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Dashboard for iPad concept app

by Michael Grothaus Mar 29th 2010 at 4:00PM



TechCrunch found this sweet app by Carnegie Mellon student Rich Hong that puts Dashboard on your iPad. As you can see from the video above, it appears Hong has successfully ported Mac OS X's Dashboard directly to the iPad, though it is missing some of the iPhone's built-in apps like Calculator, Stocks, and Weather. Many speculated that, without a complete overhaul, these limited-functionality apps would look ridiculous on the iPad's large screen. Hong's solution gives those apps back to the iPad.

It is not known yet if Hong's Dashboard iPad app will appear in the iPad App Store, but I think it's fairly doubtful considering it mimics Apple software to a T. Still, it's a cool implementation and goes a long way to showing just what is possible on the iPad.

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TechCrunch found this sweet app by Carnegie Mellon student Rich Hong that puts Dashboard on your iPad. As you can see from the video...
 

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ANDY

There is actually a jailbreak app for iPhone like this, and it can run the actual Dashboard widgets, but not a lot of people know about it, it was released on a piracy forum.

March 30 2010 at 3:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
spiceweasel

I seriously doubt we will see any kind of dashboard on the iPad. First, if switching between apps (i.e. closing one and opening another) really goes as fast as advertised, where is the actual difference between multi- and "mono-"tasking" (given the fact that any app can autosave its current state)? Second, a widget collection on the iPad would be a second ecosystem for apps on the iPad - and I doubt that Apple would have interest in that, simply for the fact that they will not have any shares from widgets being bought.

March 30 2010 at 3:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to spiceweasel's comment
Shunnabunich

"First, if switching between apps (i.e. closing one and opening another) really goes as fast as advertised..."
Safe to assume it won't, considering that iPhones work just as blazing fast in the magical Apple Ad Universe. Developers will inevitably write apps that take a long time to close, and don't do it properly (i.e. saving state).

"...I doubt that Apple would have interest in [a widget ecosystem], simply for the fact that they will not have any shares from widgets being bought."
Nor do they make any revenue from the iPhone web apps for which they've hosted a directory since 2007. Or the OS X Dashboard widget directory, come to think of it. If they were to do it, it'd be for the good of the iPad platform in general. If this Hong fella's achievement is any indication, Apple could tout extreme ease of porting for a majority of widgets from OS X to iPad, too.

March 30 2010 at 4:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JTP03

Apple should actually do this, it makes total sense given the lack of those apps from the iPhone on the iPad.

March 29 2010 at 9:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alek

i hope that if it goes on jailbreak they can implant it as part of the substrate so it opens on top of all your apps, not as a separate app. For jailbreak you could also implant a Circuitous like widget/dock to support multitasking.

March 29 2010 at 8:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Shunnabunich

Wow, nice. I hope this at least becomes available through Cydia, if not as a bona fide feature of 4.0.

March 29 2010 at 6:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Izzy

HackiPad, by the iPhone Dev Team.

March 29 2010 at 6:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bigdaddy_ga

Why is it every post Michael Grothaus makes has the Flash lego in place of the video? Is this his backhanded way of flipping the finger at Apple and iPhone (and soon to include iPad) users? You can't tell me this site can't transcode those clips to Quicktime before they are posted. Other vid clips play just fine.

March 29 2010 at 5:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hobbes

One thing I miss terribly in the iPhone and it would be awesome in the iPad is a home screen with useful information, that is, turn your decide on and you can instantly get a glimpse of important appointments, emails, news snippets, etc. This could be an additional screen like Apple added Spotlight and would add a lot of value (for me at least) to the home screen.

This implementation of the Dashboard is very cool, though, like the article said, since it's a total rip of Apple's I doubt we will see this available for the iPad, but then again, if it's just the shell that allows you to run any Widgets I don't see why not, just don't include the ones Apple already bundles with Dashboard and it should be fine.

March 29 2010 at 5:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DJ

That looks like a mac dashboard. What is the difference? He added iphone menu bar at the top and that is already creative iPad dashboard? Sorry, that does not pass...

March 29 2010 at 4:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to DJ's comment
Johnny

The difference is that it is running on the iPad emulator and not (Snow) Leopard. This would be an awesome addition to the iPad. I could see a gesture such as swiping the top bar to activate it so you can quickly reference widgets from any application and keep those widgets running in the background at all times. The widgets would be sandboxed in the Dashboard app which could have a limitation on its memory and CPU usage so that there is little strain on the system. I think that would easily solve the background issue for both users and Apple's (total control) delight.

March 29 2010 at 4:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zack kitzmiller

Wow..

March 29 2010 at 5:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eddie

Wow -- very cool! I'm thinking this could be sort of a multitasking window into a bunch of things that I would want to do on my iPad. I could have the apps that I normally have on my MacBook Pro dashboard: stock app, ToodleDo list, calculator, language translator, calendar, clock, temperature, and so on. Now all someone needs to do is add a MailPlane widget and a Safari browser widget, and I'd be able to do almost everything from that one screen. The concept is staggering my mind.....

March 29 2010 at 4:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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