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Konfabulator Coming to Windows
islandroots writes "Arlo Rose, developer of the popular Konfabulator widget, is moving his application from Mac OS X to Windows. Back when Apple unveiled their next OS, Mac OS X Tiger with Dashboard, Arlo Rose accused Apple of copying his application. 'We're all diehard Macintosh developers here, but we recognize that Windows is the dominant platform,' Rose said in a statement. 'When you have a great idea, you want more than 2 percent of the global market to have access to it.'"
There's a saying that I've heard all too often that goes ...
"Many people think of the same thing at the same time across the world - it's a matter of who gets it done first".
Time and time again I've seen this happen in the software world, where it's appearance is more noticable all thanks to the speed and expanse of the internet.
So, while it sounds like I'm backing Apple in this one, what I'm really saying is it might not specifically have been plagarism, sometimes it's just a bad coincidence.
PLD.
I think this guy is just trying to scare Apple. He could possibly have Konfabulator running on Windows before Mac OS X Tiger comes out and then it will be an old feature. I bet he wants Apple to buy his product to protect it from being released on Windows to make it a Mac OS exclusive feature.
It's the problem of ideas. They can appear in many heads at the same time.
Arlo's still sore from when he couldn't release Mekong because it became Apple's property. And then, when Kaleidoscope couldn't make the jump to X. Good artist, but he's got some bitterness.
Unless you're targeting some niche market that no one else can do or want to do. You'll never know when your selling point is integrated into the next OS version.
Going platform-independent probably isn't the ultimate answer. Can opensource help?
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
Since when did a little competition in the marketplace cause the ones first to market to simply up and leave?
The proper response is to figure out a way to differentiate yourself. Maybe Konfabulator could be better at XMLHTTP or some other technology.
The fact that you can burn cd's natively in OS X doesn't seem to have hurt Toast that much, probably because Toast provides a slew of other options.
Except for the "lickability" of the widgets, Dashboard is a quite different animal. It's like a second desktop that can be populated with widget-like productivity tools and faded in/out on keypress.
That sounds very appealing to me since the productivity stuff never gets in the way or wastes screen real estate when you don't need it, the way the Konfabulator widgets do.
So even if Konfabulator had been the first to use widgets (which it wasn't), Dashboard would still not be a rip-off but a good idea done right.
Apple out-did this guy and now he runs like a scared little girl
Konfab was a sluggish, memory hungry app that got more in the way than it did good.
a lot of noise, but none of it really worth it.
Face it buddy, you couldn't handle the heat!
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I'd rather have 18 months of revenues from 95% of the market than 6 months of revenues from 2%.
The smart thing to do would be to build up some cash, start working on the next killer idea, and release it cross-platform next time. That WILL teach Apple a lesson, though a small one.
I once wrote a spreadsheet program in pascal when I was 13, and now look, people are using Excel, and stuff, and they obviusly copied off me.
If I write something, NOONE should be allowed to write anything similar, I am sure you all agree.
Stop whining!
Instead think of all the things OTHER PEOPLE did, that you copied, to make your (good/bad/ugly - delete as applicable) application.
Share the love, not the hate. h8rz
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
not due until the end of 2006!?
This is what vaporware dreams are made of. I doubt we'll ever see an official release of konfabulator. With that kind of target date for release there will be dozens of other copycats ready to get their versions embeded with spyware out to the masses.
So, the guy is mad because the OS manufacturer took some peice of the "little guy code" and integrated it into the OS and buried the little guy? And he's making the move to windows because he thinks this happens less often there?
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I didnt prove your theory.
You're taking into account the moments we expressed the same idea, aka you before me, to establish that it is your theory and therefore that i barely proved it.
No, I expressed the same idea as you, and it is neither your nor my theory.
As a matter of fact, it is an idea as old as ideas themselves, the idea that ideas are alive and free and don't belong to none, whenever and however they are expressed.
We are just medium through which ideas express themselves.
also, try to pick a concept that wasn't implemented in the classic Mac OS that Apple is likely to bring forward into OS X.
I don't think it does. Apple have produced Dashboard only for the Mac, Microsoft produced IE for Windows, Mac and Solaris (seeting up a UNIX team specifically for this purpose) and then made them available free specifically to hurt a competitor. As soon as Netscape died so did those ports (and perhaps they'll appear again if Firefox takes off).
Microsoft also threatened PC manufacturers who didn't want to include the IE browser and took measures to prevent other shipping with Netscape. They produced other products like Outlook Express and IIS and gave them away free to specifically hurt Netscape's market share. The changed the licencing from NT 3.51 workstation to NT4 workstation simply to stop people using NT workstation to run Netscape and other competing internet server products.
The list goes on. But if Microsoft had simply produced a Web Browser and added it to NEW versions of its OS do you think there would be a case for an anti monopoly trial?
If Apple announces Dashboard for Windows and Linux and all old versions of Mac OS then you have a valid comparison. But extending their OS in this way as part of the core OS looks to be a logical extension.
