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After a bit of googling it seems as though Apple ripped off the entire Dashboard concept from Konfabulator.
Contrary to what you may believe, fanboy, Apple are not the epitome of innovation. They'd have gone nowhere if they didn't steal ideas from Xerox (just like Microsoft did). Steve Jobs admitted it himself.

This isn't the first time Apple's apparently screwed over developers.

Panic made a better music player:
http://panic.com/audion/
http://panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Widgets didn't originate with Apple (at least according to Arlo Rose):
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=77382
http://www.konfabulator.com/cartoon/partOne.html
Alternative view here - http://www.randommaccess.com/articles/1088610260.shtml

Watson was slain:
http://www.karelia.com/watson/

iPodRip bullied into submission:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/jobs-may-make-mat-lose-his-job-20091125-jq6t.html

My only observation? Over time, anything that dilutes or threatens the iTunes/App Store/iDevice ecosystem is met with increasingly over-the-top responses.

Maybe that's how you get ahead in business, but it sucks nonetheless.

It's strange to see Mac users asking about "amazing Windows software" because aren't mac users mostly Windows converts? Windows PCs have been about half the price of Mac machines for about a decade. I figured the reason people paid that premium for a Mac is for the quality that they have over Windows PCs. Also, the notion of Mac people now wanting Windows software shows that Apple's plan could backfire. Isn't the whole Boot Camp thing so that Windows people can now have an opportunity to switch over to Apple without losing all of the software they've grown accustomed to?

Anyway, to keep this on-topic, some amazing Windows software is
Spybot Search and Destroy - great spyware killer
AVG Anti-virus - self explanatory
iTunes - great software for organizing and playing your music. Also has a built-in store where you could purchase new stuff.
Konfabulator - great widget program with tons of free downloadable widgets online
Photoshop - The industry standard photo editing software, but it's pretty expensive.

thanks for that.. I don't put much thought into spelling on the internet something you may be interested in though if you are a windows user is konfabulator (now yahoo widget engine) http://www.konfabulator.com/

Widget has been used in this context for a while now. Google isn't redefining the term at all.

Stardock's DesktopX has been pushing the idea of desktop widgets for a few years now
http://www.desktopx.net/

Additionally, there's Konfabulator, which was recently purchased by Yahoo and renamed the Yahoo Widget Engine
http://www.konfabulator.com/

Also, Apple introduced widgets into OS X with the Dashboard feature.

So... the use of widget to describe a small mini-app has been around for a while now.

i used gd for a while, but it didn't find nearly as much stuff as X1 (which later became yahoo desktop). for example, it wouldn't index my gaim logs for some reason. i had to install some third party text plugin that ate the cpu like mad.

so i like the way gd works, in general, but i didn't like that it searched so little of my world. Y! desktop, on the other hand, is an ugly app, but man, it finds EVERYTHING.

as far as the sidebar, i just don't get what the fuss is about. y'all should check out konfabulator. it's amazingly cool and works the same on windows and the mac (i use both) and does all the stuff gd's sidebard does and a lot more and in much more open ended manner (transparent float mode is unbelievably useful).

gDesklets and Konfabulator are available only for Gnome/KDE based systems.

Just because Konfabulator starts with a 'K' doesn't mean it's a KDE tool. In fact, it doesn't even run on Linux, but Windows and Mac OS X. Oh yeah, and it's owned by Yahoo now, too. Looks like gadgets, widgets, and sidebars are the new battelground, with Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and now Google in the mix. Yahoo has a serious lead, since Konfabulator is the oldest product.

gDesklets and Konfabulator are available only for Gnome/KDE based systems.

Just because Konfabulator starts with a 'K' doesn't mean it's a KDE tool. In fact, it doesn't even run on Linux, but Windows and Mac OS X. Oh yeah, and it's owned by Yahoo now, too. Looks like gadgets, widgets, and sidebars are the new battelground, with Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and now Google in the mix. Yahoo has a serious lead, since Konfabulator is the oldest product.

I agree. It looks like an ugly version of gDesklets or Konfabulator except it doesn't have even close to as many useful widgets. It also includes a large ugly Google symbol on the top bar which it seems can't be removed. It's also another Google product that is available only for Windows.

