Apple Should Bring Back Dashboard
While not as flashy or important as Tiger’s keystone feature, Spotlight, Dashboard still enjoyed a big push from Jobs on stage.
A user could tap a keyboard shortcut or visit a hot corner and Dashboard would activate, dimming the screen and flying in widgets. Adding new ones could be done with a click of the mouse.
(My Titanium PowerBook’s GPU couldn’t render the water ripple effect that played when a new widget was added to Dashboard. However, college roommate’s aluminum PowerBook could do it without breaking a sweat. I was insanely jealous of him for about 72 hours after we both installed Tiger in our dorm room.)
Jobs pitched widgets as mini-apps that let you look up a quick bit of information without ruining your workflow or train of thought. They allowed for quick interactions. They were present when you needed them, and disappeared when you didn’t.
The design of Dashboard got toned down over time, and eventually it wasn’t even enabled by default on clean macOS installations. Keyboards that once shipped with a dedicated Dashboard shortcut were slowly phased out. By the time Apple finally pulled the plug on Dashboard in macOS Catalina, most of the widgets that once graced this corner of the OS had died off. The party had packed up years earlier, leaving just a small percentage of users still relying on the feature.1
