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Mac OS X 10.4.2 to enhance Dashboard functionality

post #1 of 54
6/8/05 at 8:43am
Thread Starter 
The next maintenance release to Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" operating system will include several enhancements that will make Dashboard widget management simpler and safer, AppleInsider has learned.

Widget Deletion

According to recent rumors, the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.4.2 Update will let users delete widgets from the Dashboard dock by hovering over the widget's name and selecting a small deletion icon.

Upon selecting the icon -- a red circular image with a dash through it -- a confirmation dialog will appear, asking the user to confirm that they want to move that widget to the trash.

A New Widget Installer

The updated version of Dashboard will also do its part to end ongoing security concerns associated with widgets. Rumor has it that in Mac OS X 10.4.2, widgets downloaded from the internet will not be installed automatically on the user's system.

Instead, when a user downloads and double-clicks on a widget in Mac OS X 10.4.2, a new Widget Installer will launch. Users will reportedly be able to "Test Drive" the widget in a self-contained area of the installer before agreeing to install it on their system.

Over Six-Dozen Fixes

The improvements to Dashboard are rumored to be just some of the over six-dozen bug fixes and/or enhancements planned for inclusion in Mac OS X 10.4.2.

According to reports already present on several internet websites, Apple has recently seeded its developers with Mac OS X 10.4.2 build 8C27. This most recent build is expected to be one of the final pre-releases of the Tiger update before it is prepped for an official release.

Improved iChat and AddressBook

Some of the other enhancements rumored for inclusion in Mac OS X 10.4.2 are improved AddressBook performance and multiple machine iChat logins from the same account.

The Tiger update, the second in recent weeks, is believed to be due imminently.
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post #2 of 54
6/8/05 at 8:58am
sounds pretty nice
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post #3 of 54
6/8/05 at 9:35am
six-dozen?

Who the hell speaks like a Sumerian anymore!

LOL... thats great... Are u French (or canadian)? .... only the French language is retarded enough to say "sixty ten" to say 70 "four twenty" to say 80 and finally "four twenty ten" to say 90.

Thats probably the thing I hate the most about the French language. It is the most confusing thing ever, and I still have to take a pause to understand the numbers. And I've been speaking this language for at least 15 years! At least Belgians "only" say "four twenty". And the Swiss don't say any of these things at all.

Aaaaaaanyway... Powerdoc... did you write this article?
I'm having deja-vu and amnesia at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
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I'm having deja-vu and amnesia at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
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post #4 of 54
6/8/05 at 9:45am
Quote:
Originally posted by ZO
six-dozen?

Who the hell speaks like a Sumerian anymore!

LOL... thats great... Are u French (or canadian)? .... only the French language is retarded enough to say "sixty ten" to say 70 "four twenty" to say 80 and finally "four twenty ten" to say 90.

Thats probably the thing I hate the most about the French language. It is the most confusing thing ever, and I still have to take a pause to understand the numbers. And I've been speaking this language for at least 15 years! At least Belgians "only" say "four twenty". And the Swiss don't say any of these things at all.

Aaaaaaanyway... Powerdoc... did you write this article?

Actually they say almost exclusively quatre-vingt en Suisse, mais ils ne disent pas - au moins la majorité des Suisses - soixante-dix et quatre-vingt-dix.
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post #5 of 54
6/8/05 at 9:50am
So will this update fix my issues with...

Oh wait, sorry. I didn't realize this was the French & Ancient Languages thread. My bad.
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post #6 of 54
6/8/05 at 10:39am
The Widget "preview zone" is a great solution--very user-friendly.

I wouldn't have thought of that, but it's obvious in hindsight. Sounds like Apple!

nagromme
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nagromme
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post #7 of 54
6/8/05 at 10:45am
Quote:
Originally posted by ZO
six-dozen?

Who the hell speaks like a Sumerian anymore!


So, this upgrade will fix at least Three-Score and twelve bugs?? Awesome!

Hopefully it'll be released within a fortnight!

Do what you will, but harm none.

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Do what you will, but harm none.

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post #8 of 54
6/8/05 at 11:33am
Quote:
Originally posted by ZO
six-dozen?

Who the hell speaks like a Sumerian anymore!

LOL... thats great... Are u French (or canadian)? .... only the French language is retarded enough to say "sixty ten" to say 70 "four twenty" to say 80 and finally "four twenty ten" to say 90.

I prefer saying "four score."
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post #9 of 54
6/8/05 at 12:01pm
  • rok
  • the Casbah
Quote:
Originally posted by chris v
So, this upgrade will fix at least Three-Score and twelve bugs?? Awesome!

