K's website)
good quote
Before you actually use it, it's going to be difficult to accurately gauge how a GUI element/style is going to affect your work.
Think about this ripple effect. On one level it is absolute eye candy.
But, consider now what is accomplished by that visual, and what the purpose of the dashboard and widgets is. Here's a brief scenario:
- I'm working on a project and have several windows open. At the moment i have six full-sized windows open for four different apps. Usually it's ten to twenty windows/palettes of assorted sizes and five to ten apps simultaneously.
- A widget, no matter how huge they seem, is quite small when compared to a window. If one or more small widgets were to suddenly appear floating on my screenspace, they'll blend in rather quickly with the 'background' visual of app windows (plus text, window controls, tables, graphics, etc.).
Instead, the ripple effect distorts everything but the widget in question for a moment, allowing my eye and attention to be focused on the small item.
I'm voting for "ingenious and useful in practice" when we actually start pressing that f-key shortcut for dashboard.
Best,
Logicat
Just to add a bit of wind to the fire, doesn't Spotlight seems like a LaunchBar On Steroids? Sure it seems to have like a dozen more features, but it seems to be inspired from it (I would not call it a rip off, rhough, until I know more of how it works...). I do use LaunchBar to look for folders in my HDD (name of clients, jobs, etc.) at the hit of a keystroke. Unless Spotlight cannot be launched by a keystroke, though, which would be a pitty...
-logicat2001-
That is a very interesting scinario, and a good point. I see where you're comming from, that does seem like an ingenious addition to the dashboard. Nobody will know for sure how the ripple effect till truely pan out till it's used next year, but it could be something more than just eye-candy. The ripple distorting other objects could also perhaps annoy some other users, but who knows for sure yet? Sounds like an interesting turn of topic as far as the ripple helping you focus on the widget you've selected.
That is a very interesting scinario, and a good point. I see where you're comming from, that does seem like an ingenious addition to the dashboard. Nobody will know for sure how the ripple effect till truely pan out till it's used next year, but it could be something more than just eye-candy. The ripple distorting other objects could also perhaps annoy some other users, but who knows for sure yet? Sounds like an interesting turn of topic as far as the ripple helping you focus on the widget you've selected.
MacFan25 said:I think that the flipable stickies will really be a usuable feature for me. In Panther, when using stickies, changing the font isn't that easy...but Tiger looks to solve that problem.
I still want to see more of Tiger in action...I'm hoping they'll put up the keynote soon...
Ugh! Think about this for a minute, guys!
First off, the flip-to-settings (FTS) "feature" is not consistent with the Apple standard method of adjusting settings, so we have diminished usability due to lack of consistency.
Also, and this is the big negative, how much of a pain is it to make a change in the settings, then have to flip the window over to see what the change looks like, flip it back, modify the change, flip it back, etc. etc.
A very bad direction.
narco said:
It's not about the looks, it's about idea theft.
This is probably the first time that I'm bad mouthing Apple, but this really does suck!
I'm not even a developer but I'm pissed off as hell at these [I never thought I'd have to say this] MICROSOFT tactics taken by Apple in this case and in the Watson/Sherlock fiasco.
Come on Apple, don't pick and choose the most popular features introduced by the developer community and then use their ideas without at least somekind of negotiation or even mention!
This makes me sick...
paulypants said:
Oh don't care if it wasn't the first of it's kind, it's the one that popularized the functionality as far as I'm concerned.
What about all the KARMA BS SJ?
MacQuest said:It's not about the looks, it's about idea theft.
This is probably the first time that I'm bad mouthing Apple, but this really does suck!
I'm not even a developer but I'm pissed off as hell at these [I never thought I'd have to say this] MICROSOFT tactics taken by Apple in this case and in the Watson/Sherlock fiasco.
Come on Apple, don't pick and choose the most popular features introduced by the developer community and then use their ideas without at least somekind of negotiation or even mention!
This makes me sick...
This seems to be the majority of what people agree on in this thread, along with my own oppinion. I think that the incorporating other ideas into you own development of software/hardware or sometimes flat out taking the same creation is something that happens to computer companies as they grow. Use it or lose it. If it's a great idea by a smaller company, and you can legally use the idea in your own development for your own product, then companies do this. This is a big negative though for how it makes your favorite company look, I'm not saying it's okay to do it... Perhaps though, I think we've seen Apple grow much more since OS X, and I am not absolutely suprised that this has happend. I think that a lot of companies do this sort of thing when you get bigger. Maybe I'm wrong? Just my two cents worth. Still none the less angers me too.
rdowns said:
It'll almost look as good as it will on my single G5 processor headless/mini-tower/pizza box/whatever cpu [$999-$1299] and my 30" Display.
[...obviously the mini 'whatever" cpu will have at least 3 expansion slots since the card takes up 2...]
Just dreaming