My Dream App

Slick mockups, but my dock/widgets accomplish pretty much the same thing. I really don’t want another app taking up system resources.

I’ve seen tons of these attempts at integrating everything — everything, that is, that’s already pretty well integrated if you already know how to control Mac OS X. Why, for example, would you ever need the iChat module when it does little (if anything) that iChat already does? What does it do other than integrate Dock functions and the functions of running multiple apps? Very little. Pass.

Am I missing something? Aren’t there are already a half-dozen Dashboard widgets that do this?

Ground Control had a pretty close call last week but made it through to another round. Russell did some nifty skin designs for it which shows one of the big differences between it and Dashboard and that’s of visual consistency. Will this addition be enough to push it to the finals with all the competition intensifying?

I go back and forth with this one because it’s really hard to gauge how I can feel about a Dashboard competitor. I’ll stick with what I’ve said in the past, though, and that’s how much of an overall better design this seems to have. Instead of focusing on meaningless custom designed widgets, this adds a lot of structure and integration to all of your status indicators.

I’ve had a really hard time understanding what’s going on with the hype about this idea. Needless to say I don’t like it but I have no idea why people are so excited about concept which has been available in Linux and Windows for years. Also it has so many features that I’m afraid it might become a resource hog. I prefer smaller apps, precisely designed for one-two purposes. It’s very difficult to polish your product and maintain it’s usability if it does so much. Ground Control tries to tie so many apps and functions within one interface, that it looks like an attempt to build a user interface above user interface provided by the operating system. Not meta-UI, but a redundant repetition of what you already have in OS X.

Plus this huge, blue horizontal bar taking up space reserved for dock really reminds me of Windows. Maybe if it looked different, was less obtrusive, it would grow on me. At this point I can’t think of a way to improve it. In my opinion it needs a radical change of approach, maybe even paradigm shift - to something which rather remains hidden and pops up when needed, than something that takes up precious screen space and steals focus from what you actually should be doing.

Now this is both simultaneously interesting and frightening. Half of me loves the idea and knows it would help me get infinitely more done, the other half almost shudders thinking about the amount of work involved to develop the interface for this thing. Russell has presented us with a concept that is essentially an OS within an OS. Unfortunately, it would need to be approached this way in terms of graphics implementation in order to facilitate end-user skinning and module development by third parties. Dashboard utilizes entirely freeform entities to present its functionalities, so the visual inconsistencies and lack of integration from widget to widget are irrelevant. On the flip side, GC presents us with a continuous visually integrated control surface - this is in fact its key selling-point. Maintaining the lab-perfect look shown here would require the development of a substantial library of graphics covering a wide range interface elements so that I, as a developer, could create any module I might imagine and be confident that not only would it look like part of the default GC interface, but that it would also comply with any user-applied skin.

When one considers the sheer number of control and display possibilities that would need to be covered in order to present the incoming developer with the near-limitless development possibilities Dashboard currently provides, that’s where things get daunting. I would imagine that this approach, while friendly to module developers, might also present a deterrence to skin developers due to the sheer scale of the task of designing graphics for each and every element and associated state. One alternative might be to build in (and therefor allow skinning for) only the most common UI elements (buttons, tabs, radios, checks, sliders, scrolls, frames and text entries). In this case a visual style guide would need to be developed to aid in the development of unique UI elements from scratch - however, there would be no assurances that these resulting original graphics would integrate well with every skin. A compelling concept but a challenging one to be sure.

I hadn’t taken a good look at Ground Control’s potential until recently. My initial reaction to a Dashboard replacement can only be described as lukewarm — that said, after seeing the mockups, my opinion has been swayed significantly. It is clear that Russel has this app thought out from the ground up. If the plug in API is simple enough (or, hell, if there is a simple IDE bundled with it), then I think this could be real killer. I don’t use Dashboard, but I want to… and I would if it didn’t suck, so maybe this can fill my needs.

Now, perhaps I’m a bit biased, as a rather widget centric guy, though I just don’t see the advantage of this over using the Dashboard. I think the way that widgets disappear when you’re not working with them is their biggest advantage - the last thing I need is a second dock to clutter up my screen! That said, you’ve made this rather pretty looking. There’s a caveat though! All your screenshots show this semi-transparent appearance, which is really sexy when you put it over a photograph or a nice desktop picture, though looks terrible when you have it over text or a web browsing window, in addition to being very hard to read… And of course everyone would want to theme this and add their own modules.