Let's see, what more could I possibly need. How about: address book, travel listings, an online notepad, an online briefcase, a music client, games, personals, a free auction site, a way to share tagged bookmarks with my friends and FOAFs, and a platform to build cross-platform desktop apps easily.

Oh, wait. Yahoo already provides all these things today.

I've installed it and from my initial impressions it looks like a response to Yahoo's recent purchase of Konfabulator which does very similar things (brings a variety of different information directed towards the consumer to the desktop in one piece). Perhaps "response" is not the right word, but it's interesting to note how the two companies are converging in this direction. I'm not aware of a Microsoft application that's very similar. Maybe there is one.. if not, then expect one very soon.

The other thing that really, really bothered me is that I can't get the Google Desktop to work for firewall reasons (blame work). I couldn't find any proxy settings to muck with so now I'm dead in the water. (I'll try it at home, later.) Konfabulator, though, does work. Just something to note.

Is the google toolbar really necessary? is it useful? To me it seems like a waste of screen real-estate. Do we need to always see a picture of our kitten on the side of the screen, or have our inbox constantly open? Personaly, I like Konfabulator or Dashboard because the widgets are easily available but not wasting valuable screen space. Maybe the google toolbar has this type of easy-hide easy-show functaionaly, but I have never been able to use it since I don't have a windows machine. I am not sure google is going in the right direction with this type of desktop search, but then again, I didn't just make $4 billion dollars.

from the announcement
So, we're excited. You should be too. We're in good hands at Yahoo!,
I mean, they acquired Flickr, right? How bad can they be?

Google - "Don't Be Evil."
Yahoo! - "How Bad Can We Be?"

Title: The Day Before The Big News
Tomorrow, Konfabulator will enter its next phase of life.
It's not a major new version, or a fancy new set of widgets.
It's the beginning of something big.
When you'll hear us say...
"Excellent!"
"Woot!"
"Hooray!"
"YAHOO!"


Website

http://www.konfabulator.com/

"Macworld news has an article about Yahoo's acquisition of Konfabulator, which will be announced Monday. Yahoo company executives said they will be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product. The reason they purchased Konfabulator was they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo web site." From the article: "The acquisition of Konfabulator may not be the last Mac compatible product users see from Yahoo! While Schneider wasn't specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac. 'There is a move at Yahoo! -- in addition to Konfabulator -- to move more onto the Mac,' said Schneider. 'We want to make sure we find a way to be more cross platform.'"

"Macworld news has an article about Yahoo's acquisition of Konfabulator, which will be announced Monday. Yahoo company executives said they will be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product. The reason they purchased Konfabulator was they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo web site." From the article: "The acquisition of Konfabulator may not be the last Mac compatible product users see from Yahoo! While Schneider wasn't specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac. 'There is a move at Yahoo! -- in addition to Konfabulator -- to move more onto the Mac,' said Schneider. 'We want to make sure we find a way to be more cross platform.'"

Not to mention, Apple stole the entire Dashboard concept from Konfabulator. A program that's been around for a few years.

Worse, Apple screwed it up. Konfabulator works great because it puts widgets on the desktop behind the applications. This allows you to organize your desktop so you can always see your widgets, or use a second monitor to display them. Dashboard loses most of it's true usefulness by forcing you to press a key combination to to see the damn widgets.

I want my weather widget to be visisble, so I can SEE if it it's raining, or if there is a weather alert. I want my stock ticker to be visible so I can SEE when it drops below or climbs above various things.

Bah, dashboard is almost, but not quite, useless.

http://www.konfabulator.com/

This is what i love about apple. They see the customers need and they execute simple as that.

When Microsoft does this (comes late to the game with a rip-off entrant that brutalizes a small-guy innovator) they tend not to be viewed as kindly.

Again I call BULLSHIT.

Just look at what Apple has done with Widgets... as Jobs calls them. They were a significant part of his developer presentation.

I wonder what the folks from http://www.konfabulator.com/ think of Apple's developer support.

Yeah sure Apple will support you until like M$ we take the bext ideas from their developer base and fold them into their OSes as "new" features.

