"The first thing I do when I buy a new Mac is '$ killall Dock' to stop the resource sucking widgets," Enso Cloud tweeted at me last week.

"Does anyone actually use Dashboard widgets?" Chris MacDonald said.

"No to widgets. I disable them on all Macs I work on. They're quite stagnant and useless with an iOS device nearby," Ken Fager added.

Do you still use the OS X Dashboard? It turns out that a good number of Mac users don't—or at least those who follow Ars (and me) on Twitter.

The rest of us apparently continue to hobble along with Dashboard, using long-outdated widgets and clinging to the often-misguided hope that someone—anyone—will maintain the ones we've come to rely on in our everyday lives. Indeed, there are many (OK, some) that are still functioning, but most of the ones in Apple's Dashboard widget listing are not in active development, while many are barely even maintained. It's somewhat perplexing, then, that the newest version of OS X—Mountain Lion, just released on Wednesday—still supports the Dashboard.

And we're not the only ones who think this: "I was surprised that Dashboard still exists in Mountain Lion," Ross M. Karchner tweeted at me. There were plenty of other snarky comments that mirrored Karchner's, too.

So, are there any kind-hearted developers who are still actively developing widgets for the OS X Dashboard? Is this the beginning of the end? And how could Apple revive the scene?

The stragglers

Trust me when I say it is not an easy feat finding sources to speak to on this subject—it's not like trying to find an iOS developer. You bump into twelve of those every time you turn a corner. From the outset, this angle was a challenge, only highlighting how barren the Dashboard widget landscape really is in 2012. Don't these guys feel lonely?

The general answer to that question was "maybe a little bit."

"I'm getting about three to five downloads per day for my widgets. However, when I put out an update, I get between 100 and 150 downloads," said Shawn Platkus. He's the developer behind the FrameUp! and PowerSwitch widgets and one of only two developers I could find who still actively develop their widgets. "I get about three to four support e-mails a year for my widgets, so it doesn't take up much of my time."

Platkus admitted that it seems, from talking to his peers, that he's in a minority when it comes to actually using Dashboard, too. (Though he did note that his parents use it—always a forward-moving demographic). Although he is happy to continue working on his own widgets, he doesn't sound like he expects things to change much in the near future.

Others, like hobbyist developer Rouven Weßling, agreed that the popularity of Dashboard has declined—both with the users and the developer community. "Back with Tiger, [Dashboard] was the cool thing on the Mac, but I guess this was in a time before Twitter and the iPhone," Weßling, who worked on his own Joomla-compatible widget out of academic interest, told Ars. "What definitively has shrunken massively is the developer community. I've just looked a bit and there are no recent tutorials or even developer discussions out there. Like you, I haven't seen any interesting new widgets, [or] even widgets that were once very popular."

Marc Edwards, director and lead designer at iSlayer, argued that some users are sticking around, but the number is "definitely declining." His company is behind the popular iStat Pro widget—as well as a handful of others—that many still use today. In fact, when I asked on Twitter about widget use, iStat Pro was one of the only ones that was mentioned with any kind of regularity. But even he and his team aren't doing active development on them. The last update to iStat Pro was in 2010, and he says they're currently in maintenance mode.

Just about the only person I spoke to who regularly develops and uses widgets was an engineer at Apple (who requested I withhold his name for obvious reasons). He said his team uses widgets internally on a daily basis to monitor their own work, and that other teams at Apple use them frequently as well. When viewed through this frame, it almost seems like the reason that Dashboard is still in Mountain Lion is because Apple itself uses it with enough regularity to make it worthwhile—perhaps without even realizing how dead the ecosystem seems to the rest of the world.

The lights are on, but no one's home

What happened to make the Dashboard scene go from a bustling metropolis to a ghost town? First is Apple's apparent neglect of the ecosystem. Dashcode, the tool from Apple with which developers could easily create Dashboard widgets, was once included as part of Xcode, but was later split out as a separate download. And while it's still available via Apple's Developer Tools, it hasn't exactly been updated recently.

"While the last minor release of Dashcode was from March, it hasn't seen a major release since 2009," Weßling told Ars. "This somewhat surprises me since it was positioned as a tool to create Web Apps for iPhone and Safari as well. Most telling is probably that the Web App feature has never been updated for the iPad."

Several developers pointed out that Apple hasn't even updated its directory of Dashboard widgets since around late 2010.

"I think the main reason for people not using Dashboard anymore is that there is not a reliable place to get widgets anymore," said Christopher Burner, a developer who mostly creates widgets for his own personal use. "Apple does not take submissions on site and hasn't for a few years. I think if there was a reputable site, people may start using Dashboard again."

But Mike Piontek, developer behind the wildly popular Delivery Status widget (which now works in conjunction with his complementing iOS apps), has another theory about why the Dashboard scene is so quiet. It's about the App Store, too.

"I think the App Store really hurt Dashboard's chances of ever going anywhere," Piontek said. "There was never a good way to sell widgets. Now with the App Store we have a great way to sell inexpensive apps—so why bother making a widget? Lately I've seen a lot of apps that run in the menu bar that might have been better as widgets. Even if you plan on giving it away, the App Store is a better place to get noticed."

iOS apps largely took over the purpose of many Dashboard widgets when they started becoming popular several years ago by offering a quick look at information in a visually pleasing—and extremely mobile—manner. And in many ways, iOS apps are more powerful now than widgets ever were, thanks to the ability to send push notifications and interact with Apple's own iOS services. Many existing widgets actually became iOS apps after the App Store started taking off, and Piontek pointed out that his widget remains popular due to the fact that it syncs with his iOS apps. If not for that, his widget might not see too many users either.

Can the Mac App Store save widgets?

As Piontek pointed out, the App Store is a great place to get noticed these days. Even the Mac App Store—which has a way to go before catching up to the popularity of its iOS counterpart—gives developers a boost when it comes to discoverability and awareness of their products. Those who put software in the Mac App Store tend to see more downloads than those who sell (or give away) their software on the Web, and the developers we spoke to seemed to agree that the Mac App Store might be the ticket to the future of Dashboard widgets.

"Widgets are generally sandboxed already (unless you write one to access system services) but everything you would really need to access is already available in the Utilities folder in your Application directory," Burner told Ars. "If Apple does not plan on killing off Dashboard, integrating widgets in the Mac App Store would revive the widget scene, but until that happens, consumers probably will not bother."

Edwards agreed, but pointed out that widget developers might have to jump through a few extra hoops if they want to be included. "I have no idea what Apple's plans are for the future, but adding the ability to sell widgets via the Mac App Store could change its future outlook drastically," Edwards told Ars. "Would that be a good decision? I'm not sure. Part of the initial appeal for Dashboard Widgets was that they could be constructed by anyone with Web development experience, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Requiring knowledge in Objective-C hasn't hurt iOS development, so maybe the strength of Dashboard lies in the concept, but not the execution."

One point that everyone seemed to agree on, though, is that they don't believe the Dashboard (or the widget scene) will go away just yet—whether the end-users are still around or not.

"It seemed that the Dashboard had been neglected by Apple over the last few big cat releases. However in Mountain Lion, Apple has given it some nice UI tweaks which I think makes it more usable," Platkus told Ars. "They've also put some effort into updating their own widgets that ship with the OS as well. I don't think Dashboard will be killed any time soon, rather I think it just isn't a very high priority part of the OS within Apple."

Apple did not respond to our request for comment on this story.