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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
They seem to have a rather weak concept of what a "diehard" is.
(From the site) Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your AirPort signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather. What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of Apple's Quartz rendering. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Mac OS X. The format for these Widgets is completely open and easy to learn so creating your own Widgets is an extremely easy task. For the "skinning" crowd, Konfabulator is a dream come true. You can easily change the look, feel, layout, even functionality of a Widget so that it matches your lifestyle, your desktop, or the pants or skirt you have on that day.
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.
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.
Daring Fireball's take: http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_kon fabulator
He's just pissed because now no one will want his memory-hogging, buggy as hell software. :P :-D
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.
It's something like GDesklets for Gnome.
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.
Short answer: Konfabulator is a product for writing little eyecandyful tools in JavaScript, like Weather monitors, calculators, yaddida, yaddida, yaddida. They are _very_ similar to the widgets being offered in the next version of OS X.
Long answer and editorial: Konfabulator is a resurrection of the old Apple Desk Accessories if you used those. This has been used to claim that really, Konfabulator isn't doing anything new, and that Apple isn't stealing Konfab. I find this argument to be malarky. Sure, Konfab is the spiritual decendent of Desk Accesories. And maybe even Tiger's widgets started as a coincidentally parrallel development within Apple. But writing them in JavaScript? The look and feel? The likely base package of Widgets? Come on. The most you can give Apple is that someone started working on a primitive version of a Desk Accesories successor, and someone came along and said "That's neat. Why don't you make it more like Konfabulator?"
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.
So....it's essentially DesktopX?
My Tech Posts on Twitter
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 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.
so can someone tell me what konfabulator does?
It's pretty ingenious.
Konfabulator takes a Dual G5/2.0 with 1.5G of RAM and makes it run like an Apple IIc.
At least, that's what I found when I tried it.
I didn't realized that is wasn't out for Windows yet, because XP had the same effect when I installed it on my PC.
- Tony
"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.
official site gallery(can't zoom in, since site is /.ed)
widget gallery
google image search of 'konfabulator'
apple's dashboard
When there was the Dashboard brouhaha a while back over ideas being 'stolen' from Konfabulator, I got linked to an interesting comparison between the two. It's quite illuminating reading, and should explain some of the performance, um, issues of Konfabulator:I really got the impression that one reason Apple passed over it for incorporation into MacOS X Tiger was because of the low-level architecture not being up to scratch. Instead of using the same, single instance of Safari's rendering and Javascript for all widgets, booting up some monolithic monstrosity for each sounds just... Horrid...
Oh, and the Windows port was apparently announced in December last year.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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.
What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of Apple's Quartz rendering.
Now, porting that to Windows and keeping the above statement true: That'll be impressive!
uses the
Don't worry about this
or this
or even this
or this
hmm, or this
There's nothing "Mac OS exclusive" about widgets. Apple didn't do them first, just like they didn't do alpha blended shadows, app skinning, a dock, etc... first. But, for some reason, Apple users like to attribute all sorts of misplaced creative distinction to the folks in Cupertino.
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.
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.
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!
Watson/Sherlock
They offered to hire the Watson developer, he turned them down because he wanted to be retro-actively paid for all of his Watson work even though Apple wasn't going to use his codebase for Sherlock.
Konfabulator/Dashboard
Both of these are inspired by Apple's Desk Accessories from 1984.
SoundJam/iTunes
Apple bought SoundJam and turned it into Itunes.
LiteSwitch X/Command-Tab
Please -- this has been in Windows for years. I've also heard it was in Next as well.
mbbac
Two problems with that list:
Konfabulator is a rip-off of the old Desk Accessories that were more plentiful in the earlier days of the Mac OS. (Right up through 8, if I'm not mistaken).
And LiteSwitch X was a "prettied-up" version of Alt-Tab in Windows.
To say that Apple is stealing someone else's idea is only half the story. They're stealing someone else's stolen ideas, often times they're stealing back their own ideas.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Sherlock came out before Watson. Watson cried a bit when Sherlock was updated but then went on to make a better product.
Konfabulator was not first. Apple had desktop widgets quite some time ago. Not to mention Stardock, Karamba and lots of others.
SoundJam was purchased to become iTunes.
LiteSwitch was implementing a feature that used to exist in System 9 and disappeared in OS X. Apple merely added the feature back in. Even without LiteSwitch command-tab worked, the functionality was simply enhanced with the latest version of OS X.
Konfabulator and LiteSwitch are simply a case of outside developers filling a hole that was obvious. OS X did not hit the shelves as a complete operating system. Every version that has been released has added features back in that were missing. Sometimes these features step on a developer's toes. It is sad, but it happens and it should be expected. These developers should be happy they got paid while the feature was missing and move on to the next big thing. It is unrealistic to think that a simple little toy program is going to be a permanent cash cow.
If Longhorn came out without Active Desktop and then put it back in at a future date, would anyone cry foul? This is the exact same situation.
These developers need to face the facts. Their implementation is a copy of an idea that has been around since the 80s. Their implementation is bloated and runs like crap. I know, I used to run their software until I realized it was slowing down both my cpu and my gpu, then I junked the entire mess.
Let them move over to windows, they will be right at home.
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
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.
Pretty much except DesktopX is highly integrated into the OS and includes much more than just widgets and such. It has those but it's so much more.
I'm wondering what the memory footprint will be with the Windows version of Konfabulator as compared to the original Mac version.
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
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.
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..."