Could Missing iPad Apps Reappear as Dashboard Widgets?
Are you checking out the iPad’s big, mostly empty Home Screen and wondering where the iPhone’s Weather, Stocks, Clock, and Calculator apps have all gone? Are they missing in action, simply unfinished for now, or like Kevin Fox of Fury.com seems to think, could Apple be planning on turning them into Dashboard-style Widgets?
Imagine that a five-finger pinch caused the screen to dim and a bevy of widgets flew in to the screen for quick consumption and calculation, and then were dismissed by another five-finger flick? With props to Entourage, ‘Is that something you might be interested in?’
It is, because we’d not only love to see full fledged widgets on iPad but on iPhone as well. But TiPb asks you this: would you actually prefer a Dashboard-style fly-in-fly-out set of widgets that live separately in their own screen mode, or would you prefer widgets that live on the Lock Screen, or stay put on the Home Screen alongside app icons, similar to how Android does it?
[Fury.com via Daring Fireball]
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 am
I’d prefer being able to see them with a gesture from anywhere. I’ve never understood the obsession with having lock screen info. I’ve tried a couple of jailbreak ones and deleted them all.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:55 am
Definately a separate screen.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
I’m with fastlane on this. Use a gesture to call them up from any screen, any app, anytime you want – so long as it doesn’t take forever for them to render and for data to populate. Hopefully, they’re running quietly in the background in almost a, dare I say, multitasking way.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:13 am
There is no way that’s ever gonna happen on an apple device. That fake desktop looks like a google knock off. Apple doesn’t copy thy innovate.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
yeah lock screen info is retarded if you want to access it you need to lock the device? thats stupid. Dashboard style widgets would be cool, especially if devs could develope widgets that you could keep running all the time (facebook widgets, twitter widgets etc) then you just fly them in while you are doing something else to quickly check this stuff and then fly them out…live updates in the background provided by push notifications would be cool too so it didn’t have to constantly recheck for updates
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:35 am
Apple doesn’t copy? Puh-leeze. They have copied ever since the days of Xerox PARC. That is not a slam against Apple; unlike most companies, they invest significant effort to improve what they copy, but they still copy, and stand on the shoulders of others, just like any other tech company. Last week’s Economist put it best:
“Apple is regularly voted the most innovating company in the world, but its inventiveness takes a particular form. Rather than developing entirely new product categories, it excels at taking existing, half-baked ideas and showing the rest of the world how to do them properly.”
With the notable exception of the Newton, this is how Apple operates, by breaking existing ground better, rather than staking entirely new ground. While they sometimes come up with a Pippin or AppleTV, they also hit market defining homeruns with the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. The iPad may turn out to be another seminal product, defining the tablet market in a way the windows tablets of the 90s and early 2000s utterly failed.
There is nothing wrong with this approach, but this near-fetish-level insistence that Apple is somehow better than this, that they create brand new classes of products emerging fully formed like Aphrodite from the sea foam, is blinkered, blinded fanboy speak at its worst. They copy, they improve while they copy, and they do a damn good job of it. The people in Cupertino would admit no less.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:50 am
5 finger multitouch is a little overboard. What about those people with a finger chopped off? How do you think they feel? =) Oh and for those hating on the lock screen info: you don’t access it by locking the device. Its for when you pick up your phone and want to check if anything new is in. If you are using the phone and on the home screen, you should already know when new info has arrived because the phone gives you notifications. I say do both. Lock screen info and pull down widget board. Of course Apple won’t do this for us.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:50 am
If I stream Pandora from Dashboard and brows the web the yes. just open it up to App developers. And I would like to make a “Dashboard-style fly-in-fly” not like Android or luck screen.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:55 am
I think the gesture kind of defeats the purpose. The point of widgets are to have them up and ready at that precise moment. If it was reversed then yeah, have the widgets broadside…with ability to add icons of course. Then do the five finger gesture (overkill I think) to bring in the apps.
But now when I visualize that…it makes it seem close to Android and the way they operate.
Well…I don’t know. I mean…they can do that, and everyone will say Apple invented it. So if they can get away with it, why not.
The lock screen is not really a good implementation of it. It’s home screen or nothing. They could have info on the lock screen (weather, stocks, etc. Make it customizable), but not widgets.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Nope. Not going to happen. It’s all pie in the sky thinking. I’m betting the ipad is just exactly what you see. Wishful thinking won’t change that.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Yeah, me too, I’d prefer the dashboard-call-anywhere model if it’s quick.
@Dev: OK, everybody copies something – but Apple does bring highly polished and original complete products/services to market better and more often than anyone else. We’re not deluded for saying so.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
@I didn’t say it:
How do those people with no fingers feel right now? How do those people with no hands or no arms feel right now? Maybe if Apple makes their devices entirely voice controlled, then you can ask how people who can’t speak will feel.
Multi-finger gestures will be the future for a good long while.
