“Apple’s Notification Center is a central place to get small details about the status of various applications and system services on your Mac, allowing you to see anything from song information when iTunes changes tracks, to notices about software updates being available,” Topher Kessler writes for MacIssues. “In addition, Notification Center supports quickly tweeting and replying to messages, but in Yosemite the service has been revamped to mimic the Notification Center feature in iOS 7, and might even be geared to eventually replace Dashboard.”
“While for the most part Yosemite’s Notification Center functions the same as in prior OS X versions by bringing you updates on application and system service activities, it now supports apps that will bring you information such as upcoming calendar events, stock information, weather details, and a world clock,” Kessler writes. “There is also a calculator app that can be added, and a link to the App Store that will let you browse for new apps to add to Notification Center.”
Kessler writes, “Even though these new features augment the Notification Center service, they do directly overlap with Apple’s prior efforts at the use of the Dashboard to bring widgets to the OS X Desktop.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh yeah, Dashboard. We just tried to invoke it and it doesn’t even work (shows how much we use it) on our multi-monitor OS X 10.9.3 setups (it does work on our MacBook Airs running OS X 10.9.3).
While I do use Dashboard for some quick information in a couple of Widgets, that functionality can easily be replaced by functionality in Notification Center. In fact, I will probably forgo use of Dashboard for Notification Center in Yosemite.
The one feature I absolutely do NOT use on my computer is Launchpad. My Goto Apps are in the Dock and I’ve also added the Applications and Utilities folders for everything else.
I liked the idea behind Dashboard, but it always seemed like a resource hog to me.
Noooo……I use dashboard a hundred times a day for weather, stock stuff usually!! I don’t want to see it go away! I still have it fly it out of no where instead of a space that its set too by default. I want it kept around for good!
I always thought Apple should make Dashboard capable of running certain iOS apps as widgets. Since iOS is based heavily upon OS X, it should be doable.
Never seem to find widgets these days let alone useful ones, seems to me that iOS apps instead would be far more useful.
With 20/20 hindsight, you can see that Dashboard was implemented originally to get developers to create web apps. The first apps on the iPhone before 3.0 and the AppStore were web apps. They served as the foundation of iOS apps.
I swipe to the left to see Dashboard pretty much daily, and that’s just for a weather forecast.
I have a 5S, I could just check on my phone, the laptop is a bit faster, that’s… about… it. Everything else (like iStat pro) is cool but could be a tucked away sidebar thing.
By the way, as Mac users we have to eat a TON of crow when it comes to Yosemite (no, not you, Warner Bros).. translucent window chrome? the Sidebar widgets? Admit it… MSFT deserves a pat on the back here…
iOS is a whole nother can of worms..
Except translucent window chrome happened a long time ago on earlier versions of OS X. Where do you think Microsoft got the idea?
You’re right. If you look at these old 10.1 screens, the inactive window is transparent. With Yosemite every window has this translucent effect.
I probably never used this version of OS X.. I think my first OS X Mac was an eMac running 10.3. Or maybe my memory is just off.
I will say this though: if Apple had this ‘idea’ about 10 years ago, and is now coming back to it, it seems like a weird decision. Maybe it’s because Jonny Ive is now running the show, etc.
I just feel like eating crow myself because I always thought the Windows (see through) chrome was a gimmick, and to see Apple doing it so that windows adopt the “personality” of my desktop background, is a little cheesy, but when you see them doing it in iOS7 (control center) it makes sense to do it on the desktop~~
Yes, but Apple’s transparency is the right degree of transparency unlike Windoze. And don’t get me started on the horrid Aero.
Gee, what a brilliant original idea.
Remember what spawned notification center?
Android leads, Apple follows except the caveat is they copied it to the desktop OS ala Windows 8.
They really have to do better, this and the anorexic look, sheez …
Are you complaining about the font again?
When I can from windows to Mac, I always thought the Mac fonts look fat and heavy.
First glance of [an incomplete] Yosemite on my Mac mini shows me a lighter (IMHO more sophisticated) interface.
There was another article that was complaining about helvetica everywhere and that it would be too thin. In Yosemite, the fonts and meanies are still heavy and dark(you will like it I would guess) even though lighter than previous versions.
Certainly not anorexic.
Not meanies… Menus… Oops.
You are contradicting yourself.
And yes, I am complaining about a fifties font that is the THINNEST and most ILLEGIBLE of any font Apple has ever used.
At work now use Windows 7 forty hours a week. A year ago it was Mac at work for past 30 years.
You are correct Apple type tech display is superior to Windows.
That said, the current Apple choice for thin type is technically a bit beefier than the same on Windows.
But we are not talking Windows.
Abject Apple failure and sorry the truth is hard to swallow.
I’m all for replacing Dashboard! I’ve never cared for it, and am already acclimated to using OSX’s notification center.
What you missed is Apple copied notification center from Android.
Apple also copied mobile cut and paste from Android.
That said, they improved on it to nuke the competition.
Apple should combine dashboard widgets into Notification centre then move all this to be under the Apple menu: the normal Preferences and Shutdown items at the top with all the widgets below.
I had the same thought that this replaces Dashboard. I looked at some of the screen shots from WWDC, and saw that there was no icon for Dashboard on any of the docks in Yosemite. Seems that this already discussed and decided.
Dashboard still exists in Yosemite betas, but don’t expect to see it in 10.11 😉