Hopefully it'll be released within a fortnight!

wouldn't that be "a dozen and three score" just to up the pretentious factor?
When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
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When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
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post #10 of 54
6/8/05 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally posted by ZO
Who the hell speaks like a Sumerian anymore!

I don't know, but I listened to The Bangles and I walk like an Egyptian. ;-)

Quote:
only the French language is retarded enough to say "sixty ten" to say 70 "four twenty" to say 80 and finally "four twenty ten" to say 90.

Thats probably the thing I hate the most about the French language. It is the most confusing thing ever, and I still have to take a pause to understand the numbers. And I've been speaking this language for at least 15 years! At least Belgians "only" say "four twenty". And the Swiss don't say any of these things at all.

I vaguely remember reading that the French-speaking Belgians have "huitante" for eighty. (This was when I took French about 15 years ago, so the recollection is hazy.)

I hope one of the fixes is to allow widgets to stick to the desktop without having to resort to hacking the preference file.
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post #11 of 54
6/8/05 at 1:50pm
  • rok
  • the Casbah
well, rather than screaming intoa hole about my gripes with dahsboard's interface/usability, i just submitted feedback to them for my suggestions. here were mine (so i can take credit later):

Quote:

1. the "i" button to edit preferences. the big problem here is that, since it ONLY appears when the widget is rolled over, and is very faint and VERY small, it can be missed a lot of the time, leaving people at a bit of a loss with regards to how to modify the widget preferences. my suggestion: add the "i" as another "black circle button" to the widget, and always have those buttons appear when EITHER the cursor rolls over the widget, OR if it is the frontmost widget... which brings me to my next critique...

2. frontmost widgets are virtually indistinguishable from background ones. this is especially annoying when you THINK you're entering, say, numbers into calculator, but you suddenly realize after you hit enter that you were actually entering numbers into the dictionary widget or something off to the side. the only way to quickly check is command-r to refresh the widget. hardly a great solution. my solution: "x" close and (from above suggestion) "i" buttons are always visible, but just screened back on the frontmost widget. similar to behavior like windows in the Finder.

3. screen crowding: this is especially bad since the ENTIRE dahsboard layer is dismissed if someone misses a click. this might be asking a lot, but we need some sort of auto-resizing feature of widgets that we see in both the dock and in expose, so that all widgets can be viewed at a glance. otherwise, you get a dogpile of widgets on screen, especially for those on 1024x768 screens on powerbooks/ibooks. if the widget icons are too small, the user could roll their cursor over the correct widget and have it enlarge to 100%, just like the dock does.

4. why exactly can't i move around and delete widgets from the dashboard dock the same way i can with the normal dock? also, why does the dashboard dock require scrolling, rather than dynamically resizing like the os x dock to fit all widgets at once? i feel like i'm managing my classic apple menu all over again. ACK!
When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
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When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
Reply
post #12 of 54
6/8/05 at 1:50pm
Quote:
Originally posted by cmatech
So will this update fix my issues with...

Oh wait, sorry. I didn't realize this was the French & Ancient Languages thread. My bad.

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post #13 of 54
6/8/05 at 3:36pm
Quote:
Originally posted by AppleInsider
A New Widget Installer

The updated version of Dashboard will also do its part to end ongoing security concerns associated with widgets. Rumor has it that in Mac OS X 10.4.2, widgets downloaded from the internet will not be installed automatically on the user's system.

Instead, when a user downloads and double-clicks on a widget in Mac OS X 10.4.2, a new Widget Installer will launch. Users will reportedly be able to "Test Drive" the widget in a self-contained area of the installer before agreeing to install it on their system.

It would be nice to see this test drive feature for all Apps. It can be especially useful to test something you get from the internet. The if you decide to not go ahead you don't have to delete all the files that app has made (in preferences etc.)
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post #14 of 54
6/8/05 at 4:04pm
I like the Widget Deletion, this was annoying me before.
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post #15 of 54
6/8/05 at 4:16pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Placebo
I like the Widget Deletion, this was annoying me before.

this was definitely needed - Tiger just lacks some depth of thought in some places. This is one of them, Spotlight re-index is another.
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post #16 of 54
6/8/05 at 4:46pm
10.4.3 Or Bust
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post #17 of 54
6/8/05 at 6:29pm
Quote:
Originally posted by MacCrazy
this was definitely needed - Tiger just lacks some depth of thought in some places. This is one of them, Spotlight re-index is another.

I think Spotlight on a whole could be more deep. Making Spotlight and Finder Search a single thing, anyone?
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post #18 of 54
6/9/05 at 12:26am
Quote:
Originally posted by chris v
So, this upgrade will fix at least Three-Score and twelve bugs?? Awesome!

Hopefully it'll be released within a fortnight!

