iOS 8 widget rant

[Robeckhard]

Whats the point of notification center widgets. They're just a button that brings the app up. I use Strava for biking and when I updated I thought the widget would be useful when riding so I don't have go through the app. Swipe down from notification center on the lock screen and tap widget and it asks for me to unlock my phone and brings me to the app. I don't really see the purpose of that. Takes the same time if not longer to use.

 

[gordon1234]

I know nothing about that app in particular, but there are lots kinds of useful widgets. If I want to look at my calendar, I could unlock the phone, go to the home screen with Calendar, open Calendar, than view my appointments, or I could just swipe down from the lock screen and get the same info in less than a second. Same thing with my package tracker. There are thousands of widgets available, and different people find different ones useful. Don't dismiss the whole feature because you don't like one particular widget.

 

[C DM]

Many widgets are about giving you information quickly. There are calendar widgets to show you what's happening today and perhaps on other days. There are weather widgets that show you the current and perhaps upcoming weather information. There are sports widgets that show you scores of teams and/or sports you follow and upcoming games. There are widgets showing you your data usage or perhaps other information about your device. There are widgets that give you quick shortcuts to do various functions or access various sections of an app or settings which can be quite a bit quicker than doing it otherwise.

It seems like the issue isn't really with widgets, but perhaps with the way some apps create their "widgets", which in some cases isn't really a widget at all and just a shortcut to the app that doesn't do much more than just launch the app (as appears to be in this case). It's still something in the sense that you can have access to it on pretty much any screen you are on, but that's about it.