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Yahoo Purchases Konfabulator
NerdyPunk2ML writes "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.'"
I'm sure the fact that Konfabulator's 'buy out price' went WAY down after Tiger, and Dashboard, were released has NOTHING, no, NOTHING AT ALL to do with this sale :)
Heh, I know Google will now buy Apple to get hands on Dashboard, way better than konfab... /me fells insightfull
-- Por mais que eu ande no vale das trevas e da morte, meu PowerMac G4 Não Travará!!!
And the CEO's new job title, "Director of Widget Technology"! What a step up.
I wonder if this is at the urging of Yahoo Japan? Here Yahoo is the most popular portal and search engine. I've heard Mac sales, not including the iPod, are way up so maybe there's some pressure to make things more cross platform?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
pointless javascript based desktop junk.
How we know is more important than what we know.
After fiddling around with the website I found this:
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to.
Hope that helps someone.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Konfabulator == widgets; desktop thingys made from *ml, javascript etc.
Apple later came up with Dashboard, created the mother of all smokescreens about Desktop Accessories to plead that it was not inspired by Konfabulator and the rest is history.
Apple's behaviour apparently wasn't breaking any law as such but it was the equivalent of some kid leaning over your shoulder and copying your homework. I expect the Dashboard apologists will appear shortly pointing to a piece of FUD called daringfireball, but the question remains:
would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
answer: um...ah....oh
I say good luck to Konfabulator, hope they got a good price 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. '
I don't find this surprising. Lately, it seems that Yahoo has been getting some of the positive internet buzz that used to be reserved solely for Google. I imagine that releasing products specifically for Mac users is aimed at garnering similar buzz.
While Macs have a relatively small share of the market, they are, however, well represented among popular bloggers, technorati (ugh) and the mavens of the web: inform or impress these folks, and you will begin to inform and impress the rest of the web. This is a move to grab mindshare.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Well...
there's more than one way to do me.
I can't see the purpose of a weather function on the desktop or perhaps a news ticker. All of the clutter of widgets cannot be worth the slight gain in functionality. A well-organized homepage with links/bookmarks should do the trick. A click or two to launch and use a browser are worth saving desktop real estate on a low-res (1024x768) LCD like mine.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I bought it about a week ago. It's nice, but this blows. How do I look on the bright side of this? I could use that $20.
At what point did MS steal the idea for Active Desktop?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
>would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the
>underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it
>does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
Meanwhile, other posters are complaining that Dashboard *doesn't* copy Konfabulator and requires (barring developer mode) looking at all of them at once.
Yes, Dashboard would have existed without Konfabulator. Dashboard is based on WebKit. WebKit is part of OS X. WebKit is what powers Safari and Mail's HTML rendering (and probably most other third-party HTML renderers at this point).
http://webkit.opendarwin.org/
Dashboard came at the same time that Automator did; Apple appears to be trying to ensure that their technologies are easy to automate and script into small, useful apps. After AppleScript, Automator, and the various scripting languages on the command line, it made perfect sense to build a javascript/HTML development tool based on WebKit.
I suspect that the only thing that would have changed if Konfabulator did not exist is that Apple would not have called their widgets "gadgets" for a few days.
Jerry
Here it is.
I don't think you understand what FUD means.
Honestely... name another service with so much free stuff (that's actually useful). There's email, fantasy sports, chat, IM, photo storage, stocks, streaming stocks for $10 a month, and the list goes on and on. Konfabulator is awesome, if MicroSoft had released it, it would cost $69.95 in the form of an OS update. Praise Yahoo!!
While I don't care much about Konfabulator per se, it's interesting to see how popular non-browser, web-based mini-apps are becoming. Looks like the first little frothy bit on the wave of the semantic web has arrived. It'll be interesting to see if this ends up generating as much buzz as the last few Next Big Things.
It certainly has the potential to. It's a platform-independent application framework, just like Java-on-the-browser was supposed to be, but this iteration is free from the one-size-fits-all constraints that browser-based development imposed (plus, widgets don't have to be stateless). In fact, this has all the earmarks of a disruptive technology, with the added advantage that it's based on well-deployed standard technologies.. i.e.: stuff Microsoft can't mess with as easily as Java.
