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.'"

Comments

Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

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!

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[AC-x]

At the rate Longhorn's going they won't have anything to worry about for a _long_ time

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[metlin]

From the article --

"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."

That answers your question :-)

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[lowe0]

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.

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[WebMasterJoe]

Microsoft plans for the next version of Windows to have a slightly different twist on the same idea.

So, version one in 2-3 more years, version 2 which deletes all the original widgets in 7 years, and version 8, which is completely incompatible with previous versions and now integrates with MSN and WMP 11, will debut in 13 years. Seriously, if they make the sidebar anything like the toolbars that sometimes adhere to the always-on-top and auto-hide settings, Konfabulator has nothing to worry about.

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[Graff]

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

Konfabulator coming to Windows is old. old news. In fact, that announcement on December 16, 2003 predates the Apple Dashboard announcement on June 28, 2004 by over 6 months. Konfabulator for Windows was even already in beta form at the time of its announcement, so the idea of porting it is definitely older than 6 months before any word from Apple.

It comes down to this: Arlo Rose was porting Konfabulator over to Windows way before Apple even announced Dashboard. The port has very little to do about Apple coming out with a product similar to Konfabulator, it's more about Arlo Rose wanting to tap into the large Windows market.

That's not to say that Arlo Rose is not bitter about the whole thing - he has made a lot of snide comments on the matter - but the fact is that "little desktop applications" have been a part of Mac OS ever since it first came out. Apple has always had Desktop Applications, small applications that take up minimal RAM and do one small thing well, such as a note pad, a calculator, a clock, etc. If anything it is likely that Rose was inspired by Apple, not the other way around.

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[mccoma]

next killer idea

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.

Re:Dude--Apple stole our idea!

[mbbac]

They're ultimately all ripoffs of Apple's Desk Accessories {more info}.

Konfabulator going to Windows?

[richie2000]

One might think this particular project was a natural for a KDE port.

Re:slashdotted already

[RandoX]

(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.

Apple copied Rose? Or Rose copied Apple?

[Polaris]

Daring Fireball's take: http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_kon fabulator

Apple doesn't buy its own inventions back!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:slashdotted already

[tdemark]

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

Re:Nothing uncommon here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you are talking about Hypercard.

All in all, its not really even a new paintjob as much as it is just a different engine. I had hypercard apps that could do all the same look and feel with the right free externals (remember -- the original Myst was written in Hypercard -- it still looks as beautiful today as it did back then).

This is what pisses me off about the whole Arlo Rose They Stole Mahhhh Idear bit...he was part of the team that was developing ideas like this at Apple. Its not like he didn't know this stuff was already available to the public. He changed the engine to one of his own (actually I heard it was a reappropriated BSD'd XMLHTTP engine -- which is cool if thats what happened as the BSD is intended to allow folks to do almost whatever they want with the code, unlike other licenses that force one to take specific actions based on others morality) and put it out there.

And now he claims that ANYONE doing the same thing is a thief and a plagerizer because he had the idea to rip someone elses idea off first. He's not complaining about people ripping of his app...he's complaining about ripping off his idea of ripping off apps. Its the whole slashdot joke of I Patent The Idea of Pattenting Ideas that got old years ago...

Fuck Arlo and Fuck All Ya'll...

Re:Not the first time

[mbbac]

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.