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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.'"
We'll have to fix them. Dude! I know! We'll port the product to Windows! Yeah, Microsoft would never copy an idea and include it in their next operating system! Excellent!
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
One might think this particular project was a natural for a KDE port.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Yeaaaaaaaaaaah right.
:-/
The quote at the bottom of the page goes, "Cheer Up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate."
Gee, thanks
so can someone tell me what konfabulator does?
:-)
I sure hope it isn't a bandwidth optimizer or any like thing
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
... for everyone keeping an eye on the developer's weblog.
All in all it's just good news for us windows users. By the way, there are a plethora of other Konfabulator-alike utilities (Kapsules, Samurize, Ave Desk...)
They seem to have a rather weak concept of what a "diehard" is.
I don't know about you guys, but there already is an excellent utility for system-monitoring on Windows, it's called Samurize.
It's totally configurable and can be made to be a lot of eye-candy as well. Also it can be extended with scripts and plugins for everything from weather to television listings.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Ya think?
I don't care how much I love Mac's, I would play where ever I could get the most revenue and then go back and port/develop for other platforms as the business model allowed. If you are not in business to make money you may have a hard time staying in business.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Wonder what it is? The actual Konfabulator site is slashdotted, but does come up some time. The front page looks like part of "MYST". The article describes it as a desktop organization utility, but it is rather vague.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
Widgets are NOT a new idea, and everyone ignores that his implementation is a memory hog and prone to crashes. How is he getting credit for things invented in 1984 and shipped alongside the original Macintosh?
Daring Fireball's take: http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_kon fabulator
Does anyone know if this is an application like Super/Karamba that runs on KDE. The description sounds similar. And if so, does anyone know which of these two apps came first? Basically, who stole whose idea first?
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.
"Even moving to Windows may not ensure Konfabulator free reign. Microsoft plans for the next version of Windows to have a slightly different twist on the same idea. The company has demonstrated a feature called Sidebar that allows access to similar sorts of information in one part of the Windows screen."
Uuuhhhhh, isnt the same concept that Mozilla uses for easy access to bookmarks, history, seaches and what not?
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.
DesktopX for Win32 is similar -- I have never used Konfabulator -- however DesktopX allows you to write simple vb (or any other installed scripting language including perl) scripts and attach them to interactive desktop objects.
If interested, check it out www.desktopx.com
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
Kapsules is similar to Konfabulator, so this isn't a new idea on Windows either. I never used it, but back when Windows had "active desktop" features those were quite similar to what Kapsules and Konfabulator offer.
I've tried both Kapsules and Konfabulator and once you get past the "nifty keen" factor, neither are really all that useful in my opinion.
Arlo Rose is an ex-Apple employee that build Konfabulator based on his experiment at Apple. Steve Jobs would have been stupid to buy his own ideas back from Rose. And same goes with Watson: Sherlock was clearly first on the market.
On the other hand. Apple has bought some cool technology to next Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Pixelshox Technology is one great example. It's been renamed Quartz Composer in Tiger and is basis of CoreVideo.
So Apple will buy great inventions to their OS, but they're not that stupid to buy their own inventions back.
(Sorry about typos, English is not my native lang.)
If you would like to see a summary of most of the posts here and a general discussion of what Konfabulator does and Arlo Rose's history and general discussion ... see a recent story I did on this on my jackwhispers website:
HERE IT IS
Titled: What A Kon!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
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.
That would be direct competition to Samurize...
Man that looks sweet! Come on now
That is a brilliant idea! Pay for porting the app yourself so Windows can steal it also!
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 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
www.stardock.com
Been around for years.
"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."
I wonder how much time he spent thinking of ways to improve Konfabulator to give people an incentive to use it instead of Dashboard. It would seem from this statement and the article that he just sort of rolled over.
Also, I didn't see anything in the article about it and the Konfabulator website is loading slooooow as hell, but do they intend to coninue developing Konfabulator for OS X? When this originally hit the news there was a pretty large backlash and a lot of people came out in support of Konfabulator. I really hope they don't intend to just ditch them all.
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.
Just an FYI on some of the who did what first arguments here.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
official site gallery(can't zoom in, since site is /.ed)
widget gallery
google image search of 'konfabulator'
apple's dashboard
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.
