Will iPad host a multitasking Widget Dashboard?

Here’s the picture: blogger Kevin Fox speculates that the iPad may offer a limited form of multitasking via a dashboard. Harkening back to Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ introduction of the device last week he notes that some of the smaller Apps iPhone users are accustomed to are missing from the tablet.

We may have skipped this, but for news last night that the iPad's iPhone-variant software has a shared-storage folder that's accessible to third-party apps.

“The iPad’s home screen isn’t just sparse because of all the extra real estate. There are apps that are simply missing,” he states, naming, Stocks, Weather, Voice Memo, Clock, and Calculator as examples.

He then launches into an examination of sundry potential reasons Apple may have left these apps out of its product, quickly dismissing the notion the apps were left off of promotional materials for aesthetic reasons, he speculates, “These apps are missing from the launchpad because they’re no longer apps. They’re dashboard widgets. (interesting).”

He observes that those missing apps - Stocks and Weather, for example - began life as Mac OS X Dashboard widgets - and anticipates introduction of a widget-enabled Dashboard on the iPad. And then he leaps a little further, anticipated that users will be able to run multiple Widgets simultaneously within this Dashboard.

“I’m assuming there’s still some sort of occasional polling or push notification mechanism and user notification system so they can be alerted when there’s an action they need to attend to like an instant message or a countdown timer.”

We’ll see, but as Fox puts it: “Sixty days is a long time to try and maintain excitement for an unavailable product, and it’s certain that Apple has a few updates planned between now and the end of March. Will they announce a front-facing camera? Maybe, but I’m more confident about this one. It’s too good to pass up.”

I’d like to observe a difference when chatting to people in the pubs and clubs of London town. When the iPod launched, most people weren’t initially aware of it; many more people were aware of the iPhone, and most conversations followed the line of “I want one, but I want to use my own network and I want 3G”.

(Interestingly, there were huge numbers of so-called “professional” technology journalists who themselves didn’t get the iPhone).

This time around, the tech press seems fairly enthusiastic for the iPad, but non techy consumers aren’t so sure about it - and they’ve heard of it already. Consumers seem to feel that the inability to simply use iPad as a telephone is unusual. One person noted, “With the iPhone, it fits your hand perfectly, with a notebook, it sits on the desk and the screen is where you want it, with an iPad you have to hold it in position, and it doesn’t fit in your hand.”

This leads me to ponder just how effective the iPad launch will be - clearly it will come down to the applications which exist for it, and just how well those Apps can be put before the public eye.