Briefly: Mac OS X 10.3.8, Dashboard, iPod shuffle...
A collection of notes related to Apple's OS strategies and and an update on the company's iPod shuffle digital music player.
The next, and possibly final, release of Apple's Mac OS X "Panther" operating system continues to gain some perks, according to developers who've been privy to information surrounding the latest pre-release builds.
In recent days, developers blogs have reported sightings of Mac OS X 10.3.8 build 7U7, a forthcoming maintenance release to Mac OS X Panther that currently weighs in at just shy of 20 MB.
In addition to previous reports of increased system and graphics stability, developers claim the most recent build delivers improvements to the launch time of certain applications, while offering more graphics driver and OpenGL performance fixes since the previous build.
Now believed to be in the mid-stages of its development, Mac OS X 10.3.8 is also said to sport improvements to Address Book LDAP lookup and Active Directory Plugin binding and functionality.
Mac OS X 10.3.8 is reportedly slated for release sometime next month.
Apple offers insight into latest Tiger developments
In related Mac OS X news, Apple last week quietly updated its online preview of Mac OS X "Tiger" to include movie captures from some of the latest, unreleased builds of the operating system.
Most striking are the changes to Apple's upcoming widgets application, called Dashboard. The application, now seamlessly integrated into Tiger, spawns its own dock below the Mac OS X dock when activated.
The online preview also offers clips of additional Tiger features which have previously been reported on AppleInsider, such as QuickTime movie sharing, Mail 2.0 interface improvements, and parental controls.
Sigmatel chip at heart of iPod shuffle
Confirming industry rumors which sprouted months ago, analyst Portelligent, Inc., claims to have confirmed that Apple's just released iPod Shuffle MP3 player employs SigmaTel's D-Major STMP3550 MP3 audio decoder chip for audio processing.
Shares of Sigmatel rose over 2% today to close at $37.25. The stock rose further in after hours to $32.62.
And while Reuters is reporting that Apple's online store is quoting wait times of up to 4 weeks for one of these new flash-based music players, we hear that a certain Calif.-based Apple retail store retained quite a few of them as of Tuesday afternoon.
The next, and possibly final, release of Apple's Mac OS X "Panther" operating system continues to gain some perks, according to developers who've been privy to information surrounding the latest pre-release builds.
In recent days, developers blogs have reported sightings of Mac OS X 10.3.8 build 7U7, a forthcoming maintenance release to Mac OS X Panther that currently weighs in at just shy of 20 MB.
In addition to previous reports of increased system and graphics stability, developers claim the most recent build delivers improvements to the launch time of certain applications, while offering more graphics driver and OpenGL performance fixes since the previous build.
Now believed to be in the mid-stages of its development, Mac OS X 10.3.8 is also said to sport improvements to Address Book LDAP lookup and Active Directory Plugin binding and functionality.
Mac OS X 10.3.8 is reportedly slated for release sometime next month.
Apple offers insight into latest Tiger developments
In related Mac OS X news, Apple last week quietly updated its online preview of Mac OS X "Tiger" to include movie captures from some of the latest, unreleased builds of the operating system.
Most striking are the changes to Apple's upcoming widgets application, called Dashboard. The application, now seamlessly integrated into Tiger, spawns its own dock below the Mac OS X dock when activated.
The online preview also offers clips of additional Tiger features which have previously been reported on AppleInsider, such as QuickTime movie sharing, Mail 2.0 interface improvements, and parental controls.
Sigmatel chip at heart of iPod shuffle
Confirming industry rumors which sprouted months ago, analyst Portelligent, Inc., claims to have confirmed that Apple's just released iPod Shuffle MP3 player employs SigmaTel's D-Major STMP3550 MP3 audio decoder chip for audio processing.
Shares of Sigmatel rose over 2% today to close at $37.25. The stock rose further in after hours to $32.62.
And while Reuters is reporting that Apple's online store is quoting wait times of up to 4 weeks for one of these new flash-based music players, we hear that a certain Calif.-based Apple retail store retained quite a few of them as of Tuesday afternoon.
