Today I’d like to talk about something that has happened recently. With the release of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple has allowed developers to add widgets to make the user’s experience with their app more enjoyable. Widgets have been around since the good old days of OS X Tiger. Sure it ate up your battery, but it had a good purpose. Most widgets have not been updated, and users aren’t really using the Dashboard, but it is still vibrant in the modern systems.
Some developers have made widgets so amazing, they have been taken off the App Store. A couple of days ago, Apple contacted PClac, a very popular and highly functional calculator application that has been around for 20 years. Apple said that he had to take the widget calculator out of the application. Now, iOS 8 has given developers a ton of new API’s, a new programming language, and all the tools they need to make innovative, creative, and productive applications. Also, Apple didn’t give any restrictions to the widgets in Notification Center, so developers had to guess what was acceptable. Apple said to PClac that widgets should be low powered, but now, after reconsidering, Apple has now allowed Calculators to be fully functional. But this may spark a controversy.
Launcher was people’s favourite app to launch other apps from Notification Centre, was removed after a couple of weeks since the release of iOS 8. Again, Apple didn’t release any restrictions, so anything and everything was valid. The told Launcher that they won’t allow apps to be launched from Notification Center. So, here’s a small review. Calculators are allowed, but not an app to launch other apps. Both aren’t low powered and both are fairly new. Maybe this will change the way Apple allows developers to change the world. Maybe Launcher will come back.
As a suggestion, you should download all the widget pas you can before may disappear. And get the pro version too, because once the app is gone, you can’t upgrade (I learnt this the hard way with Launcher). I guess the lesson here is keep you friends close, and your widgets closer.
The OS X Guy 