Should Mac Users Watch Dashboard Widgets For Fun?

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 | Widget Watch | Read or Post a Comment

iStat I’m not a poster girl for Dashboard Widgets. Some are handy, some are fun, most are priced right (you get what you pay for), but the vast majority of Widgets are nothing to write home about.

This week I was browsing around Apple’s downloads section where they list all the latest Widgets and came across iStat Pro. It’s called ‘The Most Advanced System Monitoring Widget’ for the Mac. And the iPhone. That caught my eye.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Apple’s.... (excerpted).

3 Reader Comments

3rd generation power said:

They just released an update to iStat Pro but unfortunate; the new update by Islayer “inc.” still does not support the 3rd generation Mac Pro’s fully, IStat still is showing eight cores when I should be seeing only four.

I even donated ten bucks to hurry them up because this my favorite widget. iStat Pro is a must for tower Pro users.

Norm said:

Two Cheers for iStat Pro. Great little utility. It’s amazing that a software programmer is so willing to create a capable utility and only take donations.

I don’t use the iStat menus any more. Why? Not enough MenuBar. It’s crowded up there. Besides iStat menus, I would have 12 other apps/utilities running, and iStat alone took up half the used MenuBar space.

Jared B. said:

I skimmed through the article just reading enough because I already knew what I was going to write when I saw iStat Pro. I have been using iStat Pro for almost three years and I love it BUT there is an incompatibility problem with the new 3rd generation Mac Pros and iStat Pro. iStat Pro worked just fine with my 1st generation Quad Mac Pro. I recently have acquired the new 3rd generation Mac Pro, I still use iStat Pro but there is one problem. I bought another Quad processor not dual Quad, I prefer the bars for my processors and with the new 3rd generation Quad Mac Pro iStat Pro shows that I have eight cores instead of what it should be showing (four cores). I am not sure if all the other read outs are correct either. I e-mailed the makers of iStat pro at iSlayer and explained to them basically what I am telling here. I got an e-mail reply in about two days from iSlayer telling me to hang tight that iStat pro does not support the new 3rd generation Mac Pros yet but an update is on the way.

Anyway I can’t wait because I miss my favorite widget. Maybe I should donate to the cause so they can hurry up and get the next version out.

Talk Back to the Mac360 writers

Post your own comment to this article. Or, post in the Mac360 Forums. It's mostly anonymous, there's no obligation, and no cost. Posting is free, fun, low in calories, low in carbs, non-fat, and mildly addictive. It's like chocolate and blondes.