It may have been some gee-wiz-bang swell tool for the MAC guys...but that kinda stuff is a dime a dozen for us Windows peeps since even Windows 3.1. And with the newer Windows GUI there are tons of free apps that do the same thing.
"Welcome to the group Mr Rose...here's your number."
And you know it kind of reminds me of the "star quarterback" from a high school thinking he's the stuff...then he joins a college or pro team. You're with the big boys now and you're just another player.
I wonder how many people here at /. would be using the same arguments if it was M$ "bundling" other people's work into Windows.
I've been out of the Mac realm for a while now, but when I left, I would estimate at least 70% of the MacOS features were available as third-party shareware or freeware apps before they were part of the OS. I remember using "Launcher" before there were such things as "Aliases". Another good example is the Extensions Manager control panel. I wonder how many of those were purchased by Apple and how many Apple just made their own versions.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
"When you have a great idea, you want more than 2 percent of the global market to have access to it."
If that is the case, why did you not develope it for Windows in the first place? Also, I challenge the notion that this was "your idea".
DaringFireball has an excellent article on why this is bullshit. Google for it if you want to know more.
I wanted to use Konfabulator for my Intranet stuff. Basically, instead of manually consolidating information from all my servers, I was going to add REAL simple reporting scripts that could be accesseed via Konfabulator, and let everyone on my network access them.
/Library, /System/Library, and /Network/Library... Konfabulator will ONLY use the ~/Library, where it SHOULD go ~/Library (User based), /Library (Computer Based), /Network/Library (network based), and support there had no interest in that feature.
/Library/Preferences/edu.mit.kerberos (instead of /etc/krb5.conf), but they are pulled out of the LDAP cn=config group and rewritten if changed and the local machine had an unedited file...
HOWEVER, the Konfabulator guys have made it a User based system (in OS X, settings are stored in "Library," and you have a ~/Library,
If you had a cross platform (do the Windows port in Qt and you have a free Linux port), and you have a GREAT system for Enterprise customers that want something like Widgets to get information available to users without running a complicated Intranet. And for me, add Kerberos support to your fetching code and it works with my Single-sign on environment... Do that, and you are also selling site licenses, as well as your personal users.
However, for that, you need to run cross platform, which is entirely possible. Hell, if you don;t want to search the libraries, than do what Apple does with Kerberos settings... they write them to a file
Give a reason for Enterprise groups to think that you can make their lives easier, and you get bigger sales.
Alex
how is confabulator different from samurize which is what I think konfabulator was copied from.
Why should someone switch from Samurize to confabulator?
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
uses the
Apply actually has a long history of destroying those developers that would help promote their OS. Here's a few examples: (3rd part app listed first, Apple newly introduce "feature" second)
a m/iTunes (the one time they hired someone)
/. cries foul. Apple essentially just steals the whole idea and integrates it into their OS package, and no one cries foul.
Watson/Sherlock
Konfabulator/Dashboard
SoundJ
LiteSwitch X/Command-Tab
It would stand to reason that Apple is killing off their own developers by usurping the projects they undertake, why? Because they've actually been here before. Remember when the Mac was stagnant at system 6-7.5? Not much really changed. Then 8.0 came out and Apple got into a better habit of releasing real changes on a regular basis.
I think though, there's a bit of a double-standard amongst what geeks perceive what MS and Apple are doing. MS buys out open source or 3rd party developers, and
Granted, I do understand there's more than just that in play, but it really kind of irks me when I see the editors gleefully talking about the latest Apple feature or product. It's like rooting for the underdog in the face of cats; you're still rooting for something other than what your target audience is concerned about.
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.
..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.
According to their website, the developers had ... issues ... with the sole Windows developer, including the belief that he would own the source code. They got rid of him and started over. Thus the delay.
The reason why it's news now is because its release is Monday, instead of next year or the infamous "real soon now..."
I, for one, welcome our new widget overlords. I love the Mac version and can't wait to use it on Windows too.
Stardock already does this for Windows in a very nice way.
Check it out here.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Their server is hosed up, go to their web site and you get the Control Panel page... free access!
-- You can't drink all day. (Unless you start in the morning...)
Although Konfabulator sounds like a nice idea I think that Objectdock widget's (startools) do exactly same thing on Windows machines. You can get weather, transparency, Mac-like-skins etc.
http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/
Once something similar is bundled with an OS it can be buggy as you like, but it'll still decimate your market.
