iPad gains dashboard widgets via mobile Safari

Those Mac users who love their dashboard widgets for one-off tools like weather reports and mini-calendars may find their curiosity piqued by a proposed new iPad dashboard which will run through via device’s mobile Safari web browser and purports to create a similar experience. The service, which is currently in signup-only beta testing, presumably runs through a web browser to get around the App Store approval process, making it feel just a little bit too richly like a hack for our blood, but it’s nonetheless an interesting proof of concept of the kinds of dashboard widgets that Apple itself might someday bring to the iPad platform. “Web apps” (those that run through an iPad or iPhone’s web browser instead of being a real standalone app) have a history of being generally inferior to the “real apps” you can get in the App Store, but it’s entirely possible that the DashPad folks could be the rare exception – not that we can think of a single existing exception at the moment.