Atlantis (MacOS X Dashboard)
The partnership between Apple and Excite! during the early 2000s was a significant milestone in the initial conception of the MacOS X Dashboard experience. At that time, We were looking to create a more personalized way to digest news information, one that would go beyond mere widgets and icons. The idea was to make the Dashboard not just a place for system utilities, but also a hub for real-time information and content.
Excite!, a leading news start page at the time, had a robust content platform that included news, weather, and stock quotes. By forming a content partnership with Excite!, we aimed to integrate these features directly into the MacOS X Dashboard experience. This was a strategic content acquisition for Apple, as it allowed the company to offer customizable news sources and other real-time information directly within the operating system, enhancing the desktop experience significantly.
People could tailor their Dashboard to display news topics of interest, track stocks, or even get local weather updates, all thanks to the content sourced from Excite!. This level of customization was groundbreaking at the time and set the stage for future developments in personalized computing experiences.
The partnership also had mutual benefits. For Excite!, being integrated into MacOS X meant a significant boost in visibility and content engagement. For Apple, it meant enriching our operating system with dynamic content, making it more useful and engaging for the end-user.
While the Dashboard concept has evolved over the years, and Excite! has undergone its own set of transformations, the early partnership between the two serves as an interesting case study in how content acquisitions can drive technological innovation and experience improvements. It was a pioneering move that helped shape the way we interact with our computers today, making them not just tools for tasks, but also personalized hubs for information and content.
Screens: Atlantis vaulted design direction for MacOS X Dashboard (circa 2002).
Atlantis was finally introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," as MacOS X Dashboard and released on April 29, 2005 popularizing heuristics for single-use applications which we all now enjoy and love on our iPhones and iPads.