Half the pages at konfabulator.com result in a 404, including the 'downloads' link.
This is very similar to desktopX. Which already has tons of free and paying widgest/objects/themes.
From the weather report to translucent fishies swimming over your applications, it's all there. Quite fun for some time!
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
*main site got slashdotted prior someone might have noticed*
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
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.
You have due dates confused. Konfabulator will be out shortly for Windows. Longhorn has the vapor date.
It would seem Arlo is a bit late in providing his great widget application to the other 98%. The windows desktop widget application DesktopX predates even the Macintosh version of Konfabulator. And he's accusing Apple of ripping off his "idea"? Arlo , do a Tom Cruise and Open Your Eyes.
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 ...
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
They did not license Xerox tech. They allowed Xerox to buy a chunk of discount Apple stock in exchange for seeing a technology preview at Xerox PARC. This is well documented by Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld, Larry Tesler, and scores of Apple history books.
Bud Tribble was usually on an even keel, but one afternoon in the fall of 1981 he came into my office, unusually excited. "You know, I've been thinking about it. Even if we can only run one major application at a time, there's no reason that we can't also have some little miniature applications running in their own windows at the same time."
c in tosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Ma
It's nice that Konfabulator is coming out for Windows but Arlo knows that Konfabulator is old news on Windows. Programs like DesktopX not only do everything (and more) and cost less, but have existed far longer than Konfabulator. http://www.desktopx.net.
And he also has to compete against freeware alternatives.
Here's an article that compares ALL of them:
http://frogboy.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=27014
Ok, I read the story submission and read both of the pages that were linked to in the story submission, and I still have no idea what a "Konfabulator" is or what it does.
A little help, please?
Kewl! Something else to keep the script kiddies busy!
Already there are many apps which do not show the standard window box. How is this different?
They are absolutely first in line when it comes to screaming bloody murder and attacking with lawyers when anyone puts out products that resemble anything they do.
The thing is I agree with you. Pulling up and leaving isn't the right thing to do. I just think its odd that you would defend Apple in that way since they clearly have no tolerance when people put out products similar to theirs. If things were reversed we would have 500 posts from Apple users accusing the Konfab author of stealing Apple's "innovative ideas".
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
COOOL!! My 20 year old Apple IIc has been getting a little tired lately. Now I can buy Apple's latest and greatest, install Konfabulator, and PRESTO! a green screen monitor, a nice keyboard, support for all my 5.25" disks, and all my AppleWorks files can live again!
You'd think if this were the case, the Konfabulator would be advertising this to the Apple II community as a feature!
(former Beagle Bros tech support)
Is reinnovation a word?
Yeah, because Konfabulator is nothing like Win98's old Active Desktop... except for the whole being exactly the same thing.
Microsoft welcomes you to the dark side. Just watch out for the corn hole, buddy!
Dashboard is an inevitable result of Apple providing the webkit for easy use of HTML, Javascript, and other web technologies. I doubt very much that it is a response to Konfabulator. The three similarities usually cited are:
1) it looks like a bunch of little apps
2) they're programmed in Javascript
3) they're called widgets
The third one is just silly. They're called widgets because they *are* widgets. Konfabulator did not invent the name.
The first one is something apple's been doing; they want developers to be able to create quick little things that enhance the user experience. For example, applescript studio, services, docklets, scriptmenu. Some of them disappear--I haven't seen a docklet for quite a while. But this is clearly a direction Apple has shown interest in from the beginning of Mac OS X.
That Dashboard widgets are programmed in Javascript appears to be a slight misstatement. Konfabulator does use Javascript; as I understand it, it uses the open source javascript renderer from Mozilla. While Dashboard's widgets are for the most part going to be programmed in Javascript, simply because it's the programming language that's available, they are really programmed in WebKit.
WebKit is the underlying web rendering engine that powers Safari; it is based on an open source rendering system and Apple makes its version available to all Mac OS X developers; so we've seen lots of webkit-enabled applications, such as HyperEdit (a text editor that automatically renders HTML as you type it) and web browsers (I believe OmniPage now uses WebKit). I haven't upgraded to Panther yet, but I understand that Apple's Mail program also uses webkit.