Sure, absolutely. I mean, why provide widget writers with the benefit of multitasking and protected memory when you could lump them all together in the same process?
Dashboard widgets are written in interpreted Javascript, doing their display with HTML and CSS. If they can crash each other, you've got serious problems that need fixing elsewhere.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
..is that if I write a widget with it and want to share it, everybody with whom I want to share it has to buy a Konfabulator license. The license isn't unreasonably expensive, but it's not free, and that's sufficient friction that it's just not worth bothering with as far as I'm concerned--I think very few people would ever cough up for the license, so I'd have wasted my time.
So like it or not, Apple is actually doing something that works out really well for me. I'm sorry it doesn't work out well for the Konfabulator folks, but unfortunately I think their business model was unrealistic.
Konfabulator basically returns to MacOS X the functionality of the old MacOS 9-and-under Desk Accessories.
The graphics for their widgets are gorgeous! I really have to applaud the folks at Pixoria for paying attention to detail. I was pretty happy to try it out and return some of the whimsical little things back to my Mac that I used to have under the old OS.
In their implementation, they used Java to run their stuff, so the result is that Konfabulator can be a bit CPU intensive to run. I didn't have quite the performance issues that another poster had, but running more than a couple of widgets did send my CPU usage soaring.
I disagree with the assertion that Apple stole the idea. Returning Desk Accessory function to OS X had always been on the development path. It was simply low enough on the priority list that it didn't get approval to be included until the pending OS release, Tiger.
I will concede that it does encourage one to raise an eyebrow at Apple for calling their DA's "widgets." But I can also point out that if anyone with half a brain was going to steal someone else's idea, they would at least give it a different name. And does anyone in the general public really know when Apple decided on that name for their DAs in OS X?
Early on, there was a critique leveled against Pixoria that rather than just make desk accessories, they should have put their efforts into making an editor that regular people could use to make those desk accessories. Considering that Microsoft is planning on making their own similar desk accessory system, I think that would be a pretty good idea to come up with an editor like that.
For an example: I ultimately decided that Konfabulator didn't have enough value for me to purchase it. But I did choose to buy a program for editing style sheets called, CSSEdit, even though I can easily slap together a style sheet by hand. The idea is the same, sure I could load someone else's work, but I like to see my own stuff.
CSSEdit had value for me because it made it easier for me to manage my own work. Konfabulator is fun, but I can't do my own stuff with it.
Finally, one important thing should be pointed out: just because Apple (and ultimately Microsoft) are going to be including their own DA code into their OSs, that doesn't mean there isn't room for competition! If the people at Pixoria could rewrite Konfabulator to lower-level code that isn't so resource intensive, I'm sure they could make a strongly competitive product. They certainly have set a pretty good standard by the look of Konfabulator's widgets.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Ever heard of Desk Accessories in MacOS systems 6 and earlier? Back when the OS could only run one program at a time, they created DAs that could run concurrently to another app. You could then have access to a calculator, note pad, etc.. without having to interrupt your work on the other program.
Dashboard seems like a remake of that. Push a button and get all your accessories to pop up.
Konfabulator on the other hand is a whole javascript runtime engine, and _that's_ what they're charging for. They're not charging for the concept of widgets (which could arguably be the same as DAs in the first place).
So it's not so black and white about who took who's idea. Apple has the right to reanimate its DAs... They just happened to choose a way to handle the different gadgets that is vaguely similar to the way Konf does it (html/css/javascript).
I still think there's room for both. Dashboard isn't always on. When it is, it dims the rest of your screen. Konf can run next to other apps.
I think anybody who writes anything is going to have to get used to the idea that creativity does not entitle them to a revenue stream.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Konfabulator basically returns to MacOS X the functionality of the old MacOS 9-and-under Desk Accessories.
No, IMO Desk Accessories are gone. They're all small applications now. Dashboard isn't about another calculator/clock/stock ticker or anything like that. Its about providing a new way to write applications for the Mac. Its about making it easy for would-be developers to use tools they're already familiar with to write an application for the Mac (if you can do a web page, you can write a Mac program).
Widgets and Desk Accessories are dead! Long live small, easy to write applications.
It runs widgets that tell you a stock price or the power left in your battery, not in windows but integreated borderlessly into the desktop.
So, basically, what we're saying is: Some company wrote Active Desktop for Mac(*), and now they're porting it to Windows.
But, didn't all(**) the Windows users turn off Active Desktop back in 1998/99 or thereabouts? And if they wanted to turn it back on, wouldn't they just do that, rather than paying good money for some third-party program?
I don't get this idea.
-Graham
(*) I am well aware that whatever-the-hell for Mac probably came out well before Active Desktop ever did. However, before you flame me on this point, please understand that I don't give a crap.
(**) Everyone who works in tech support knows at least one (l)user who still has Active Desktop enabled. However, it's a mistake, and even that (l)user's co-workers all know it.