88 points | 4d ago | Discuss on Hacker News | Back to Radar
It’s a shame because years ago macOS had the perfect place for “quick information at a glance” apps: the Dashboard. But the Dashboard got killed off in mysterious circumstances, and I still miss it!
I had hopes that something like Dashboard would make a comeback with the advent of the new widgets framework, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Widgets can only be buried in Notification Centre (where they get lost and forgotten, buried under all the notifications) or on the desktop (same, plus needless clutter).
Apple, please bring back Dashboard!
You'd better be north of Leeds to be saying things like that. :) Cool app.
Without doxxing myself, I'm based in a village on the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
Keyboard navigation, the ability to change text-size, and voiceover support will all be in the next version.
I might have a look at a Windows version in future, but don't have access to a PC at the moment. The code is open source on Github if anyone wanted to make an alternative version in the meantime. Nightwatch does make use of the Mac's location services and Apple Weather, but these should be easy to swap out. I don't know whether widgets ever made it back to the desktop on Windows, so anyone looking at porting it over might need to change the widget into a standard dialog.
From there, if you have found out that you enjoy being outside using the binoculars, can see what you expected... then buy a compact scope
see https://telescopicwatch.com/different-types-of-telescopes/
I have two sets of cheap (<$100) binoculars, a cheap refractor from amazon (gskyer, $300), a very nice celestron c8 and a small meade MCT. I bought them in that order as I developed my interests. I use two different eye pieces, both plossals, one with about an inch of eye relief with no eyecup and one with a bit less relief and an eyecup. I use the binoculars more than all the others combined and if I were starting over I would buy a really nice set with a tripod.
For planets and nebulae I use the c8 with an equitorial mount. This is _fantastic_ for general objects in the night sky since once it's aligned it's a single knob to turn to keep up with things as the earth is rotating. For the moon and large planets and tracking things like space craft launching or starlink sats I use the refractor with the standard azimuth tripod. It makes it very easy to manually "point and shoot" objects with irregular travel paths.
So yea... go buy some binoculars.
The biggest problem I found with weather forecasting is that most people want to know whether it's cloudy/raining overhead. I want to know if it's cloudy and raining somewhere near the horizon :D
I've made some updates as a result to make the app more accessible following feedback from jareds, with improved support for different text sizes, voiceover, and keyboard navigation.
I've also added wider coverage for dark sky spots, aurora alerts, and the nearest clear sky following the reply from robotmay.
Thank you all so much again, and please let me know if you'd like to see any more features!
Also a big shout out to Dan the moderator - thank you for all your help!
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leetrout 3d ago on HN
For iOS stargazers that don't already know (we've all been there) xasteria is a great option for your phone to compliment this (it also uses 7Timer!).
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xasteria-astronomy-weather/id9...
delphidolphin (author) 2d ago on HN