So, Dashboard is ripping of Konfabulator, but Stattoo isn't? Hypocrites. Desk Accessories have been around longer than any of them.

I guess nobody here is old enough to remember Desk Accessories. Sorry kidz...but this has been done almost 20 years ago...by Apple.

Developers keep crying about ideas being stolen. If you don't want your ideas developed by others, don't code; go work for McDonalds.

Now, while the concept behind Konfab isn't new, their way of doing it is very slick and nice. While I think Apple should have coughed up some $$ to them for Dashboard, this kind of developement goes both ways - many shareware authors build upon Apple's apps and system tools and then why shouldn't Apple be allowed to do the same on useful sh/w apps?

Konfabulator is a stupid idea anyway. I tried it for a while only to realize what a worthless gimmick it is. If Apple should be blamed for anything, it's thinking that this was a good idea.

The only reason i see to include it, is the more worthless widgets someone has filling their screen, the larger the monitor will need to be (hint: 30")

To me it looks like...

1) Dashboard widgets 'fly in' when you hit the activation sequence. This is the reverse of the 'fly out' effect when you use expose to clear to your desktop.

2) Just like your windows are all there until you clear to desktop, the widgets don't appear and you can't use them until you fly them in.

3) So Dashboard is like quick one stroke access to accessories/lists you need/check from time to time.

In konfab, the gadgets are 'live' all the time, even if they are stuck to your desktop.

Two different cats all together

Oh please.

Doesn't the new spotlight look like Launchbar. You can already lookup's like this with LaunchBar. I will have to say that Apple is losing it's originality.

Personally I couldn't care less about what the owner of konfabulator has to say. All these widgets belong to others anyways. If Apple can do it better and for free then more power to them. As a previous poster pointed out, if they have a case take it to court.

Cry me a frickin' river. There's nothing original about Konfab to begin with...

It really does not matter how original "widgets" are or if this is play on the old idea of Desk Accessories. The point is Apple's relationship with developers.

Apple does not have a great relationship with developers. All too often Apple has introduced a technology, encouraged developers to adopt that technology, then dropped the technology. Anyone remember OpenDoc? How about QuickDraw?

The result of these actions was to make developers very hesitant about committing to the Mac platform. Why invest time and money into using these technologies if Apple is going to drop them?

Now we have Apple borrowing or using or mimicing the ideas of shareware developers. In the case of iTunes, at least Apple outright bought the rights to use the SoundJam code and asked the developers to come on board. Apple could not have been completely unware of Watson and Konfabulator. Even if Apple planned all along to incorporate these ideas into the Mac OS, the fact that similar apps were out on the market should have prompted Apple to at least acknowledge them.

If developers, no matter how small, become hesitant to develop apps we are all screwed.

sigh. look, arlo and perry, you made a runtime engine (is that the right terminology?) based on javascript, so it's very easy for someone with scripting knowledge to access. that's great. but like others have said, it's not exactly a new idea. and plus, do we even know what programming the widgets are based off of? is it applescript? something more complex? and yes, the widgets look like they were born of the same design sense... you know why? because you designed konfabulator widgets in-line with the aqua look and feel (shiny bright colors, translucency, etc.)

arlo and apple do have some history (arlo and greg landweber never released to coolest kaleidoscope2 scheme, "mekong," because apple decided that his old contract said they owned it because he worked on it while there -- a common stipulation in contracts... mind you, they never did anything WITH it...), so that may be figuring into this a bit.

but seriously, arlo, perry, you have a TON of development on these guys already. do a limited time sale, geet lots more registrants, get macaddict et al. to talk about you and establish a market where even when apple DOES come out with this in 2005, you'll be eons ahead.

or you can sue... but wher's the poetry in that? ;-)

Not really excited about Dash board or the user apps in Tiger. Its the 64 bits I like and XCode 2.

As far as developers, sound jam was a nice program. I actually purchased it. Then itunes came out. Felt a little bummed about casady and greene. They did a great job on that program. I can see it now: they were a threat to the big head at Apple!

But here is the other side of the coin with developers: how many apps did third party developers make for the mac? Did they have the qualit of the iApps? A: no they did not make them for the mac and generally the quality was poor. Everytime there was a hot app we would get into this big fear about mac support. I think Apple just said s**** it were going to do it ourselves because its to important for the platform.

In a way third party developers did it to themselves. Well, maybe the windows developers did it to the mac developers. The small mac developer lost and Apple just took the buisiness. The small guy looses again.

Are you kidding? Me thinks you need to go look at some history on MS. They have STOLEN more code than they've written. All the way back to Wang (OLE). h***, the first MS media player was nothing but Quicktime code. Look it up. Remember Stacker? On and on and on and... These people have a very LOOOOOOOONG history of theft. And there are lost lawsuits to prove it. Look it up.

