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Dashboard Feature Eliminated in macOS Catalina
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Calculator, Contacts, iStatPro, Dictionary, Weather, Stickies, TimeZone, Movies playing for the next week at whatever theatre you choose through Fandango. Its been a nice little feature on my iMac and MBP to just swipe for utilitarian features all together rather than having to go into a separate app to find each one individually. Also, it's virtually invisible to those of you who don't use it, so shouldn't be an issue.
Notification center is not conducive to multi-tasking. You still have to click on many items to individually pull up the information contained within or to use the app, calculator, contacts etc. Dashboard is much more efficient in that you can take in a wide variety of information already accessed at one time. If I want to write a document, I have the calculator, statistics, dictionary, and thesaurus at hand. If I want to take a business trip, I can see the Calendar, Weather, and make notes about what to take with Stickies. Seeing the big picture all at one time is much faster, with all that information easily brought up in one place or easily hidden with just a swipe of the fingers.
Notification center is not conducive to multi-tasking. You still have to click on many items to individually pull up the information contained within or to use the app, calculator, contacts etc. Dashboard is much more efficient in that you can take in a wide variety of information already accessed at one time. If I want to write a document, I have the calculator, statistics, dictionary, and thesaurus at hand. If I want to take a business trip, I can see the Calendar, Weather, and make notes about what to take with Stickies. Seeing the big picture all at one time is much faster, with all that information easily brought up in one place or easily hidden with just a swipe of the fingers.
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I don’t go around disrespecting other users for their choices. I’m not putting Notifications down for you and others that like it, yet you seem to prefer talking down to those of us who would like to keep Dashboard as an option.
I can have a personal preference and respect yours without pissing on it.
Looking at my touchbar what do you think is one of my most frequently used apps? Yeah, Apple, just kill everything simple and useful (and instead copy Windows 7 desktop gadgets a.k.a. MacOS Notification Center). :-(
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How did you acquire your statistics? BTW, macOS is used on ~ 1% of shipped devices (see screenshot from the Wikipedia). Let's apply your logic and finally trash it ;-)
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So what?
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How did you acquire your statistics? BTW, macOS is used on ~ 1% of shipped devices (see screenshot from the Wikipedia). Let's apply your logic and finally trash it ;-)
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Your argument makes 0 sense. All you're doing is comparing against other operating systems. What does that have to do with macOS Dashboard? Does Android have macOS Dashboard? No. Does iOS have macOS Dashboard? No. Do other operating systems beside have macOS Dashboard? No. So why are you bringing it up? If anything, you're making the case for a small number of people using macOS Dashboard even more so. Talk about logic.
Funny how Micky Do is liking this. Anything that argues against my point even if it makes 0 sense will get a like from him. Poor Micky Do. This is what I call Micky Do being biased and not objective at all.
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I'm not disrespecting other users. It's my personal preference to shut it down. You're essentially pissing on my opinion by grossly mischaracterizing it.
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What I am saying is that a small percentage of users can prefer a superior solution (e.g. with macOS vs. Windows, or Dashboard vs. Notifications center [that is, if Dashboard is less used w.r.t. Notification center at all]). In any case, there is no need to kill (macOS, Dashboard) only because most of people are not using them (most of people just need a web browser ;-) ).
And lastly, let me re-iterate: Your opinion on the number of users of Dashboard is just your opinion, not a fact that can be used as an argument for anything.
Damn, the precision word selecting in iPad is much harder than on desktop or laptop.
Anyway, in the user’s mind, this is pretty reasonable. But when comes down to actual implementation of features, things can be dramatically different from what users might thought. I am not a programmer, but I think if the feature is not implemented in a way that is highly modular, sometimes getting rid of old features could make more sense for developers to maintain their code bases easier in the future.
This still doesn't make sense as to why Windows is involved. I never said Notification Center in Windows is superior. I never mentioned Windows Notification Center at all. You're just throwing out random statistics that have 0 relation to this argument.
There are many reasons to kill Dashboard. Dashboard still requires engineers to make sure it works with every macOS release. Also technical writing engineers need to keep updating the documentation for Dashboard. And users don't realize there are some widgets that are eating up the CPU utilization. Not efficient for MacBook battery. To say that there is "NO NEED to kill Dashboard" is factually wrong.
Your fact about macOS vs Windows has 0 weight in this discussion. You're not making any sense at all. Your opinion about not wanting to kill Dashboard has been noted and my point still stands.
Polls like this are somewhat misleading because those of us who don't use Dashboard and don't care are less likely to bother voting at all. Hence it may look like the majority of us on this forum use it when that's far from the case.
I've been running Mojave with 32-bit execution disabled (using the boot arg), and interestingly the Dashboard still works. Not sure if this means Apple could've kept the feature around for one more release, but it has already been treated like an abandoned legacy feature for years now.
Comments like this are somewhat meaningless because those who don't care a less, are less likely to add anything worthwhile to the conversation, thus might be better off remaining in the silent majority.
For those who are interested, here is the current state of the poll, and a link to it:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/poll-dashboard-should-be.2184526/
I see a lot of people cheering for the removal of Dashboard, and I don't know why. I use it practically every day! Living in a foreign county it put such thinks and unit and currently conversion, time zone conversion and weather at the touch of a button! Nothing so far Apple has done adequately replaces the functionality of Dashboard and Widgets.
I'm sure they believe adding the Notification Center replaces it's functionality but you have to scroll scroll scroll. Dashboard just put your 15 widgets right in front of your face super fast.
Again, I think most people today don't know about it because Apple stopped promoting it. Everyone should go watch the rollout of OS X Tiger and WWDC from 2005. Steve Jobs spends a lot of time demoing Dashboard clearly because he loved it.
