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BillyMatt87

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 23, 2013
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in iOS 6, we had a Notification Center widget for the biggest social media sites: Facebook and Twitter which made it possible to quickly post or tweet something without actually using their respective apps. It has been removed since iOS 7 for some odd reason yet the OS X version has been a mainstay on its Notification Center.

There are other NC widgets on OS X which are strangely not available on iOS such as: Weather, Calculator, World Clock and an iTunes mini-player.

If these are all on OS X, why not iOS?
 
Only Apple would know. That said, there are plenty of third party widgets that provide most of those capabilities for iOS.
 
Because of the fact that apple doesn't want interactive widgets on a touch display. They want apps taking up the full screen because it's so small. I would like some of those widgets too on iOS.
 
Because of the fact that apple doesn't want interactive widgets on a touch display. They want apps taking up the full screen because it's so small. I would like some of those widgets too on iOS.

Idk, when Apple removes features from iOS (which is something they've been doing a lot of lately), they usually try to come up with a BS excuse that I just can't buy considering that they were obviously capable of implementing a feature but stripped it away for no apparent reason.
 
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Because of the fact that apple doesn't want interactive widgets on a touch display. They want apps taking up the full screen because it's so small. I would like some of those widgets too on iOS.
And you can still get most of them via third party widgets.
 
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What Apple did to widgets in iOS 7 was freaking annoying. Not only did they remove the awesome weather widget, we lost the Facebook and Twitter widgets as well :(
 
What Apple did to widgets in iOS 7 was freaking annoying. Not only did they remove the awesome weather widget, we lost the Facebook and Twitter widgets as well :(
I loved the old weather widget. It was descriptive and interactive. Now it's s stupid block of text with a tiny icon. The stock ticker was very cool too.
 
Various nice alternatives for weather and Facebook/Twitter widgets exist in the app store.
 
Various nice alternatives for weather and Facebook/Twitter widgets exist in the app store.

Not as nice as the originals + they take up storage space + they're probably not as good as the Apple versions for utilising resources.
 
Not as nice as the originals + they take up storage space + they're probably not as good as the Apple versions for utilising resources.
But better than nothing for those that seem to miss those kind of features. And in some cases might very well offer more things than Apple's versions offered, which someone might find useful as well.
 
in iOS 6, we had a Notification Center widget for the biggest social media sites: Facebook and Twitter which made it possible to quickly post or tweet something without actually using their respective apps. It has been removed since iOS 7 for some odd reason yet the OS X version has been a mainstay on its Notification Center.

There are other NC widgets on OS X which are strangely not available on iOS such as: Weather, Calculator, World Clock and an iTunes mini-player.

If these are all on OS X, why not iOS?

"business decisions" :) obviously noone here has any real idea, only speculations.
 
There are other NC widgets on OS X which are strangely not available on iOS such as: Weather, Calculator, World Clock and an iTunes mini-player.

If these are all on OS X, why not iOS?

I agree it's odd that Apple widget are missing in iOS. I'm afraid we have to deal with it and use 3rd party widgets instead.

Not as nice as the originals + they take up storage space + they're probably not as good as the Apple versions for utilising resources.

I disagree. There are lots of nice third party widgets offered that are way better than what Apple does with for example the weather (paid, free), calendar widget or other social apps (twitter/Facebook share) like this, this or this.

Or what to thing of the amazing Launcher widget to quickly access settings or send a quick predefined message to someone.
 
I disagree. There are lots of nice third party widgets offered that are way better than what Apple does with for example the weather (paid, free), calendar widget or other social apps (twitter/Facebook share) like this, this or this.

Or what to thing of the amazing Launcher widget to quickly access settings or send a quick predefined message to someone.

While this is true, third party widgets consume space + they slow down devices where as the Apple ones seemed not to :(

I do use some widgets, but would want to avoid having too many run.
 
I've got about 5 or 6 running in my NC and dont see any real issue with it. They are either for apps i have anyway or in the event of apps specifically for widgets they are small both in terms of actual installation space and resources. There are some very useful ones out there.
 
While this is true, third party widgets consume space + they slow down devices where as the Apple ones seemed not to :(

I do use some widgets, but would want to avoid having too many run.
Why don't they take up space or resources? The space is simply part of the space iOS takes up since they are part of the OS, but surely they take up some space as part of it. Many third party widget specific apps are fairly small as well. And surely they take up resources to run and update as well. Aside from heavy widgets or having a lot of them it doesn't seem that they affect the device more than Apple's.

But, yes, in general, at least as a concept, native widgets would be better overall. Given that we have no control over what Apple decides to do with them, I guess we can either be without them or find alternatives that provide the closest thing.
 
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