News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 4, 2007

software

Apple patent hints at Dashboard^3

Posted May. 4, ’07, 10:10 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

Dashboard CubeMan, does Steve Jobs have a cube fetish or what? I mean, there was the NeXT cube, the PowerMac G4 Cube, the giant glass cube on 5th avenue—the list could go on and on. We’re no strangers to cube special effects in the Mac OS X (fast user switching, for example; or the photo thumbnail in Image Capture). And if the latest uncovered Apple patents are any indication, we may be set for more cubism in Leopard this fall.

Patent application 20070101297 is called “Multiple Dashboards” and covers a variety of ways that OS X might handle multiple Dashboard environments, including the afore-mentioned cube (pictured above). From a quick overview, it sounds to me like Spaces applied to Dashboard. I can see how that might be useful; I might like to organize my widgets by use or topic, but the idea of having both multiple desktops and multiple Dashboards seems like it’s ripe for confusion to me.

Of course, according to the patent application a cube isn’t the only option: there’re also tabs, a “Rolodex” method, or a cylinder, sphere, triangle, or other “geographic objects.” Heck yeah; I want me a Dashboard sphere, pronto.

What say you, readers? Would multiple dashboards be useful, or just an extra bell-and-whistle?

[via MacNN]


3 Comments

George said:

It seems to me is that the simplest thing to do is allow for Dashboard widgets to be tied to the various Spaces. Each Space could have its own copy of Dashboard or the user could set a Dashboard up to span multiple Spaces. Otherwise, you end with Spaces multiplied by Dashboards to equal utter confusion.

May 4, 2007 11:00 AM
ME said:

Well nowadays everything has tabs... How bad would that be to have tabs for dashboard?

I wouldn't mind.

May 4, 2007 12:31 PM
Dave-O said:

I'm with George. Especially since some widgets may go with the task a Space is supposed to accomplish.

As for utility, I have to wait for all my widgets to update to use the one I'm looking for. Loading fewer widgets would be nice (so would prioritizing the interactive ones, I shouldn't have to wait for the weather widget to update before I can type a word into the dictionary). Whether I could come up with coherent sets is another question.

May 8, 2007 2:49 PM

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