Comments
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Shares of Sigmatel rose over 2% today to close at $37.25. The stock rose further in after hours to $32.62.
Rose from 37.25 to 32.62??? Thats some fuzzy math.
Macaddict16
I can see what all the color is for now: telling one widget from another at a glance. Since they can all pop up at once (unlike the usual way you launch apps one at a time), those visual cues are important. They let you keep lots of widgets open and get to them all instantly.
Download the PDF from Apple's page for lots of details. There's quite a bit of functionality there!
Can't wait to make my own widgets with Shockwave Director... (I wonder if Director, Flash, etc. can have Dashboard transparency that animates?)
One question... The demo movie does NOT show the "water drop effect" happening. Nor do widgets flip over in 3D. Odd... those effects are still mentioned in the text. Are they still present?
Originally posted by nagromme
With the exception of the Calculator (bugs me for some reason)--and some slightly non-standard popup menus/scrollbars--I think Dashboard is looking pretty nice!
I can see what all the color is for now: telling one widget from another at a glance. Since they can all pop up at once (unlike the usual way you launch apps one at a time), those visual cues are important. They let you keep lots of widgets open and get to them all instantly.
Download the PDF from Apple's page for lots of details. There's quite a bit of functionality there!
Can't wait to make my own widgets with Shockwave Director... (I wonder if Director, Flash, etc. can have Dashboard transparency that animates?)
One question... The demo movie does NOT show the "water drop effect" happening. Nor do widgets flip over in 3D. Odd... those effects are still mentioned in the text. Are they still present?
Most likely. Maybe the demo compy lacked a CoreImage-enabled GPU? Or perhaps they turned them off to make the screen capture work better, or the specific build they used has them taken out...
Originally posted by m01ety
Most likely. Maybe the demo compy lacked a CoreImage-enabled GPU? Or perhaps they turned them off to make the screen capture work better, or the specific build they used has them taken out...
i can make pretty pictures !! see
http://www.phatcraft.com
anybody wanna partner with me to make a cool Dashboard widget? i'm gonna let the cat out of the bag...
the idea is to make a Widget that collates all the news from different Mac news sites in a slick, innovative, exteremely readble Widget.
news collation leverages XML feeds of course, plus some nifty tech to prevent too much duplication of news items, for example Columbia Uni's Newsblaster http://www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster/
i am interested in designing cool UI... any others? maybe to help with marketing/alliances/coding!
thanks for your time people
Originally posted by nagromme
Can't wait to make my own widgets with Shockwave Director... (I wonder if Director, Flash, etc. can have Dashboard transparency that animates?)
IMHO i am not sure if Flash or Director are supported? Just HTML/CSS/Javascript. Any clarification is appreciated...
edit: ok cool, yeah Flash supported, quicktime, java... good question on the transparency.
Originally posted by sunilraman
i can make pretty pictures !! see
http://www.phatcraft.com
anybody wanna partner with me to make a cool Dashboard widget? i'm gonna let the cat out of the bag...
the idea is to make a Widget that collates all the news from different Mac news sites in a slick, innovative, exteremely readble Widget.
news collation leverages XML feeds of course, plus some nifty tech to prevent too much duplication of news items, for example Columbia Uni's Newsblaster http://www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster/
i am interested in designing cool UI... any others? maybe to help with marketing/alliances/coding!
thanks for your time people
Are you thinking of an RSS reader for Dashboard? This'd be a great widget! I know HTML and CSS and should be learning some basic Java soon, if that's all that is necessary to make one, I'd be interested. Has Apple released documents detailing the making of widgets yet, or is it still in the higher developers area?
edit: Found the information on building widgets and I am even more interested now.
Originally posted by nagromme
One question... The demo movie does NOT show the "water drop effect" happening. Nor do widgets flip over in 3D. Odd... those effects are still mentioned in the text. Are they still present?
They're still there, but it requires a capable graphics card.
