![]() "What definitively has shrunken massively is the developer community. "Back with Tiger, was the cool thing on the Mac, but I guess this was in a time before Twitter and the iPhone," Weßling, who worked on his own Joomla-compatible widget out of academic interest, told Ars. Others, like hobbyist developer Rouven Weßling, agreed that the popularity of Dashboard has declined-both with the users and the developer community. Although he is happy to continue working on his own widgets, he doesn't sound like he expects things to change much in the near future. (Though he did note that his parents use it-always a forward-moving demographic). Platkus admitted that it seems, from talking to his peers, that he's in a minority when it comes to actually using Dashboard, too. "I get about three to four support e-mails a year for my widgets, so it doesn't take up much of my time." He's the developer behind the FrameUp! and PowerSwitch widgets and one of only two developers I could find who still actively develop their widgets. However, when I put out an update, I get between 100 and 150 downloads," said Shawn Platkus. "I'm getting about three to five downloads per day for my widgets. The general answer to that question was "maybe a little bit." From the outset, this angle was a challenge, only highlighting how barren the Dashboard widget landscape really is in 2012. You bump into twelve of those every time you turn a corner. Trust me when I say it is not an easy feat finding sources to speak to on this subject-it's not like trying to find an iOS developer. So, are there any kind-hearted developers who are still actively developing widgets for the OS X Dashboard? Is this the beginning of the end? And how could Apple revive the scene? The stragglers There were plenty of other snarky comments that mirrored Karchner's, too. It's somewhat perplexing, then, that the newest version of OS X-Mountain Lion, just released on Wednesday-still supports the Dashboard.Īnd we're not the only ones who think this: "I was surprised that Dashboard still exists in Mountain Lion," Ross M. Indeed, there are many (OK, some) that are still functioning, but most of the ones in Apple's Dashboard widget listing are not in active development, while many are barely even maintained. The rest of us apparently continue to hobble along with Dashboard, using long-outdated widgets and clinging to the often-misguided hope that someone-anyone-will maintain the ones we've come to rely on in our everyday lives. They're quite stagnant and useless with an iOS device nearby," Ken Fager added.ĭo you still use the OS X Dashboard? It turns out that a good number of Mac users don't-or at least those who follow Ars (and me) on Twitter. "Does anyone actually use Dashboard widgets?" Chris MacDonald said. But there are still widgets I use often."The first thing I do when I buy a new Mac is '$ killall Dock' to stop the resource sucking widgets," Enso Cloud tweeted at me last week. A good number of widgets I used to use on a regular basis have not been updated in forever and no longer work so I've had to drop them. The only reason I would agree it's becoming less relevant is because of lack of widget developers. I use a Logitech MX Revolution mouse and have Dashboard mapped to one of the soft keys so, no matter where I am or what I'm doing in OSX, all this information that I've setup to be ready on the fly is always available a single button tap away. We've become accustomed to finding all this relevant data when needed at this one spot and for some of us, it's the Dashboard. I know people often say Spotlight, Alfred, or their iPhones do the same as Dashboard, but like widgets on the Dashboard, it's trained behavior. Others include Logan Rockmore's MLB Schedule widget, Flight Tracker, Translate, Weather, Dictionary, and I have 4 clocks (used for work to keep track of what time it is around the world where clients are) Delivery Status continues to be a godsend.
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