Apple has been trying to make their scripting languages easier to use to create quick and dirty apps. They've made AppleScript Studio for Applescript; in Tiger they are also coming out with Automator, which appears to also be for AppleScript, making it even easier to use.
Dashboard appears to be the same thing for WebKit: something that jumps it from being a way to enable other apps to display web pages; to something that lets web developers create apps.
It may well be that Apple was influenced by Konfabulator; but I think that something like Dashboard from Apple was inevitable from the moment Apple came out with webkit.
Jerry
Konfabulator was not originally Rose's idea by any stretch of the imagination. This idea first came to light in the mid 1980s with the introduction of Desk Accessories. If anything, it's sorta like the idea that the MacOS was originally Apple's idea. Neither is an original idea, and each got the idea from another source.
I did, however, Konfabulator for a while, and just found the way that it handles as bothersome as the original desk accessories that cluttered the desktop--not very intuitive at all, just maybe looked a bit more fancy. However, the dashboard coming out under Tiger looks like it resolves the "clutter" issue, and would definitely a more preferential choice for me anyways.
"There are 10 types of people in this world--Those that understand binary, and those that do not..."
So he goes from supporting Cthulhu to supporting Satan himself, because he's the more popular evil.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Like Windows needs another memory-hog kludgy piece of bloatware.
I ran Konfabulator on my iBook (G3/500, 640MB RAM) for all of about two days -- the amount of time it took me to realize that it was more of a resource drain than Adobe Photoshop.
blog |
hit you in the ass on the way out, and I wish you lots of success competing with the dozens of well established Windows GUi enhancement applications such as Stardock, Window Blinds etc etc etc, not to mention Active Desktop.
You may be bitter that Apple is not kissing your ass and buying your memory hungry resource intensive application instead of using it's own small footprint application that works as well as Expose, but you definitely will be extra bitter when you discover that the competition in the Windows software world is much larger than it will be even under OSX Tiger.
Bad attitudes never produced good sales, Arlo, only good software does that. Well, that and a tiny bit of innovation.
I ran it for a few months, but Konfabulator ate so much of my system resources (it was an absolute hog) that I finally had to uninstall it. I'm looking forward to Apple's Dashboard, since it looks to have a much better engine design.
Close, but no. Aaron was written by Greg Landweber. Greg and Arlo worked together to make Kaliedoscope.
'We're all diehard Macintosh developers here, but we recognize that Windows is the dominant platform,' Rose said in a statement.
What a fucking hypocrite
That's right. I now remember the name. Thank you for setting me straight!
Kaleidoscope kicked ass.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Why the heck is this crap getting publicity? In the Windows market, its been done before, and done better. Who cares about this thing!
Try Stardocks DesktopX for the real thing..
To me, "diehard" doesn't mean running off because you're unhappy.
I just took a quick tour of the web site and I can't find out just what the fuck is konfabulator. Can someone tell me?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The implementation has sucked for 5 years.
18 months ago (EIGHTEEN) a shareware app was introduced that addressed the weaknesses of Apple's scheme (slooow process, tied up optical drive, wastes disk space) called TheHotFolder that introduced the concept of a monitored Finder "Smart" folder that was user assigned, to drop stuff into for burning later. Capacity was monitored dynamically, the user could "upgrade" their CD sized HotFolder to a DVDR capacity if the machine had one.
Once the user was satisfied, the could burn their HotFolder, etc.
Earlier this year, that app was updated to integrate even more into the Finder by the developer, and received a Mac Gems rating by MacWorld.
Apple appears to be adding this feature to MacOS X 10.4.
Finder burning worked *nothing* like this...not even close.
Someone sits down, figures out what sucks about it, writes a solution, and Apple nicely implements it.
APPLE RAWKS!
...it wasn't so damn buggy. For the two or three weeks I had it installed, it was mostly locked up or crashed. After a while I realised I simply didn't need a bunch of buggy clocks so I trashed it. Had it been more reliable (and, to be blunt., more useful) it might have stayed around and I might have cared a lot more about the Dashboard/Konfabulator bun fight.
Personnally I think Konfabulator is a bit of nickel-and-dime-ware that eats up your resources, but there is a place for eye candy in the world.
The choices for small innovative independent developers are not great these days. You can either wait for your OS distributor to steal your idea if you are ever successful, or you can work on Free software and hope someone sponsors you. Anything in between looks a bit like survival economics.