From Apple:
The performance gains and features supported by Core Image ultimately depend on the graphics card. Graphics cards capable of pixel-level programming deliver the best performance. But Core Image automatically scales as appropriate for systems with older graphics cards, for compatibility with any Tiger-compatible Mac.
Supported graphics cards:
ATI Radeon 9800 XT
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200
NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
Originally posted by danielctull
Are you thinking of an RSS reader for Dashboard? This'd be a great widget! I know HTML and CSS and should be learning some basic Java soon, if that's all that is necessary to make one, I'd be interested. Has Apple released documents detailing the making of widgets yet, or is it still in the higher developers area?
i am thinking a more directed kind of rss reader. you gotta assume that tons of people will be doing generic rss reader.
i think we should differentiate ourselves to specific areas, starting with our beloved Mac News. smart grouping of news items, great UI, and getting all your News from multiple websites in just one Widget may give this the spark that will light up your Dashboard
game on:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html
ps. if one can use Flash and dashboard supports Flash tranceparency, that would make for some cool effecx and stuff.
thanks for your interest danielctull! let's just continue to explore Dashboard fun!
Originally posted by sunilraman
IMHO i am not sure if Flash or Director are supported? Just HTML/CSS/Javascript. Any clarification is appreciated...
Supposedly all your Web plug-ins are supported. HTML/JS is just the beginning. I see in the dev docs that you have a PNG background with transparency control. The question then becomes... if you have a TOTALLY transparent background, and then Flash or Director plug-in stuff animating on top of that, can the background of the plug-in be transparent instead of solid? You don't see that done on web pages much if ever, but maybe Dashboard can do it?
Originally posted by Cake
They're still there, but it requires a capable graphics card.
The "genie" effect seems more intensive than the widgets flipping over, and it doesn't require Core Image. (Genie doesn't even need Quartz Extreme! Nor do Sheets.) How do you know which UI effects (if any) are Core Image effects? Does a widget flipping over really need a Core Image capable GPU?
Originally posted by nagromme
Supposedly all your Web plug-ins are supported. HTML/JS is just the beginning. I see in the dev docs that you have a PNG background with transparency control. The question then becomes... if you have a TOTALLY transparent background, and then Flash or Director plug-in stuff animating on top of that, can the background of the plug-in be transparent instead of solid? You don't see that done on web pages much if ever, but maybe Dashboard can do it?
The "genie" effect seems more intensive than the widgets flipping over, and it doesn't require Core Image. (Genie doesn't even need Quartz Extreme! Nor do Sheets.) How do you know which UI effects (if any) are Core Image effects? Does a widget flipping over really need a Core Image capable GPU?
1. dude, intense... like multi-level transparency and stuff composited on the fly in Dashboard...
2. widget flipping over, etc... interesting question. if most animations are done in Flash, for example, that could bypass Core Image GPU considerations to deliver some nice animation even for those with *ahem* crap video cards (ie, in the first year of Tiger, that would be most people)
If you don't have one of the cards listed above, it just means that Core Image will fall back on the CPU. The CPU has AltiVec, which is a highly capable vector processor, so you will still be able to execute a lot of filters and effects in real time, and they'll still be supported.
This idea that you won't be able to do anything fancy without GPU support must die. Core Image will be fully functional. It just won't be fully accelerated without one of the GPUs listed above. But the CPU can do filters just fine. You might even say that AltiVec was designed for that sort of thing...
2 Docks, one over the other. Dragging out of the top dock removes things from a dock in a poof. Dragging out of the bottom dock creates a new mini-application on the screen. These mini-applications don't have their own desktop icons and can't be launched individually, so application authors have a choice between a "real" application and a "Dashboard" application.
Why couldn't they just simplify the management of ALL applications, and make Dashboard widgets appear to be first-class citizens? If they want a nifty function key to bring it up, let people assign such a key to any group of apps, not just Dashboard apps. And why can't I arrange Dashboard apps around real apps on my screen?
