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

July 12, 2006

software

Worried about widgets & CPU resources? You should be.

Posted Jul. 12, ’06, 1:52 PM PT by Scott Silverman
Category | Software

DashboardJoshua Scott Emmons has posted a great entry in the Mac DevCenter Blog. It concerns widgets and the amount of CPU power they consume while Dashboard is both active and inactive. Here are three major points I learned from his article:

  1. Widgets are not supposed to consume any CPU power while Dashboard is hidden. However, there are some naughty widgets which don’t follow this Apple-made rule. (This same rule does not apply to memory. All widgets actively use RAM when running on your Dashboard.)
  2. All Apple-made widgets (Weather, Calculator, Stickies, Stocks…) do follow the no-CPU-while-Dashboard-is-hidden rule. Load your Dashboard with all the Apple-made widgets you like.
  3. Luckily Joshua found a way to reveal which widgets are the naughty ones using Activity Monitor. Check his article for the method.

I’ve come to view Dashboard & widgets as a double edged sword. Sometime they’re great, sometimes they’re the plague. I’ve heard rumors Dashboard will be gone in 10.5. I’ve got the feeling this will be a good thing for all power users. I’m sure Apple will come up with another Dashboard-like solution for candy-eyed consumers.


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