Smash the Dashboard

Microsoft introduced widgets in Vista. These were tiny little programs which were supposed to provide you instant access to information. Minimize your windows and you could see your information right away. These digital tchotchkes were a bad idea: they hung around in your machine all the time, draining cpu cycles and resources while providing very little information. Also, it took some doing to get rid of them.

Truth be told, these seem to be borrowed from Mac OS's Dashboard. MacOS's Dashboard widgets and apps have the same idea. They sit generally unseen on the Dashboard and present themselves when you CTRL + LEFT ARROW from your desktop. These were meant to be cute and impressive. Tchotchkes  nonetheless. And just as useless, and just as terrible an idea.

I usually find the Dashboard to be more a nuisance than an aid. CTRL + LEFT ARROW when editing a document, and boom, paradigm shift to a screen that serves very little purpose other than to flummox and annoy. No thanks!

So here's how you disable it in Mac OS X:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
killall Dock


source: http://www.macworld.com/article/1046236/disabledashboard.html

to turn it back on (why? Seriously, why would you?), do
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
killall Dock


Hasta la vista, Dock!