And no, I don't want to clutter my Dock with a dozen various widgets -- I think you're missing Dashboard's best feature, the ability to slide in and slide out very quickly. One of the ingredients for that to work is existing in a separate environment that can be speedily invoked and dismissed.
I bet you're right about special Core Image GPUs not being needed. It's odd not to show those effects in the demo movie, but that doesn't mean much.
Originally posted by Booga
Am I the only one to think "UGH!"?
2 Docks, one over the other.
Dashboard's not meant for the purpose you describe--although your idea would make a great utility too. (I'm sure someone will make add-ons to take Dashboard widgets OUT of Dashboard.)
Dashboard vs. the regular dock isn't confusing, because the regular Dock--the whole regular screen, in fact--just dims away and is non-functional while you're in Dashboard.
Plus, the Dashboard dock is not always there--only if you want it. I personally would only open it when I wanted to add a new widget. The rest of the time I'd just keep all my widgets open and not NEED the Dashboard dock.
(I do think the PMG5-matching look of the Dashboard dock is odd. A little too busy... and Tiger doesn't need one MORE visual theme going on!)
Originally posted by Booga
<snip>These mini-applications don't have their own desktop icons and can't be launched individually, so application authors have a choice between a "real" application and a "Dashboard" application.
Why couldn't they just simplify the management of ALL applications, and make Dashboard widgets appear to be first-class citizens? <snip>
I'm also wondering why there are 2 classes of applications.
Obviously as another reply said, there are different purposes for dashboard and 'real' apps. If it's a new way of interfacing with your computer, however, why restrict the language for dashboard apps? There is no current reason to restrict dashboard apps to HTML/CSS/Javascript/quicktime/flash if carbon and cocoa are available.
So is it just about the user interface? To me, the lack of cocoa says there's more.
I believe Apple has something in mind - some other device where dashboard apps can run from. A java (dashboard) device with access to your phone numbers, weather info, stock prices, etc etc - even an applet to control your iTunes. Maybe the "iPod Home" rumour relates to this.
Mentioned here:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/da...s_konfabulator
As for the logic behind two classes--I think it's for usability.
There already ARE two classes of apps in terms of how people use them: ones you spend time in, and "little" ones you use briefly and then get out of.
The Dashboard distinction may be artificial, but it acknowldges that second class of app, and makes it easier to work with those.
My dock won't have to be cluttered with "little stuff" like Calculator and Address Book anymore. All that stuff will be one click away. And when I NEED the full Address Book (for instance), one click in the widget will get me there.
Dashboard vs. the regular dock isn't confusing, because the regular Dock--the whole regular screen, in fact--just dims away and is non-functional while you're in Dashboard.
In my mind, this sentence contradicts itself. Elimination of hidden "modes" was always one of the core precepts of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Now you're going to have an entire class of apps in another Dock that looks sort of like the real dock and is near it, but acts completely differently in response to drag and clicks. And you won't be able to use Dashboard apps next to a real app, you have to enter a special mode or whatever.
You want another row on your dock for widgets that's hideable? Great! You want virtual desktops that can be invoked with a keypress and overlayed, and some apps to automatically go to a second virtual desktop? Great! But why force this distinction between real apps and Dashboard widgets, and why make the second row of dock icons behave differently, and why have these modes where you can use one but not the other?
The Widget Bar acts very much like the media bar of many apps. Click an item to activate it--or drag it where you want it. That means you can add a widget with one click if you don't care where it goes. Or drag it into place if you do. It's really not confusing to use.
And the Widget Bar isn't a normal part of Dashboard use. It's for customizing what shows up in Dashboard. The rest of the time it's not even there. Many people will never even use it. Those who would be confused by it included.
This is a case where it's useful to move into a separate mode for just one type of app. Why? because by highlighting the newly-visible widgets and dimmming everything else, you can show them ALL with one operation. They're small and simple enough to fit.