Yup... now that's what I call develoer support!

What an ASSHOLE! Steals from the Open Source community, steals from his developers and suck innovation out of the market at every turn... sound familiar.

Try www.konfabulator.com. It's free to use (nagware, actually) and versions are available for Windows and Mac.

With Konfabulator, you can build cross-platform (no Linux yet) desktop widgets (similar to OSX Dashboard widgets, but more functional), using XML and Javascript. You can define the different components of your widget in XML, and then write the event handlers in Javascript. Optionally, you can have Javascript dynamcially create the components in the onLoad event handler. It uses the Spidermonkey Javascript engine, also found in Mozilla/Firefox.

If you give it a try, Check out my widget, ClipDrop (a clipboard manager), in the Gallery.

How much do you know about Winamp? If you're a mac person I understand, but it runs at least twice as fast as iTunes, has skins, and is much more customizable. It's my fault for not specifying, but I really meant skins for the mini-player. It ought to be easy for people to make the mini player be the size they want and show the options they want. I've found a widget for Konfabulator that does most of what I want in a much smaller, less flashier package. BTW, Konfabulator is what Apple copied to make Dashboard.

Even if Apple doesn't think I need to interact with mp3 files, why not let me adjust how it sorts them anyway? It wouldn't be hard.

Truth be told, I need to look into foobar2000, a free competitor to Winamp and iTunes. If it lets me rate my songs and create playlists accordingly, I'll switch. Meanwhile it's in Apple's interest to get as many windows users as possible to switch from winamp and musicmatch, so they should offer an advanced options menu. Make the defaults the same as they already are, and you won't have to spend 40 minutes setting it up either.

* more complicated and less secure than what it is copying.

No, dashboard is just konfabulator. Damn near the same product, as far as I can tell. It is somewhat controversial for that reason.

I guess we're seeing another difference between M$ and Apple. M$ sees a product they like, and they buy out the company and rewrite the history books to make it look like a M$ product. Apple... just steals the idea and doesn't bother paying for it?

Don't forget Konfabulator for those of us too poor to buy Tiger.

Have you tried Konfabulator also? It's a non-free alternative to Dashboard, but you might be interested in some of its features over Dashboard.

OK, I'll bite.

I think it's lame that the 2 hit new features are shameless ripoffs of existing shareware apps. Dashboard is to Konfabulator as Spotlight is to Launchbar. They may have some improvement over the original, but who could say with a straight face that they didn't get the idea from these shareware developers? Right down to Dashboard apps being called "Widgets", just like in Konfabulator. Was it really that hard to think up their own name for them? If they're creative enough to come up with the best OS around, can't they at least come up with their own name for them? Bill Gates at least called his version of the trash can the "recycle bin". And original ideas are like Kryptonite to him.

Second, the WSJ reviewer notes occasionally odd slowdowns in his tests. What's happening is that he's run out of RAM and that's disk paging he's discovered. Which makes me wonder whether how well I can run Tiger. I have 768MB of RAM, a respectable amount, and running Safari and iTunes at the same time is easily enough to eat it all up, sending me to annoying disk-paging territory. Apple's apps are so fast because they gobble up as much RAM as they can. I switched away from Safari and iTunes, and I haven't had the problem since. How much RAM do you think Dashboard going to need?

There, there's your critical rant. Of course I am still going to buy the damn thing.

If you disengage yourself from reality and just look at the concept of Dashboard, it looks amazingly cool. If you look at the examples, it's really stylish. But then you come back to Earth and realise that these examples are pretty much everything that will be done with Dashboard. Check the Konfabulator gallery. It is mostly filled with more clocks, more calendars and more RSS feeds.

Even the examples that Apple provides are nothing special. And there is no reason why they all should be integrated with Dashboard. A much more sensible approach would be to implement them as separate applications (even if using that XML/JS combination), and then create Dashboard as a universal way to engage any applications (and not just Dashboard widgets).

Because they never copy anything.

As for the info display panel, from what I've seen, it seems a lot like Konfabulator (http://www.konfabulator.com/). So, while it's nice to have these things built in, neither one of them are original ideas from either corporation.

