A global list of updates is of no use in our installation as well because we always told our space administrators to enable the users to share their knowledge and to restrict space permissions only if absolutely necessary. This means that the majority of our users has at least read access to nearly all spaces.

Removing the list of updates for all favourite spaces from the dashboard forces users to start watching spaces and to enable e-mail notifications. We are working hard on reducing the number of e-mail sent in our company. Moving from the list of favourite updates from within the application to e-mail notifications outside the application means moving in the wrong direction.

I also agree on the All updates vs Favourite spaces.

We have a large install with multiple, independent business units using the system.  Most of the time I can no longer find any relevant content that I am interested in as it is buried within all the other content created by other groups.

This is a definite step backwards in functionality making the system less useful!!!

I agree with you, the updates from favorite spaces is a MUST HAVE. 

A workaround is to display the recently updated dashboard macro in the welcome message.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/recently-updated-dashboard-macro-169607931.html

To hide the not needed tabs use this jQuery in a HTML Macro

<script type="text/javascript">
AJS.toInit(function(){
  {
    AJS.$('.menu-item.popular').hide();
    AJS.$('.menu-item.all').hide();
    AJS.$('.menu-item.network').hide();
  }
});
</script>

<style type="text/css">
.menu-item.my {
    display: none !important;
	}
</style>

I really like the new style dashboard. But I'm missing my favourite space dashboard view. Recently updated is too noisy for my installation.

I agree with this as well.  

The old dashboard view that showed only the recent updates in my favorite spaces is my default dashboard view.   We have a fairly large installation, and I really need to just focus on the 5 or so spaces I really care about.  

+1 for bringing back Updates from Favourite Spaces.

For any instance with more than a few spaces, watching "All" is highly irrelevant for any individual user...there's just too much varied content. And "Popular" is not useful for actual knowledge management...my job is not to work only on things that many others work on...

The new dashboard seems geared to small organizations only...it's disappointing, because the sidebar styling is quite attractive.