Basically, just as we’ve been discussing whether or not Ground Control should be a replacement for the Dock in my earlier post, A Dock Replacement? (and missing blogs), this topic addresses how Ground Control fulfills certain aspect’s of Apple’s Dashboard functionality better than Dashboard but without being a replacement for Dashboard.
In this post, I’m going to try to back up a little and start from the beginning with a fresh description of Ground Control and then a detailed overview of the workflow benefits of Ground Control in contrast with how Dashboard works and how GC will be accessed by users.
Fresh Description
Ground Control is a true dashboard environment. Unobtrusive, yet always instantly accessible. Commonly used information and resources are a simple keystroke or mouseclick away. Like a real dashboard, all you need are quick glances at speed, gas, etc., likewise, Ground Control provides a smooth, seamless workflow experience that will increase your productivity and allow you to work with less distraction and interruption of the creative process.
Ground Control is a simple, elegant solution to regain control of your workflow. Ground Control will allow you to access information and resources stored with Apple’s basic iApp suite of productivity apps such as: Address Book, iCal, iChat, iTunes, iPhoto and Calculator and basic Activity Monitor information. Ground Control is designed to be extensible so other modules could be developed for future releases, third party developers and hopefully, by the users themselves. The list of possible productivity modules is endless and could easily foster a module-developing community that will further enhance specialized workflow environments.
Continuing the real dashboard metaphor, Ground Control is to your workflow productivity what a dashboard to a car truly is. Can you imagine driving down the freeway at 85 mph (OK, 65–whatever) and hitting the equivalent of F12 and your whole windshield goes 50% darker and all of your “vital” information (like weather reports, tire pressure, windshield wiper fluid levels, iPod controller, seat adjustments, etc.) come up in pretty widgets? While all those things are important and you need access to them at the right time, while you’re barreling down the freeway (at 65 of course!) is not the right time. While not quite as life-threatening, Apple’s Dashboard as a productivity enhancer is as counter-productive as rummaging through your glove box looking for the driver’s manual while you’re driving (65).
Likewise, when you regularly work with many open apps, to keep on launching small but necessary apps or keeping those apps open all the time can be a difficult task to manage when you have to do simple things like look up a phone number, a calendar item, a To Do list or just do a quick little calculation. Sure, we have Exposé to help sort through windows and soon, OS X 10.5’s Places to better manage our work environments, and those with large budgets can afford to buy 30″ Apple Cinema Displays or have dual-monitors just to be able to show commonly accessed apps like iChat and iCal while they’re working on their projects. We wouldn’t have to do that, if we had a better, quicker, less obtrusive way of accessing common, everyday information and resources. OK, so we still all need dual 30″ Cinema Displays–just for other things than iCal and iChat.
Workflow Benefits
All of these are hinderances to productivity. To stop and launch Address Book just to get an address or phone number; to send a quick email; review incoming email without actually having to open or go into Mail; or even worse, to hit F12 and go into Dashboard mode — while I’m there originally to use iClip Lite, I check the weather, stocks, Dilbert, etc. — all, when I have a deadline to meet. I just needed to access the clipboard. Of course, these may reflect other personality issues, but if I had Ground Control, I could continue in a state of denial much longer. Ground Control will allow you to quickly access your info and then, just as quickly, allow you resume your workflow.
Apple used to have an online G5 productivity calculator (maybe they still have a MacPro version of it) where you could drop in the amount of time you estimated you waited for your computer to process tasks throughout the day and entered your hourly, billable rate and they calculated by the amount of time the G5 would save on your daily grind how quick it would pay for itself. You could think of Ground Control in a similar fashion (with the exception that it would pay for itself before the demo version even expired). Ground Control will streamline your working environment to free you up to be more productive. This is music to the ears of anyone who bills by the hour, and the Mac platform has a large percentage of just that type of user.
How Ground Control will be Accessed
Ground Control is designed to be effortlessly accessed by one of three ways; either a user-defined keystroke, a hot corner or by clicking on a Ground Control “nub” in the lower-left corner.
Like Yahoo! Widgets, the user should be able to choose in a quick-popup prefs setting (either up on top utility icon menu or via the GC nub in lower-left corner) whether they want the panel to be Floating, Topmost, Below or part of Desktop. The user should be able to decide if they want it minimized in the nub, collapsed modules (see images below) or full-blown GC with all modules firing on all cylinders.
For a collection of screen shots in one location, click here.