That means you never have to hunt for the icon or name of the widget you want. Hit the icon or F12, and instantly any widget you commonly use is there. The fact that each is a different color--and positioned where you left it--further helps you get right to what you're after. It's as though the app IS the icon. You see it, and you use it, with no selection process needed--except to trigger Dashboard.
You COULD make such a system available to all apps... multiple virtual desktops is cool... but that would confuse most users I think. They'd have to keep track of which apps were on the dashboard (or the other desktop[s]) and which were not. May as well do away with it then--and lose the instant-access, instant-dismissal benefit which is the reason for Dashboard. That benefit applies to small apps that you use briefly--not to all apps. Exposé provides what you need for other kinds of apps.
Put another way, multiple virtual desktops all alike would be a neat power-user feature--I'd love Apple to add that--but it would be a burden to many other users. It wouldn't be something they'd use. Dashboard, however, is easily usable and comprehensible to everyone BECAUSE there's a clear distinction between it and "everything else." (And remember that many of these things have long been separate--as panes of Sherlock.)
Again, I think this distinction here is NOT artificial. It's recognizing a distinction that already existed between "real" apps and "mini" apps, and makes something useful of it--something that understands how people think and work. Address Book, Calculator, iCal, Stickies... these are all things I launch (bounce bounce), use for a moment, and then use a menu command or keyboard shortcut to quit or hide. With dashboard, ONE operation can show ALL of them--and hide them again--more quickly, easily, and without cluttering my dock with "trivial"--but vital--apps.
I think people will easily understand and remember what's a widget and what isn't. Nobody will find themselves wondering... "Web browser... is that in Dashboard?" Nor will they look for the latest weather under Applications. The principle of "widgets" vs. regular "apps" is further made clear by using a different name... They're not "Dashboard apps," they're "widgets."
Dashboard also avoids cluttering my screen with little app windows (or menu icons) to do minor things like display weather or control iTunes. If you want full-fledged always-present apps for those things, you CAN still have them. But they clutter your workspace. I've always been of two minds about such things, from CPU meters to remote-controllers to weather banners.
Solution? Dashboard lets you have your mini-apps AND your freedom from clutter. Have your cake and eat it too.
Sometimes dividing things into different areas or functions makes things MORE logical. That's why we have a menu bar, window gadgets, AND a Dock. Each does its job well. You COULD pack all those things into one long menu, but it would be harder to navigate, and it wouldn't respect the way people work with their machines.
And of course, for those who DON'T work that way--who want the mini apps mixed in with the full-scale apps... Dashboard is optional
Some will never use Dashboard, and nothing is lost by having the option and not using it. But I think a LOT of people will find that Dashboard saves them time and effort. That it fits usefully into the way they use their computer. I think they will even miss it when sitting down at a Panther or Windows system.
Basically, a lot of the stuff that was in Watson/Sherlock seem to belong in an app, and not in a temporarily visible "mode". I don't see why this is so much better than a tabbed palette of extra tools, except for the whiz-bang demo factor. My grandmother, and I as well, would sure understand the tabbed pane app better.
And the UI for Dashboard just looks really, really bad to me. Like, worse than if Microsoft had implemented it. The Dashboard "not-a-Dock" designer should, IMHO, be fired.
The inconsistencies in dragging, I suppose, shouldn't surprise me. MacOS X is horribly inconsistent in what happens when you drag random object X into random space Y, so I suppose adding one more inconsistency doesn't significantly worsen the experience. MacOS 7-8 was probably as good as we are going to get on that front for awhile yet (really, OpenDoc was as good as we're going to get for a LONG while.)
Dashboard gadgets are the new Desk Accessories, only more configurable and more powerful. It didn't make sense to commingle them with normal applications in 1984, and it doesn't now.
I think they were implemented primarily as HTML and JavaScript because so many of them (the weather app, for instance) are front ends to web technologies. So the developer of a web service can whip up a Dashboard app to access it herself, instead of hunting for a Cocoa programmer.
And yes, you can call into Cocoa, or Java, or AppleScript, or what-have-you, from a gadget. They're not limited to being 100% HTML/JavaScript.