Mac OS X (Tiger) 10.4 — Dashboard Widgets 


My initial impression of Tiger's new Dashboard Widgets feature is that I probably won't use it very much. I already have apps that are equally good or better. 

Here are my comments on some of the widgets that came with Dashboard:

Address Book — this is a redundant widget. You already have an equally good way to find contact info using the Address Book application itself. On my G3 iMac with 1 GB RAM, the widget uses 20 MB of real memory, while the application uses 25 MB, but the amount of virtual memory consumed is essentially the same.

Calculator — this is a redundant widget. You already have an equally good calculator application, with exactly the same funcationality. The widget uses a little less memory, but it hardly matters unless your machine is very low on memory.

Calendar — yet another redundant widget. It displays a calendar for the month. iCal does that and a lot more. If you just need a quick reminder of what day/date it is, the Date & Time preference panel will put the time in your menubar and the day/date in a drop-down menu.

Dictionary — this dictionary and thesaurus is potentially useful, although I don't know how many entries they have. There are equally good alternatives on the web; if you keep a link to your favorite in Safari's bookmarks bar, then you probably won't need this widget.

Flight Tracker — a potentially useful widget if you are waiting on a flight, either yours or someone you are meeting at the airport. It tells you where the plane is in route. This sort of data is also available on the web, but it might be more convenient to use the widget.

iTunes — another redundant widget, even more so than some of the others, since it only works when the iTunes application is in use. A simple little control like this might have some use if it were running as a normal app, but what's the point when you have to switch to the Dashboard screen in order to see it? You might as well switch to iTunes itself.

Phone Book — this is useful if you want to look up Yellow Pages info. You give it a zip code and it will look up businesses by name or by category within a specified radius. But it should have been called Yellow Pages rather than Phone Book, because it won't look up White Pages info.

Stickies — if you want stickies you can't save, this is the redundant widget for you. The Stickies application is much more useful and you don't have to keep it loaded to keep your notes from disappearing.

Stocks — this is useful if you want to watch the movement of stock prices (20 minutes delayed) during the day. It's no good if you are an active trader, but if you just want a look at how your stock portfolio is doing occasionally, it's just fine. Of course you can do the same thing, and much more, on the web, for example on the Yahoo! Finance site.

Translation — if it worked it might be useful. When I first opened it it brought up a window to translate English to Greek. I typed "Hello" into the English box and saw "Γειάσου" appear in the Greek box. Then I clicked on the icon to reverse the translation. It came back with "Geja'soy" in the English box. That doesn't look like "Hello" to me. Need I say more?

Unit Converter — it might be useful, but if you want to convert light years to kilometers, forget it. There's much more extensive conversion data on the web.

Weather — this widget displays the high, low and current temperature, plus a 5-day forecast from AccuWeather. That's not much weather information. The shareware app WeatherPop Advance puts the current temperature in the menubar where it is always visible, and provides forecast info and more detailed current conditions in a drop-down menu. The freeware app WeatherDock provides the current temperature in a Dock icon and more detailed current conditions and a 10-day forecast in the application window. WeatherPop Advance uses the least real memory on my Mac and widget the least virtual memory.

World Clock — if you want a clock to show the time in Pittsburgh, you will have to configure this widget with a nearby city (assuming you know one that's in the same time zone), because Pittsburgh isn't on its list.

Apple has a web page with more than 100 additional widgets you can download. Most of them are freeware. Since widgets are about as easy to create as web pages, I expect to see lots of new ones available relatively soon. 

Posted: Sunday - May 08, 2005 at 11:04 PM          

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