It ’s my line of work to try out out fresh software . In the guinea pig of Tiger , that means try out out the fresh feature film — Automator , Spotlight , the revised Safari , and Mail , and on and on . The question is : If I were n’t pay to apply these newfangled features , would I apply them at all ? I was recall about this because I understand the other day that , after an initial stir of downloading and installing contrivance , I ’m not using Dashboard at all . I did a quick , cozy public opinion poll of folks here and plant that I wasn’’t alone . While severalMacworlders reported strike F12 several fourth dimension a mean solar day , others ( like me ) just had n’t look at to it with the same enthusiasm . For me , the reason is simple : I ’m not going to change the way I work unless the new fashion is demonstrably easier than the former . Take , for object lesson , that stock - trailing widget : Is using it really that much better than tracking my portfolio on Yahoo ? Sure , if you ’re number keystrokes , hitting F12 is easier than switching to Firefox and load my homepage . But first I ’d have to enter my portfolio into that descent widget ( which does n’t seem to like my mutual monetary fund symbols ) . And the gubbins silver screen is n’t boastful enough to exhibit my Brobdingnagian holdings without scroll . Ditto on the weather . Sure , the Apple weather widget has cool graphic and shows the six - day forecast . But , again , I can get the prognosis ( if not the graphics ) on Yahoo — where I can also track the weather in Paris , Baghdad , and so forth . So it proceed for other widgets I ’ve check out : None seem more compelling than tools I ’ve already got . Between My Yahoo andQuicksilver , I ’m never more than a dyad of keystrokes away from tools that copy most of the widgets I ’ve visit so far . ( lease me take a minute to point out how dastardly it was for Spotlight to earmark the Command - spacebar key combo that , by default option , launches Quicksilver as well as LaunchBar . Thanks to the former , my finger’s breadth are used to hitting that combo dozens of times a day . That ’s one cause I ’ve been using Spotlight a lot : I keep launching it by accident . ) What I ’m waiting for is that one widget that does n’t copy something I already have and really does something useful . Once that make out along , I ’ll start hitting F12 more often . Until then , I see no pauperism .