People seem to be looking at this from one side. And that's the Mac side. The first batches of comments seem to stem from folks who are keeping up with the Apple/Mac side of things.
While the acquisition of Konfabulator and its removal of the pricetag is great news for all users of the program, do note that Konfabulator, while originating on the Mac, also has a competitor on the Windows side. That side has been dominated by Stardock's own DesktopX application where it's been around for quite a while now.
The news of Yahoo buying up Konfabulator will benefit both sides of the OS platform. Windows users can soon use Konfabulator for free as an alternative to Stardock's DesktopX which costs about US$15 to register/purchase.
~ Old Warriors Society
...but in the end, I just never found anything that useful.
A weather checking widget? Check. But I have a web browser with a tab to my local weather up at all times anyway.
A package tracking widget? You bet. But I only have one or two packages to track every year. I always have a tab open to that page.
A calculator widget? Of course. But it's still slower than asking google, since my web browser is always open.
Konfabulator (and Dashboard) can do some pretty interesting things, as long as you don't have any other utilities on your machine. Unfortunately, it's unable to consolidate and replace the bunch of utilities that you already have, since you're unlikely to give up big things like your web browser.
I'm sure there are a bunch of people out there that really like it, and find it super useful. That's awesome. I'm glad someone appreciates the hard work that the Konfabulator (and Dashboard) guys did. I just can't find a single useful widget that isn't better implemented or accessed somewhere else.
Here is a better article on the news: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Yahoo%20Konfabulator
It says Konfabulator has only three employees!!! Now we know which three households have champagnes popping tonight.
Sun and Fun
I'm really disappointed Yahoo has left Yahoo messanger to rot on the vine.
No Supermode
No Audibles
No new features for years now.
Yahoo, when are you going to update Messanger for the Mac.
What? I know that Slashdotters aren't all on the same page, but most people here generally agree that software patents are bad. Especially the vague, hazy, and overbroad ones that look like obsfucated user manuals (claiming entire kinds of software or user interfaces) rather than looking like nice detailed technical USENIX conference papers. Only Konfabulator wasn't patented.
Now you're saying that even though Konfabulator wasn't patented, wasn't a trade secret, Apple isn't a monopolist, and no part of the Konfabulator code was used by Apple, Apple should be barred from making a similar product? Pray tell, what is this argument based? Should Apple's product suck just so that these small fry can make a couple bucks? Are you saying Apple should do it just to be nice? (It would be nice if Apple sent me a check for $50k so I could buy a Lexus. Just to be nice.) Comparing the free market of the software industry to an elementary school math test is a little facile, eh?
Surely you know, since you pointed to the daringfireball website, that there was nothing in Konfabulator, other than the general idea of JavaScript desktop accessories, that would have been useful to Apple. The reason Apple chose to write Dashboard from scratch is that it could save a lot of system resources and make a more polished product by leveraging existing parts of OS X like Web Kit. Konfabulator was a monstrously heavyweight framework based on Mozilla -- each desktop accessory was bigger than many Mac applications. The people at Apple aren't stupid. If buying Konfabulator would have saved them time and money, they would have done it, just like they bought SoundJam.
Konfabulator made a lot of money on Windows, as well as Mac, and now they got their payday from Yahoo!. No tears shed there, I'm sure.
With great power comes great fan noise.
I find it difficult to look at Konfabulator's widgets and look at Apple's widgets and believe that Konfabulator doesn't have something big to do with Dashboard.
It may or may not make perfect since for Apple to develop a javascript/HTML tool based on Webkit, but one that looks and feels almost identical to Konfabulator? Let's face it. If Windows had done Dashboard, Mac users worldwide wouldn't be able to shut up about how Windows ripped off poor Konfabulator.
On the flipside, if Dashboard's popularity made the Yahoo deal happen (which, come on, it probably did), then Konfabulator probably just made out better than they'd ever imagined.
(disclaimer: typing this in Tiger)
...because the widgets only update when the dashboard is visible.
I share your concern over the need for some widgets when web or utilities work fine. (Wikipedia widget, I'm looking in your direction!)
There's a dashboard widget called SysStat -- pretty much the same as 'top' or 'Activity Monitor' -- but unlike those, it only uses CPU when dashboard is showing. I use this thing an awful lot...