Search: Tiger will feature a built-in local search technology called "Spotlight" (technology built upon the search engines that Apple currently uses to search iTunes and e-mail). Microsoft has said it plans to offer a similar local-machine search engine for Longhorn that will be based on the company's Windows File System (WinFS) technology.

Not only has Microsoft announced their search feature before Apple, but there have been numerous others that did it before (Google, Yahoo, MSN).

Scripting: Tiger will include a front-end scripting environment known as "Automator." Longhorn will include a new scripting shell (currently in beta test) known as "Monad."

Windows currently supports; VB scripts, Javascript/JScript with WSH, Python and Perl scripts,... (I never used any other). All that is missing is a scripting shell (UNIX had this for 20 years?).

Built-in RSS support: Tiger will embed an RSS aggregator into the Safari browser. Longhorn will include an embedded RSS feature in the user interface.

This is completely expected from a modern browser. Doesn't matter who featured it first, as long as it's there.

Info-Display Panel: Tiger will have an information-display capability called "Dashboard." Longhorn will have an information-display panel called "Sideshow," to which users can "pin" collections of items of interest.

Dashboard is a straight rippof of Konfabulator. Developers of Konfabulator (originally for Mac OS X) switched to Win32 programming after Apple announced it for Tiger. You can read how they feel here http://www2.konfabulator.com/journal/index.php?sta rt=68&show=1.

Integrated Instant Messaging/Video Chat: Tiger will feature a souped-up version of iChat. Microsoft will embed Windows Messenger (a sister to MSN Messenger), which also will likely feature video-chat.

Video chat is the next big thing? Seriously, something like this is perfectly expected from a modern OS.

64-Bit Support: Tiger will include extended 64-bit capabilities. Longhorn allegedly will be optimized for 64-bit systems.

Tiger is not fully 64-bit, while Windows XP 64 is, and so will be Longhorn. Tiger is for one platform, Longhorn will ship (so they say) for x86, IA64, Itanium and probably more...

As much as Steve Jobs wants us to believe that Tiger is a major threat to Longhorn, I somehow very much doubt this. Tiger runs on one platform, which costs a hell of a lot more then the x86 equallient. When, and only when, Jobs gives us his OS for x86 it will make it a competitor. When OS X will support thousands of different hardware combinations and still "just work" then I will be impressed. Until then, it's the same as running a game on PS2 and say it doesn't crash while the PC version does.

btw, rumour has it that the next OS X release might even feature support for a mouse wheel :)

Um, Konfabulator?

Personally, I always found Kon got in the way, so I look forward to them being on a separate layer. Best of both worlds I suppose would be to allow placing some on the Dasboard layer, and some on the Desktop (I would like Weather shown all the time, for instance).

I think I can answer that for him...

While this list may answer your questions, I seriously reccomend viewing the '05 Keynote from San Fransico

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf05/

1. Spotlight: I'm sure you probably know about it by now. Super-quick searching of everything evar!

2. Dashboard: Quick lookup-info and go thing. Try something remarkably similar at http://www.konfabulator.com/ but think of Dashboard as faster.

3. Automator: Like writing small shell scripts to replace you, but way better/gui'fied. Application developers can use AppleScripts to create more robust workflows. (Save your pr0n images faster than ever before!)

4. More optimization: Like most .upgrades, things are looking a lot faster.

Visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/ for more info

a few ideas...

if they have a mac introduce them to applescript as it seems pretty easy to learn. if you haven't upgraded to os x yet (or have classic and can get your hands on a copy), try introducing them to hypercard.

if they have a pc or mac introduce them to konfabulator or when the new tiger os x comes out, dashboard...

i mention dashboard and konfabulator because they use javascript, which is very useful to know for other things, and is an easy way to get something really useful done without spending a lot of time to do it.

however... i'm not sure that when i was 5-10 years old i would have had the patience to sit down and learn most of this stuff. i would probably have just wanted to play games on the computer when i didn't have the opportunity to go outside and play with friends.

in fact, if i were a parent i would probably encourage this stuff to kids only on rainy days when they can't be doing something more social.

