Mac OS X-style Dashboard App for iPad

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

TechCrunch links up Carnegie Mellon student Richard Hong and his pretty much pixel-perfect looking rendition of Apple's Mac OS X Dashboard widget platform... on the iPad! The video shows not only the widgets working, but being added from the web and managed on the iPad as well.

We don't know if Hong will submit this to the App Store, and given that the rights to many if not all those widgets are owned by other people, we're not even sure if it could be submitted, but we do know we'd like to see something like that from Apple. Hey, it's been rumored. If not, an old-school "desktop" style app using another, open widget platform would be nifty to see as well.

Video after the break. (Tap the link below the box if you're on your iPhone or iPod touch).

Dashboard on iPad (opens in new tab) from Rich Hong (opens in new tab) on Vimeo (opens in new tab).

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

11 Comments
  • A little bit of Macbook on my pad. Nice! I like it.
  • If it's running the actual Dashboard widgets I highly doubt it would get approved as it is effectively running 3rd party code.
  • My understanding is that DashCode is pretty much JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, so that might not be a problem so much as he's running other people's code who may not have given permission for its use.
  • I want widgets they look cool
  • Wow! Cool.. looks like it does bridge the Macbook, iPhone gap. It's like having a touch screen MacBook 13"
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  • i really hope this all comes out in v4.0 os
  • I think we will see what an ipad can really do soon.apple is waiting till sales slow to give us firmware updates that will blow our mind
  • Good point MrC about the 3rd party code, but as Rene Ritchie says, widgets are indeed JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The 'dashboard App' is effectively a web-browser that can load widgets.
  • Impact on battery life?
  • @Lady Kaede: do you ask the impact of battery life with all apps? Because this is just an app you run whenever you want to see a dashboard. So it is no different than any other program that happens to have a lot of graphical elements.
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