A while back I'd tried Konfabulator after hearing some Mac folks rave about it. Basically (explaining for the non-Mac crowd) it was these eye-candy-ful little widgets that would sit on your desktop all the time, showing you the weather, info about an RSS feed, or somesuch stuff. This seemed pretty pointless, since most of the time my desktop is hidden behind all the apps I've got open pretty much whenever my computer is running - but you'd be amazed at the number of Mac users who apparently just leave a blank desktop open so they can stare at it and drool.
Well, anyway - then along comes Tiger, and Apple announces Dashboard. It's Konfabulator done right - the widgets can be brought into view whenever you actually need them rather than having them hiding back on your desktop. Of course after this announcement, it wasn't long before the Konfabulator guys copied the idea of (gasp!) not having the widgets hidden back there - what a concept!
But you know what? Even Dashboard seems pretty pointless. I've got a web browser open all the time, so it's just as fast to click on my weather bookmark, or go to ups.com to track packages, or leave a tab open to my gmail account all the time (after all, if I get a new message I'm going to have to open it anyway). While Dashboard certainly seems to be a better implementation than Konfabulator, but it's still basically an idea that is of no practical use to me. At least the price is right, either way now...
#DeleteChrome
"On the flipside, if Dashboard's popularity made the Yahoo deal happen (which, come on, it probably did), then Konfabulator probably just made out better than they'd ever imagined"
Yup. sometime getting copied in the software business is a GOOD thing. I, for one, never heard of konfabulator untill apple announced dashboard.
If Windows had done Dashboard, Mac users worldwide wouldn't be able to shut up about how Windows ripped off poor Konfabulator.
e ry/default.mspx
Actually, Windows did do "Dashboard" back in 1998, but the widgets were stuck to your desktop, and your PC only had 64MB of RAM, and the stock widgets seemed to be mainly spamish RSS-type newsfeeds, so it didn't seem all that. But it was the same basic idea.
The MS widget list is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/previous/gall
(Wow, there's a grand total of 3 which still work, I'm amazed.)
It was interesting for about 10 minutes and then forgotten (much like I expect Dashboard and Konfabulator to be). As for Mac users, they've shown that they are totally immune to things Windows implemented years before Apple did.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
It's not hard to see Yahoo dropping support for their Dashboard widgets now that they have Konfabulator. The question is which one will become the better?
Konfabulator will be free and cross platform. Dashboard is part of OSX. Running both just seems real redundant to me. Konfabulator may attract a much larger following of developers simply because it's available to Windows users, and the fact Yahoo's widgets will at some point only run on Konfabulator (not that someone else could probably come up with an unoffical one).
If a converstion tool is made to transfer Dashboard Widgets to Konfabulator Widgets, you may soon see people moving over to Konfabulator. Will the original third party product find itself overbearing the one in your system you can't remove (for Mac users)? Then again, Dashboard widgets run as separate processes (each one) so an empty dashboard prolly uses little if any system resources. It's also a possibility someone will write a converstion tool to move Konfabulator Widgets back to Dashboard.
It will be interesting to see how much malicious widgets become a problem on the Windows side once Konfabulator becomes free and adopted more widely.
Writing and capitalizing is also hard. Apparently.
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
killall Dock
Any widget you hold with the mouse while switching from dashboard to desktop will end up as a normal window.
And vice versa.
k2r
Or install the devMove widget.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/
Enjoy.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/
in the pre-OSX days, arlo was known by millions of macintosh
users for making 'Kaleidoscope' - it basically let users of
above-average graphic skill to theme the entire mac OS
interface down to the pixel without a lot of programming
knowledge. this was way ahead of anything that was done
in windows or linux. millions of mac users had custom UIs
because of this man.
but such a theme manager was closely tied with OS9,
and so when time came time for OSX, arlo started an even
more clever hack -- konfabulator.
now this was already very close to what apple always had with
desk accessories, but it was javascriptable (whereas DAs required
a separate development environment to compile); they were
internet enabled (desk accessories only lived in the time before
the internet); and they also had a really nice photoshop-able
front end (DAs couldn't utilize quickdraw as nicely as OSX's
incredible quartz graphics); and because CPUs were finally
fast enough, you could run them interpreted instead of
compiled.
these factors made konfabulator really nifty for quick, beautiful,
useful little utilities. but they fell too closely to apple's own revival
of the desk accessory concept, and so it looked like all of arlo's
hard work had all the chance of a netscape against a bundled browser.
so now yahoo buys them up, they all still got jobs, and it opens up
possiblities for them better than they ever had before -- this is a
good fate for these amazing mac developers. they have long been
a credit to the mac community. its great to see that they've come
across good fortune at this time. congratulations arlo & team!!
we love ya!
j.