True, snowflakes and fire are not necessary. However, I have to say there is something about using a slick UI that makes me actually wanna work. I sometimes, depending on mood, have various desktop images or even none at all. At Apple - yes, I use OS X - they developed the whole Graphite 'theme' for people who work in the color industry as less color on the desktop distracts artists/image people less. So I completely believe UI has a big affect on a persons productivity.

The clock on the video reminds me of the new OS X Tiger Dashboard . They are pretty much a ripoff of Konfabulator which is something I've been using for a while now. But the way the Dashboard widgets work - flipping, spinning, etc - have some appeal for me. There's just something to be said for stuff that really looks cool and works just as well.

So when I see some kick ass eyecandy, that object get's my attention. And as long as I can turn it on or off at various levels or have enough control of it, then it starts to get my admiration for a sweet environment. And once it get's that, then it's a pleasure to work in. Once that happens, work is, er sometimes, fun and the actual process of being productive becomes less of a chore itself. This is why OS X excels - because it provides all kinds of eyecandy but also stays the hell outta the way.

I specifically stay away from Gnome/Metacity or XP desktops because I think those guis leave much to be desired (however, hats off to Gnome guys for at least making something with some kind of community behind it).
Gnome does remedy this a little by having better placement of buttons and things - human interface guidelines? - (more Mac like and opposite of XP, of course), but overall, they're just clones of the Windows95 space and frankly, quite uninspiring to use. Couple that with the more frequent use of Gtk# via C# via M$, and I don't see much of the Linux desktop innovating over the stuff that E already has.

Yes, maybe no one is writing anything based on much of the E libs, but there's something to be said about following or working with a project that inspires people to use it instead of the same old same old. But then again, if Gnome is positioning itself to be more friendly to those that will jump the Windows ship in the future, then I'm sure they don't lose much sleep at night over their decisions.

Konfabulator offers several weather tracker widgets.

check out konfabulator.

You forget that Dashboard is a complete and utter copy of Konfabulator.

Exposé

They've been bitching they had this for a while... Hit Windows-Key-D, OHMYGOD, SHOW DESKTOP! Some people have it in the Quick Launch Bar.

Rendezvous

UPnP.

Dashboard

DesktopX? Samurize? Konfabulator? Granted, they're not in Windows default yet, but they're certainly available, and at least one even predates Mac OS X.

Tabbed Browsing in IE out of box

Just wait 'till Longhorn! We'll show those Mac Apologists who-has-what-first :P!

I'm surprised you didn't mention Avalon/Quartz Extreme...

I have been using a mac since OS 6 was first introduced. I currently own an iBook G4 and while it does not support an extended desktop there is a firmware hack that will provide you with this capability if you have a vid card with enough RAM.

That said I do have 2 pcs at home, one running windows XP and the other running Debian. For some of the more obvious annoyances between my mac and windows pc (fink and apple's X11 actually give me most of the capabilities of my Debian box):
1) many websites (large corporations, including many banks) are optimized for windows and will not display properly in Safari or IE for mac (no longer supported by Microsoft). This can be overcome if you happen to run Microsoft's Virtual PC, which will run XP and therefore a compatible IE.
2)I do not like iPhoto's categorizing my digital photos. I have yet to find a good program for the mac (I use Firehand Ember on my PC)
3)Which brings me to another point, there is a lot more shareware out there for Windows (however, if you are proficient with Unix, many of these types of applications have already been written for Unix and can be compiled on OS X given a little time).
4)If you need to have all the shiny new software out there, then the mac is not for you. An example is Gmail. It only recently began supporting Safari and there is still no Gmail notifier for OS X (although there are some nifty Gmail widgets out there for Konfabulator).
5)Upgrading is more often than not a problem. Don't think that you can head off to CompUSA and buy a new video card for your new G5 tower. Memory is really the only readily upgradeable component in an apple (and this is only a recent addition). Many apples leave you stuck with what you bought (I do not really see this as a big problem as I like to upgrade to a completely new system every 2 years or so anyways).
6)People will salivate all over your new computer. So if you have OCD don't buy a new mac.

