Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, Apple, Widget Watch
Apple Matters' 9 best widgets
Widget lovers unite! Apple Matters' Aaron Wright has crowned, what he thinks, are the nine best widgets out there. His list includes iStats Pro, iPhoto Mini, digg.com, and six others.I must confess that I am a rather boring Dashboard user, but I do make frequent use of it. My go to widget? Apple's weather widget that ships with the OS. I love that thing more than any man should.
What are a few of your favorite widgets?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Neshy said 12:42PM on 6-01-2006
I would have to say my productive widgets include battery monitor, Airport utility, and the shutdown/sleep shortcuts.. and on top of that, theres the fun ones such as SameGame, ChiaPet, and Sketcher, just to name a few. All of these can be found at the Apple Mac OS X site under widget downloads.
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Todd S said 12:47PM on 6-01-2006
Call me a fanatic, but my fav widget is actually an Apple widget that shows everything on sale in the certified-refurbished section of the Apple.com store. I check it each morning for great deals.
Here's a link: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/shopping/applecomdailyspecial.html
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Burt said 12:57PM on 6-01-2006
I second that on the weather widget -- by far the most used.
I also frequently use the wikipedia and IMDB widgets.
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Camille Brown said 1:00PM on 6-01-2006
My fav is the weather and the airline tracker...nice to track hubby in the sky...
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stl said 1:01PM on 6-01-2006
I use 3:
The iCal events widget
http://www.benkazez.com/icalevents.php
Notepad (much better than stickies)
http://homepage.mac.com/stewart.hector/home/software/software.html
and of course, the Weather widget
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Gomer said 1:02PM on 6-01-2006
I use iCal Events, Wikipedia, and Apple's Weather widget most frequently. I also have the Simpsons quotes, Family Guy quote, white and yellow pages widgets open as well.
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fp said 1:21PM on 6-01-2006
weather
wikipedia
capture
and wimic!
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Thayne Miller said 1:24PM on 6-01-2006
azureus widget by far the best widget ever made!
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Omar said 1:24PM on 6-01-2006
My most frequently used:
Weather
Calendar
Address Book
Skype
Dictionary / Thesaurus
Currency Converter
Jack widget
Terribly boring, bloody useful.
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Bill I said 1:25PM on 6-01-2006
My standard widgets are: Radar in Motion, Apple's Weather Widget, and StopDashboard.
Beyond that - I don't really use Dashboard all that often....I've never really found a "killer widget" that was enough to get to use it for anything more than quick weather information.
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Brenden said 1:25PM on 6-01-2006
I have the Netflix widget that tells me what movies I have out, which I like a lot...but I'm boring and like the calendar. That's the most used one, probably. And the calculator.
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Ultim8Fury said 1:51PM on 6-01-2006
VLC controller (for remotely controlling my mini.
Apples converter widget. I use that all the time.
Magic 8 Ball for those important life altering decisions.
Apple order tracking widget.
The weather widget.
iClipLite
nixie clock
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jp said 1:53PM on 6-01-2006
i find the weatherbug widget to be WAY better than the stock one. i live fairly close to the weather widget's source, but it always seems goof. weatherbug actually finds even closer sources for current temp. for me it uses a highschool that is less than 2 miles away.
i found it because it was a top download at apple.com, so i guess others agree?
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mike said 2:37PM on 6-01-2006
how can you take a best-of list seriously if it promotes the product of the publishing party?
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Dra studio said 2:49PM on 6-01-2006
I used to use Apple's weather widget quite often, but I have now found WeatherBug's to be much more detailed and resourceful.
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Tracye said 3:18PM on 6-01-2006
Definately the weather widget!!!
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Adrian vG said 3:36PM on 6-01-2006
Calcuator
Weather
Unit converter
not so many others are good looking (like the ones recommended in the link) and too many jsut take up too much RAM.
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Olivier Ansaldi said 3:38PM on 6-01-2006
I find the dictionary/thesaurus and the translator (since I'm not a native english speaker) extremely useful when blogging. When it comes to spelling and finding synonyms, it doesn't get much better!
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jason mark said 6:45PM on 6-01-2006
I can't say any widgets really impress me. I mean battery and airport monitor are on my menubar, why would I want to hit a key for them. Weather, just hit my quicksilver combo and type wea for weather.com in my area. I tried widgets Konfabulator, and played a couple of games for an hour, but it sort of lost it's appeal. Maybe I'm just missing how "insanely great" this is...
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Clark said 9:14PM on 6-01-2006
They aren't "insanely great". They are useless resource hogging gimmickry.
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