As for non-Apple users saying the “fly in-and-out widgets with darkened background” idea will never happen, this has already long-existed on OS X… but with a key command instead. So, it’s nothing new to Apple. And does anyone really believe the iPad won’t have calculator and weather? C’mon…
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I would like to have something without looking like a bunch of Windows Gadgets all over the screen. Maybe two or three columns of standard sized widgets that look nice together and run in the background maybe like iGoogle, but way better. Access from any screen with a simple two finger swipe would be nice. Allow apps like Pandora to play in the background and Apple may be onto something.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Wow, I can’t believe the comments went this far without somebody mentioning FLASH for no reason.
FLASH!!!!
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Is this the iphoneblog or the appleblog???
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:45 pm
I have to believe that there will be some surprises in store once the iPad is released. Otherwise it is just a stupid ploy to make money on E-books.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Like I said before. This is the iphone blog. Not the ipad blog. Why don’t you make a separate blog for the ipad. I’m really tired of seeing ipad articles on here. I’m sure a lot of folks would agree.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:55 pm
WTF @ “There is no way that’s ever gonna happen on an apple device. That fake desktop looks like a google knock off. Apple doesn’t copy thy innovate.” Seriously get the “blank” of of apples “Blank”
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
off*
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
@OP
It’s not going to happen. Quit asking.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Skip the article if you don’t want to read it.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
For those complaining about all of the iPad coverage here, remember that The iPhone Blog covers not just the iPhone hardware, but the iPhone OS as well. The iPad runs a version of the iPhone OS. Therefore, it’s a relevant topic for this blog. It’s the same reason why http://www.androidcentral.com covers the B&N nook and other Android-based devices that aren’t phones. The OS is within their scope of coverage.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
P.S. May I request that TiPB editors write an editorial articulating why you’re covering the iPad. The reason seems obvious to me, but apparently, it isn’t obvious to all.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
At first I thought the iPad looked unimagative then I realized all that’s done for the iPhone is the developers, imagine proswitcher, categories, mobile dashbord (widgets), remote view windows 7, iTunes, movies, and hames on this thing. It’s gonna be awesome but I’ll only buy when it’s jailbroken. It’s coming to Canada in the summer, by then I’ll have the money but if it ends up being MacBook pro vs ipad I’ll take the MacBook
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
good idea, maybe? would be great. I wondered the missing record-app and the compass app.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@Jason
Rene has said many times what you’ve just said. I don’t think they need to justify their posts anymore than they already have.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:28 pm
This blog makes me sick, getting there hopes up on the most pathetic things. Maybe there is a camera on the iPad though
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I’m not a big fan of the Dashboard interface on the desktop and I probably wouldn’t like it on the iPhone either. It pretty much goes against the simplification that Apple is trying to make with the iPad. A dashboard is just another way back to a cluttered mess of a desktop of overlapping windows, which they’re trying to get away from (I think). Additionally, it would be bad for battery life because everything has to update when it’s activated, so every time I want to bring in, for example, my calculator, it’s going to hit the network and drain battery to update stocks, weather, IM/Twitter, and whatever other widgets are there.
In short, I’m hoping for a better solution, although in general the ability to bring other small apps in and out quickly would be a good thing. I wouldn’t mind an interface, maybe activated with a special gesture, where I choose which widget I want to bring in, so I could quickly bring in just my calculator, or clipboard manager, or whatever I choose, without the clutter and inefficiency of updating everything else.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:27 pm
TiPb will be covering the iPhone OS platform including iPad. Not a big deal.
Rene Ritchie
Sent from my iPhone
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
And thank heavens for that. Following the Round Robin has left me with a smartphone OD condition! The iPad’s new and interesting, and with it’s announcement we see that the big story with iPhone has been the OS all along. Bless the children of the BSD kernel!
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:55 pm
@Rene (whether or not that really was Rene):
LOL…
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I was really Rene
February 4th, 2010 at 6:04 am
When u update to 3.1.3 look at the battery percentage remember it, then reset ur iPhone and when it turns back on look at the 1st intial lockscreen the battery percentage will be 8% lower then after a sec it will jump back 8 % to wut it should really be… Very very strange I thought apple was supposed to fix the issue not make it worse…. DO NOT UPGRADE PLEASE STICK WITH 3.1.2 FAR LESS BUGGY….
I AM LOOSING FAITH IN APPLE UR GETTING WORSE EVERYDAY, UR NOT IMPROVING THE IPHONE UI AT ALL.. UNLIKE ALL UR COMPETITION…. STEP UP APPLE AND BE A MAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 7th, 2010 at 9:20 am
Not sure how they would have you invoke the dashboard, but I can see that as a good way to give visibility to background apps. Not all may actually need CPU in the background, like Calculator, but you could have a way of placing apps here that you wanted, and remove them when done.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:27 am
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March 12th, 2010 at 10:13 am
hi there i bet any thing apple wants too have wiget like aopps like the mac ox 10 i think it will be useing more hybride mac ox 10 and iphone os or bascaly 2 os but just a thory we have too wait for aprial 3 release i do not know if any last minute upgrades that apple wants too be a secrete just like with the iphone