I use the word fortnight all the time. When I was living in Boston they sure liked to make fun of me saying it . I guess the word just didn't stick in the US. I'm pretty sure it's a part of common speech in England too.

Anyway onto the real topic - I think the best thing about this release will be the test area for the widgets. I mean who knows what these little apps could do. I hope this tester will alert you whenever it tries to access some system files or anything like that.
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post #19 of 54
6/9/05 at 12:27am
72 bugs fixes?

This depresses me.

Tiger was not a robust gold master release. I hoped the number of fixed bugs would be in the hundreds--Tiger surely needs it.

Hopefully 10.4.3 will FINALLY be the release Apple should of released.
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post #20 of 54
6/9/05 at 12:32am
Any word if Quartz 2D is working and turned on in this release?
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post #21 of 54
6/9/05 at 12:52am
Quote:
Originally posted by BWhaler
72 bugs fixes?

This depresses me.

Tiger was not a robust gold master release. I hoped the number of fixed bugs would be in the hundreds--Tiger surely needs it.

Hopefully 10.4.3 will FINALLY be the release Apple should of released.

Well I'd rather get some bug fixes now and the rest later, versus waiting x amount of days/months for them to get it up into the 100's.
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post #22 of 54
6/9/05 at 2:16am
Quote:
Originally posted by spyder
Well I'd rather get some bug fixes now and the rest later, versus waiting x amount of days/months for them to get it up into the 100's.

Agreed; sooner is better.

Just given the state of Tiger, I'd really like more fixes since there are so many things that need fixing. But, if these 72 are the ones that piss me off daily, I'll be happy.
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post #23 of 54
6/9/05 at 3:12am
Quote:
Originally posted by macFanDave

I hope one of the fixes is to allow widgets to stick to the desktop without having to resort to hacking the preference file.

you can make it stick to the desktop?
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post #24 of 54
6/9/05 at 3:17am
Quote:
Originally posted by dojobi
I use the word fortnight all the time. When I was living in Boston they sure liked to make fun of me saying it . I guess the word just didn't stick in the US. I'm pretty sure it's a part of common speech in England too.

Anyway onto the real topic - I think the best thing about this release will be the test area for the widgets. I mean who knows what these little apps could do. I hope this tester will alert you whenever it tries to access some system files or anything like that.

Yup in Britain we say fortnight. Some application have a need to go into the system though. We should be able to see which areas the widgets want to access and choose whether they can or not. However, this would be too complicated for the average user who would not know where the widget should be accessing.

Apple could make a simple category box - Internet, personal files, iTunes, etc.?
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post #25 of 54
6/9/05 at 3:27am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
you can make it stick to the desktop?

Well this would go against the 'dashboard' layer idea. Most of the widgets have apps that do their function anyway but I agree it would be cool ( and make dashboard so much better).

I though the only (easy) way to stick widgets to the desktop is to launch dashboard and then drag a widget out while pressing F12. You then release the mouse and the widget is in the normal layer.
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post #26 of 54
6/9/05 at 3:31am
Quote:
Originally posted by MacCrazy
Well this would go against the 'dashboard' layer idea. Most of the widgets have apps that do their function anyway but I agree it would be cool ( and make dashboard so much better).

I though the only (easy) way to stick widgets to the desktop is to launch dashboard and then drag a widget out while pressing F12. You then release the mouse and the widget is in the normal layer.

holy crap that worked weird...
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post #27 of 54
6/9/05 at 3:33am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
holy crap that worked weird...

BUT you can only have one and it goes back when you launch dashboard again. So what's the hack in the preference file?

(Also it always stays on top and does not 'move' with Exposé)
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post #28 of 54
6/9/05 at 4:27am
Hopefully the update will make apps more stable, especially Safari.
"There's no bigot like a religious bigot and there's no religion more fanatical than that espoused by Macintosh zealots." ~Martin Veitch, IT Week [31-01-2003]
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"There's no bigot like a religious bigot and there's no religion more fanatical than that espoused by Macintosh zealots." ~Martin Veitch, IT Week [31-01-2003]
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post #29 of 54
6/9/05 at 4:39am
Quote:
Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch
Hopefully the update will make apps more stable, especially Safari.