If you are heavy into windows and need to use Microsoft Access or other windows only apps extensively, don't think that virtual PC will be your savior if you buy a mac. In this case stick with Windows for these things. However, if you are just waffling because you can not think of what you "might" be missing, just jump in and go buy a new 1.33GHz iBook, you will not be disappointed. I myself will always use a macintosh, not being a PC gamer and now that I have the command line and X11 I may never use anything else.

I tried to follow the story line "ten days in the wild" on the Konfabulator web site. It started off interesting, but after "day 4" I really wanted to get to the point. Then I saw the "whatever you want it to be" tag at the bottom. Oh, great. Another widget-wanker that promises everything but does nothing. Sorry folks, but having just survived a presidential election, I've had enough of that for a while. Hmmm. Maybe I'll click on that "Information" link ...

I tried to follow the story line "ten days in the wild" on the Konfabulator web site. It started off interesting, but after "day 4" I really wanted to get to the point. Then I saw the "whatever you want it to be" tag at the bottom. Oh, great. Another widget-wanker that promises everything but does nothing. Sorry folks, but having just survived a presidential election, I've had enough of that for a while. Hmmm. Maybe I'll click on that "Information" link ...

We'll have to fix them. Dude! I know! We'll port the product to Windows!

First, Tiger has Dashboard, not Dashbar. If anything, Apple's Dashboard is similar to Konfabulator which was out long before MS conceived of ShortHorn. On top of that, the concept for the Dashboard has been in the Apple OS since back in OS 6, the concept of an extensible desktop interface that would allow various controls of different components was simply called "Control Panel" back then, it was extensible, but not web enabled, so it wasn't an html based program. The guy that claims to have created Konfabulator used to work for Apple. If you want to discuss the possibility of stealing you should know the history better.

Not even similar. Apple's Dashboard is actually a ripoff of Konfabulator, except that it's more fully integrated with Exposé and uses Safari as its rendering engine.

Sounds like you have never heard of Konfabulator? I feel that many of the widgets have much more polish than the ones that I have seen under KDE.

MacOS X will also come with Dashboard, so this functionality will be standard in the OS.

Now Google has always been a multi-platform and anti-windows/msft player... So i'd expect an OSX/Linux version first... Luckly, some David Estes have published a Konfabulator widged that does just the same, and works pretty well.

Examples:

• http://www2.konfabulator.com/forums
• http://wwwa.accuweather.com
• http://spc.noaa.gov

I guess many will have corrected you by now, but you must mean here instead

Arlo Rose use to work for Apple in their Human Interface Design Center and took a voluntary layoff. He then started his own little company and later launched Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a theme rendering engine for Mac OS 7 to 9.1. Apple later turned out a similar application to Mac OS 8, "Appearance Manager", which took a dig into his possible user base. Some people decided against getting Kaleidoscope (with it's hundreds of themes) and waited for Apple to turn out more than one theme or at least the tools to create Appearance Manager compliant themes. Two additional themes floated around ftp servers for awhile but since Apple never officially released them they were difficult to find. Well, "Platinum" was the only theme ever released and many felt Apple "strung" users along so Kaleidoscope would die off. (There's a lot more to this story and this is just a quick overview.)

Fast forward to today. Apple will soon be releasing Mac OS 10.4 aka "Tiger" with a program called Dashboard (although Arlo claims that Dashboard won't be out until next year). Dashboard is an application that allows users to have small javascript apps on their desktop that will access their calendar, different style clocks, control iTunes and lots of different things. The problem is is that Arlo has had similar and very popular program out for a year and a half called Konfabulator. Dashboard and Konfabulator both use small javascript "widgets" to create desktop applications. To many it seems Apple once again has used it's position as the creators of Mac OS X to snuff out another programmer that has a popular addition to their OS.

I'm not saying that Apple stole anything or did anything legally wrong but IMO they should've tried to work with Konfabulator. Maybe they could've bought some limited rights or bundled a stripped down version instead of just stepping on it. To me many of MS's past tactics and Apple's in this case are quite similar, and IMO unfair.

(FYI: I only know what has be put out on the net about the Dashboard vs. Konfabulator issue. Maybe they did try to work something out and the deal didn't go through. Apple hasn't said much about it, not out of the norm for them.)