I love watching old WWDC's and special events. It's neat to look back on the introduction of features that are so commonplace now but back then were excitingly new and the result of really hard work and development.
The final act of removing Dashboard natively will remain a hidden mistake because few will notice other than on threads such as this.
Notification sucks tbh. I never use it, because it's nasty and flat and annoying and yes the scroll. It's delegated to same level of internet "pop Ups" in my brain. It has NO appeal. It's conformist in the worst way.
However what this tells us again about the nature of the compromises at Apple these days, there is a lot of good stuff coming out now but I remember when the iPhone X came out and Apple had to move access to the control centre to the top, this was the biggest bug bear I had with my first android phone and why switching to iOS was simply better, a very real reason for not wanting to upgrade.
One hand operation of the phone as the baseline seems to have been forgotten. The beauty of iOS was that it was the best and easiest phone OS in comparison to Android our to it's one hand operation ethos.
What might seem like an inconsequential denials is actually a crucial and incredibly important baseline.
Maybe it's getting to complex but this is exactly why you need to keep going back to baseline. It's not there to be broken but to guide.
Apple are lucky they had Jobs back as such a great touch UI was given priority because that time was needed to develop the gestural standards and intuitive designs to make touch a serious proposition, not just some cool but hard baked bells & whistle - under his watch they got ahead of everyone and now they can bolt on some of the jtried and best old UI ways but in a great touch UI context.
Previously to my mind, touch was often bolted on as a last thought and it was abysmal experience ( M$ tablets pre iPad, an awful experience - I know I had one, what a waste of money, I could by the top spec iPad Pro for almost the same price today)
Notification sucks tbh. I never use it, because it's nasty and flat and annoying and yes the scroll. It's delegated to same level of internet "pop Ups" in my brain. It has NO appeal. It's conformist in the worst way.
However what this tells us again about the nature of the compromises at Apple these days, there is a lot of good stuff coming out now but I remember when the iPhone X came out and Apple had to move access to the control centre to the top, this was the biggest bug bear I had with my first android phone and why switching to iOS was simply better, a very real reason for not wanting to upgrade.
One hand operation of the phone as the baseline seems to have been forgotten. The beauty of iOS was that it was the best and easiest phone OS in comparison to Android our to it's one hand operation ethos.
What might seem like an inconsequential denials is actually a crucial and incredibly important baseline.
Maybe it's getting to complex but this is exactly why you need to keep going back to baseline. It's not there to be broken but to guide.
Apple are lucky they had Jobs back as such a great touch UI was given priority because that time was needed to develop the gestural standards and intuitive designs to make touch a serious proposition, not just some cool but hard baked bells & whistle - under his watch they got ahead of everyone and now they can bolt on some of the jtried and best old UI ways but in a great touch UI context.
Previously to my mind, touch was often bolted on as a last thought and it was abysmal experience ( M$ tablets pre iPad, an awful experience - I know I had one, what a waste of money, I could by the top spec iPad Pro for almost the same price today)
Funny, you've spent an awful amount of time trying to win the argument against each person on here that's expressed an interest in keeping it. That's not just expressing your "personal preference", that's shoving your choice down every one's throat that doesn't agree with you. I'm not pissing on your choice or opinion, I'm pissing on your behaviour.
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Ditto mate.
THere's clearly a generational divide between what SJ found cool and what more recent users do.
It's the same trend in other technologies, like cars. Computers/tablets with wheels.
I bet I could start a flame war debating everything that's wrong with Tesla & co
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Oh and you're not doing the same exact thing you're describing? Take a look at EXACTLY what you're doing. You're trying to shove your personal preference down everyone's throat that doesn't agree with you.
I'm simply expressing my opinion. We can be civil about this but if you decide to piss all over my behavior, you're the one being extremely disrespectful.
Bye, I'm not going to argue with you anymore.
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Dashboard was such a simple, fast application. One button did all you said and more. To the people who never used it, I suppose they are not the power user they think they are. Dashboard even worked without an internet connection. They should have fixed Notification center (or got rid of that, instead).
I have my dashboard opening via the middle button of my mouse.
I can't stand Notification Center, I almost never use it (only to clear my notifications, which I also don't really need, just for the apps that I haven't turned off (yet) the notifications).
The Notification Center is nothing compared to the potential and actual use that one can make of the Dashboard.
Everyone? I've only called you out. Look at the number of your posts and mine in this thread.
Likewise for opening Dashboard.
Likewise for Notification Centre.
In my experience, Dashboard is convenient and useful.
I confirm that it is missing in the Catalina 10.15 Beta. I might be swithching back, filed a complaint with Mac Beta Developers site. You can do so as well. link here.
https://forums.developer.apple.com/welcome
https://forums.developer.apple.com/welcome
I use it daily and I am unhappy that they've removed Dashboard completely. Stocks, weather and world time (placing several clock widgets) are my go to and sometimes stickies too.
Why not Notification Center? Because it eliminates the absolutely key feature of Dashboard: widgets are fixed in location.
I know exactly where to aim my eyes as I invoke Dashboard, saving me time to scroll and search for a particular piece of information. Fixed location for UI items is key for productivity, it is one of the reasons why I prefer macOS with it's fixed menu bar compared with Windows.
Why not Notification Center? Because it eliminates the absolutely key feature of Dashboard: widgets are fixed in location.
I know exactly where to aim my eyes as I invoke Dashboard, saving me time to scroll and search for a particular piece of information. Fixed location for UI items is key for productivity, it is one of the reasons why I prefer macOS with it's fixed menu bar compared with Windows.
You're the real MVP !! Thank you so much, I didn't know this feature
Interestingly when I opened the Stickies app in Catalina it imported all my stickies I had in the widget within dashboard. It also looks like they've massaged Stickies to look more like the original widget. I'll probably use these now as they float on top and have very similar features.