They share a few common trates, but the #1 thing that doesn't add up is that the dashboard is only active after hitting a key command. And when they are everything else can't be used... Dashboard is more like a hotkey to switch into a new application...

Konfab only comes close now due to their recent release (a couple days ago?) with Konsposé. Prior to that, there was really not a whole lot in common... Since Dashboard is fully dependant on the feature like Konfab's Konsposé, I would think that the whole thing was started long before Konsposé was...

Although it seems really weird that Konsposé reached release within a day or so of Apple demoing Dashboard. And I mean this litarally, because I don't know how to see this...


From my perspecitve, however, I still see myself using Konfab, and maybe dashboard for other purposes (that calculator seems handy to me, but so far that's it)...

funny, when i saw Dashboard, i thought, well, that's why i like Apple software. they take the best parts of others' software, and make it better.

i really wanted to like Konfabulator when i tried it 2 months ago, but i didn't like that it slowed my computer down, and was always there, when i like a clean desktop. so Konsposé sounds like the upgrade that would have sold me, but now it will be built into the OS.

i agree the timing of the release of Konsposé is very suspect. for which side, who knows? do i really care?

I'd like to know if Arno and Perry used the free X Code (or its earlier version Project Builder) or purchased CodeWarrior to create Konfabulator? ;-)

I think I bigger concern for all of us is how much more Apple are going to jam into OS X. No wonder there was a big push for G5s, as there is so much stuff running underneath or installed now. It may become OS XX, due to extra weight!

Isn't it funny, Apple doesn't release an apps that was part of OS 9, so some developers fill that void, yet when Apple finally comes out with that apps that fills that niche, developers cry foul. Come on, the developers are doing filling the niche that Apple have yet to fill, so no need to cry about it when Apple finally does fill that niche.

Konfabulator will no doubt be getting more attention and probably more business as time goes on.
Dashboard could be a great success in Mac OS X with the help of developers who want to make more widgets. Whether or not I use it rests on my shoulders.
Some third party applications Apple copies are very helpful but others leave something to be desired. Let us hope that Konfabulator and Apple can work together to grab people's attention like so many other companies have in the past.

tiger is not due until "first half of 2005." that potentially gives us another YEAR before this stuff hits the fan. i can't imagine, now that arlo and perry know about these widgets, that they'll just sit there and let konfab rot. and dude, the guy who says "well, now i don't need konfabulator because it will be part of the os..." um, yeah, potentially NEXT SUMMER. and then it'll be a version 1.0 release. meanwhile konfab's just sitting there begging you to buy it. it's $25, you cheap b@stard. $25 to use a mature runtime environment that will now get out of your way with a single key andd will only get better.

We've seen Docks before now, we've seen Dashboard like apps going back to Windows 3x on the PC side, and Object Desktop on OS/2 (even CDE was Dock-like and to me it was almost an inspiration to OS X Dock) h***, Norton Desktop for Windows 3x had similar features., Linux has similar apps.

That said, the Konfabulator folks have little room to complain. These widgets are the future of your desktop.

The Konfabulator folks have over a year's lead, they can either complain and blow it, or offer a compelling reason to keep supporting them.

Let me see if I have this straight: Apple is stealing from Stattoo what they stole from Konfabulator, who got the whole idea from Windows who (of course) stole it a concept from NeXT but with "Be" styling.

Man, this is silly!

I would hope that Arlo et al are sensible enough to know that crying foul would be exposing themselves as hypocrites, and would focus (as Karelia did) on moving beyond the core concept to expand and supplement Apple's Dashboard far better and far faster than Apple themselves will do.

YES, developers should be aware that when you develop under the shadow of a company that also develops software, they may have the same idea as you. Microsoft is the long-crowned king of stealing ideas and crushing small-time operators -- and they themselves are only taking a page out of Disney's playbook before them!

My reply to that is, DUH. This might happen. The people at VRWorx don't seem to be losing sleep that Apple might *finally* beef up their VR tools, the folks at Mariner don't give up for fear that Appleworks might finally get an update, and Adobe continues to market and improve GoLive even though there's no reason Apple shouldn't look into making a replacement for HomePage or PageMill that would outsell GoLive. All three of those companies understand that Apple owns the platform and has an absolute right to incorporate whatever they feel will attract more users, even if they have to step on some toes doing it. Ultimately, it's a win-win for all parties, though some might suffer in the short-term sometimes (the Mac Premiere team come to mind). Like a hurricane, sometimes you can see it coming and run the other way -- and sometimes you just get blown out of the water.

Mac development -- just like Win development -- is not for crybabies.