Definitely - it often doesn't load pages, needs restarts etc. It's a real shame that it's got this bad.
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post #30 of 54
6/9/05 at 4:53am
Quote:
Originally posted by MacCrazy
Definitely - it often doesn't load pages, needs restarts etc. It's a real shame that it's got this bad.

hmm bummer \ i have personally experienced nothing but ultra-snappy-safari-huntin
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post #31 of 54
6/9/05 at 6:29am
  • rok
  • the Casbah
my problem at home with tiger i smore with airport functionality. there are times when i simply must disconnect from my network, and then reconnect. no apparent common thread, either. one minute, i'll be surfing along, the next... whack. dead. doesn't seem to happen when i use firefox exclusively, though, but that might just be dumb luck. i will say it could also be my network -- i have gotten by with an all-linksys solution (pci card, router, range expander), and their customer service and drivers have been terrible over the past two years.
When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
Reply
When you're lovers in a dangerous time,
You're made to feel as if your love's a crime.
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

-...
Reply
post #32 of 54
6/9/05 at 6:32am
Quote:
Originally posted by rok
my problem at home with tiger i smore with airport functionality. there are times when i simply must disconnect from my network, and then reconnect. no apparent common thread, either. one minute, i'll be surfing along, the next... whack. dead. doesn't seem to happen when i use firefox exclusively, though, but that might just be dumb luck. i will say it could also be my network -- i have gotten by with an all-linksys solution (pci card, router, range expander), and their customer service and drivers have been terrible over the past two years.

I have a wireless router as well - Netgear make mine. Maybe Tiger doesn't like that?
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post #33 of 54
6/9/05 at 7:01am
hmm \

my Dlink wireless router has been nothing short of stellar. and with tiger, the wireless speed and signal is improved 30%+ for the most part.
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post #34 of 54
6/9/05 at 7:03am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
hmm \

my Dlink wireless router has been nothing short of stellar. and with tiger, the wireless speed and signal is improved 30%+ for the most part.

edit: i must mention though that said router was an utter piece of rubbish until firmware 1.03 upgrade from Taiwan support. so....
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post #35 of 54
6/9/05 at 8:06am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
hmm \

my Dlink wireless router has been nothing short of stellar. and with tiger, the wireless speed and signal is improved 30%+ for the most part.

Wireless signal will not improve in Tiger. OS X just changes the signal level depending on strength/speed rather than just strength.
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post #36 of 54
6/9/05 at 9:16am
I hope that the GL_EXT_framebuffer_object OpenGL extension that will allow for Unreal Tournament 2004 to have full shadows etc will be included. It was recently included in the Linux OpenGL update.
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post #37 of 54
6/9/05 at 10:06am
Quote:
Originally posted by MacCrazy
I have a wireless router as well - Netgear make mine. Maybe Tiger doesn't like that?

I had the same problem with dropped internet access on my netgear wifi router. Technically, it was dropped dns.

Unfortunately this is a known issue for some netgear routers but netgear refuses to acknowledge it. My solution was to buy a different router.
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post #38 of 54
6/9/05 at 11:00am
Quote:
Originally posted by MacCrazy
Wireless signal will not improve in Tiger. OS X just changes the signal level depending on strength/speed rather than just strength.

I know that you're right... but the net effect still is improved signal, kind of. Prior to Tiger, I could get no signal at all in my kitchen - it wouldn't list my network on the list of options at all... it just couldn't sniff the thing out. So I had, for all intents and purposes, no signal that far from my wireless router. Now the network shows up as an option in the drop down menu, and I have a pretty stable connection.

So perhaps the same signal strength was always there, but if it wasn't being represented as an accessable network connection, I've effectively gained greater wireless signal range on my iBook.
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post #39 of 54
6/9/05 at 12:43pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Engine Joe
I know that you're right... but the net effect still is improved signal, kind of. Prior to Tiger, I could get no signal at all in my kitchen - it wouldn't list my network on the list of options at all... it just couldn't sniff the thing out. So I had, for all intents and purposes, no signal that far from my wireless router. Now the network shows up as an option in the drop down menu, and I have a pretty stable connection.

So perhaps the same signal strength was always there, but if it wasn't being represented as an accessable network connection, I've effectively gained greater wireless signal range on my iBook.

oh ok - well that's good. I didn't realise that.
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post #40 of 54
6/9/05 at 7:27pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Engine Joe
I know that you're right... but the net effect still is improved signal, kind of. Prior to Tiger, I could get no signal at all in my kitchen - it wouldn't list my network on the list of options at all... it just couldn't sniff the thing out. So I had, for all intents and purposes, no signal that far from my wireless router. Now the network shows up as an option in the drop down menu, and I have a pretty stable connection.

So perhaps the same signal strength was always there, but if it wasn't being represented as an accessable network connection, I've effectively gained greater wireless signal range on my iBook.

uh... yeah MacCrazy, what Joe said
effectively somehow Tiger handles the wireless signal much better. again, my teknikal knowlehg not so goodd

but i suspect that maybe somehow Tiger 'assigns' more battery power to the airport extreme card. battery drains fast when airport is on, but not too bad when airport is off

anyway when connected to the AC (most of the time) i am mui mui impressado with the iBook wireless experience with tiger
...........
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