Ground Control’s still my favorite entry. It’s too bad that it took the “WTF o’ the Week™” for this round. Kevin came out with an amazing video mockup for Hijack, and I was hoping for big responses from other leading contestants. So how did Russell respond?? In true conservative fashion, he did so by…selling T-Shirts!?

So Ground Control still has my support and I’m hoping that it’s built-up enough momentum from last week to stick around until the next round. I have faith that Russell will get back on track soon and continue to refine his idea and pimp it out like he did last round.

Potentially neato idea. Kinda like a cross between m and Dashboard? I guess the available modules for it would be the key. Hooks into web apps and hosted apache log stats would also be nice. Thinking about a range of things like the Backpack widget for Dashboard, etc.

I didn’t like this idea when I first saw it… in Windows Vista (Sidebar and Ground Control, separated at birth?) and I still don’t like it. I’m not a big fan of widgets and gadgets and geegaws, so this app leaves me cold.

“YESS!!!!11one111″ was exactly what I was thinking when I first heard about the Ground Control idea a while back. Now that I have some stunning visuals to pair with this idea, Ground Control is aiming to be a productivity powerhouse. For that to work the best, usability and placement of each element needs to be honed down to perfection. Hopefully it won’t clash too much with the dock and actually be worth its screen real estate.

In round 1, I commented on how Ground Control is my favorite entry so far. This hasn’t changed one bit and Russell’s shown that he’s totally into this and also that he’s a true professional. He’s actually created a pretty slick website for Ground Control…how dedicated is that?? There’s no doubt that this;ll be a tough one to pull off if it wins, both in implementation and in marketing, but I strongly feel that it’s very doable. I’m really hoping Ground Control makes it to the end as I’d love to be involved with creating it.

Sounds like Dashboard done right to me. Reminds me a bit of Statoo from Panic, and this could be a slick app with a decent module community behind it.

I’m always leery when people say, “It’s like this free app that bundles with the system, but done right!” (c.f. OmniWeb) How would I program Ground Control? Is it compatible with Dashboard? Who is the target market? People who love widgets so much that they *have* to have them on their main screen? If you actually came up with a clearly better innovation here, Apple would just copy it and you’d end up with no market again. Writing this kind of software is a quick way to stay poor.

When I first read the idea I thought it was kind of lame. After looking at the mock-ups I thought differently. It blends functions of the Dock and major Dashboard widgets together for really easy access to your calender, mail and what not. The aggregated information is really at your fingertips. The Dock status icons usually only feature some kind of badge giving you a hint that something is going on, but with Ground Control you get more. The suggested plug-in architecture is very important for customizing it for the users needs and also for being open for new kind of apps. It’s also great for releasing a 1.0 version with just the basic set of plug-in, e.g. mail, calender, and weather. Then it can be extended in future versions with new plug-ins and functionality. You can also create a community around it for providing plug-ins. What worries me is the fact that it is more or less yet another Dashboard-widget-aggregation kind of app. But Ground Control seems to make it right.

I don’t know if I’d personally use this app, but I think it would be super-popular. What’s compelling about it is that it abstracts a bunch of different functionality from different programs into a common interface (see also, Hijack).

What’s challenging about GC is that each individual module would be moderately challenging to write on its own. Putting them all together, the task becomes pretty formidable. But the idea’s compelling enough that it’s probably worthwhile.

Something I’d really like to see in GC is a unified skin system. I definitely see skins being popular for something like this, but doing it correctly would take some thought. Basically, I envision the skin designer basically creating a CSS stylesheet for various text types (app name, section header, explanatory text, etc.). The skin designer would also provide graphics for panel backgrounds, buttons, checkboxes, etc. Finally, the skin designer would provide a set of Core Image filters that would be applied to application icons. This would allow, for example, the Mail.app icon to appear nicely monotone and desaturated, blending with the GC background.

With a skin system like this, I think the modules could just use standard Cocoa widgets and the underlying engine would theme ‘em appropriately.

Finally, something that was very compelling to me in the early GC mockups that seems to have disappeared is having functionality on the portion of GC that’s initially visible to the user, and NOT just on the sheet that slides out. For example, when you view GC in its default configuration, you should immediately be able to see how many emails you have unread, what today’s date is and whether there are any appointments pending, and so on. Clicking any of those modules should then provide more detail.