Apple does not have a great relationship with developers. All too often Apple has introduced a technology, encouraged developers to adopt that technology, then dropped the technology. Anyone remember OpenDoc? How about QuickDraw?


First off, Quickdraw was around for 15 years, and was superseded by much better Quartz. Hard to call that 'dropping a tech'. OpenDoc was never really out there. It was a cool tech that barely made it out of Apple. Even Apple couldn't get it to work right with the oft-delayed OpenDoc version of ClarisWorks. It was one of those ideas that worked out better on paper.

But the main problem is Apple tries new Tech, but its a chicken/egg thing. They need to put the tech out, but so many developers are reluctant to go to new tech, that leads apple to dump the tech (why keep the stuff up-to-date if people aren't using it).

Oh, on top of this then, where's the uproar over apple building in PPPoE support (which drove the MacPOET people out of business!). Then on top of that, they add in windows networking support (b*******!). Stick in a browser (why, of why, did they make Safari? What's wrong with Mozilla and OmniWeb? h***, they drove IE out of the browser business, poor guys). Buit-in mail programs, text editors, even process viewers, are taking money away from our developers. h***, Multifinder took away potential $$$ from Switcher.

h***, if they ever came out with a two-button mouse you all will be complaining how they're putting mouse manufacturers out of business.

LouZer, you got it exactly right. Bravo.

First of all, the dude who makes NetNewsWire actually is looking forward to Apple adding RSS support into Safari. Gee, how about that. A developer of a tech that Apple is incorporating actually sees it as a good thing? Hmmm.

Second, the Konfabulator author lost any type of chance of me buying his product (and any respect for his company or any of his products) by stating that Pixar has a site license, and that Phil Schiller is a registrant. I guess they don't care too much about privacy there. He's lucky he doesn't run a blockbuster, as releasing rental information is against the law in some states.

I don't think I will be using Dashboard to the full extent. I hate Knofabulator, I have tried using it but it takes up so much dang room and provides little info to me.

The only reason to use Dashboard is if Apple drops Stickies and Calculator.

The regular Stickies and Calculator etc. seem to be staying. Dashboard is optional.

And I hope it's VERY customizable--I like the concept, and SOME of the eye candy, and some of it makes me cringe :)

Also, I'll be running out of screen corners soon...

I think one of the key advantages of Dashboard is that it integrates with Expose, so it doesn't take any room on your desktop at all. Hit a key and it pops up and disappears just as easily.

It will be nice to have all that info at the touch of a button instead of having to bring all the Widgets to the foreground or worse, having them stay on top of all apps.

I think one of the key advantages of Dashboard is that it integrates with Expose, so it doesn't take any room on your desktop at all. Hit a key and it pops up and disappears just as easily.

It will be nice to have all that info at the touch of a button instead of having to bring all the Widgets to the foreground or worse, having them stay on top of all apps.

Honestly after watching the keynote ... I'd have to say, Dashboard was the least impressive. So if Arlo Rose some how manages to convince the world that Apple stole his idea and apple decides to remove from Tiger, well then ... so what?

I've never used his software and if/when I upgrade to Tiger, more than likely I won't use Dashboard either. On the other hand, Automator, CoreImage, CoreVideo, and Spotlight were all freaken awesome. And I'm sure I'll be using quite often!

I think it Dashboard looks fantastic, and can't wait to use it in Tiger. I like it when stuff is incorporated into the OS. e.g. I use messaging much more now that iChat is incorporated into Panther, since everyone using Panther, has iChat running. Anyway, IMHO is that Apple without question replicated Konfabulator. Apple could have made boring looking applications that flew in with a keystroke. But no, they copied the Aqua-sised look of the Konfabulator widgets, and even copied the name widgets. The idea may have been around for 20 years (as some say). But I sense that some "look and feel" has been stolen here. I sense that Konfabulator 3rd party stuff will be "ported to Dashboard, in which case Konfabulator will have no reason to exist.

The similar release times of Dashboard and Koonfabulator's Konsposé feature have been questioned. Instead of one influencing the other, could it be that there was another, third, product which influenced them both?

Note the uncanny similarity between Konsposé and the "Expose" feature I added to iCalViewer (www.iCalViewer.com) more than two months ago - on 16 April, 2004: you press the F8 key by default to bring iCalViewer's window to the front and shade the rest of the display (holding the key down for a short time will release the display when you release the key).

Sounds similar? Mmmmm.

Karl

Anyone remember...QuickDraw?

I suspect you mean QuickDraw GX. QuickDraw started with System 1.0, and continued through Mac OS 9 and is still available in the Mac OS X carbon libraries. Hardly an abandoned technology.

QuickDraw GX, however, was abandoned. But it influenced Quartz, so it was not a complete loss, either to Apple's R&D folks or the developers who took time to learn it.