I'll leave the debate over Konfabulator vs. Dashboard to the other kids... here's what I'm upset about...
"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.'"
OK, great. So start by making it possible to browse everything on Yahoo from a Mac! It's really annoying getting a message that my browser (nay, platform) isn't supported by a website. It's not like I'm using an obscure operating system like OS/2 or something.
Furthermore, I'm a cross-platform guy. I grew up using Macs & PCs, though I definitely prefer OSX. Recently, I've found a new love for my old Dell Latitude simply because of the awesomeness that is Yahoo Music Unlimited. What sucks is that I can't use it on my iBook.
For those who don't know, for less than the cost of a case of beer every month, Y! Unlimited is, essentially, a music on-demand system with DRM that's easy to live with. Personally, it's not very important that I "own the music." What's important to me is that I've discovered new music in a way I've missed since the original Napster was destroyed. Only LAUNCHcast and Y! Unlimited is WAY better than everything out there that's currently like it (I'm looking at you remixed Napster and Rhapsody.)
Sure, the download catalog isn't as deep as iTunes Music Store... but I'm sure the gap will eventually shrink. Yahoo is a large company with enough resources to make that happen.
LAUNCHcast, Yahoo's "radio" service, lets me rate music then taylors future songs to my preferences and tastes. It basically serves songs up on the fly without ads. It's really fucking slick.
At any rate, I wish they'd offer Y! Unlimited (or more to the point, Yahoo Music Engine) for OS X, but since it uses WM9 and whatever portable management system requires WinXP, I'm guessing that a port to Macs will probably never materialize. Which is too bad. I'd love to be able to use YME with Airfoil so I could stream it to my Airport Express... without Virtual PC.
A guy can dream...
All those existed before both Konfabulator and Dashboard...
Yes, it's true kids!! Apple is copying Linux this time!
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I get all this current information the second I hit F12, it takes me a few seconds to scan it, then I hit F12 again and im back to working again.
You're trying to tell me your tabs are doing all this? You dont have to load them up every time you boot into the OS? I'm sorry, but the entire idea, again, is all this personalized info at a touch of a button, that appears and disappears as quick as you want. Always updates, all the time.
For those asking the obligatory question: "But does it run on Linux?", the answer is "No, but..".
Linux (and BSD) have gDeskLets which provides the exactly the same/similar functionality with arguably more applications available for it.
It is these two exact projects which spurned the creation of Apple's "Dashboard" product available in Tiger.
The only way Dashboard is "better" is that all the widgets run in one process, instead of forking a process for each widget like Konfabulator does. It's probably an order of magnitude better in terms of performance.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not to be a naysayer, but am I the only one who doesn't quite see the purpose of widgets?
These are essentially small applications running within a hidden desktop, each additional widget takes up additional resources, and so many of these widgets are redundant. A widget to control your system volume? Isn't that what the volume menu item is for?
Does anybody really need to check traffic so often that it is necessary to have an application running continuously?
I gave widgets the benefit of the doubt when they came out, but found that the actual Widget system in Tiger significantly slowed down our systems and that it was actually more accessible to simply keep my address book or calculator open but minimized rather than having to use key combinations to make a terribly scaled down version of each of those apps (you can't copy and paste from widgets to other applications).
Who knows though, maybe I'm just an old geezer who really doesn't understand the purpose or the actual usefulness of widgets like "Mosquito... A little Widget that displays the mosquito conditions within your zip code for today and tomorrow. " or "Nascar: RSS feed of Nascar news, choose from several feeds including Nextel Cup, Busch Series and Truck Series. Feed time interval settings available also."
Sigh.
Um... Widgets are all launched by the Dock controller process, but if you open Activity Monitor or run Top you'll see that each open Widget has its own process. You can kill them individually.
Wait. You spend all this money on some penis enlarging theater system and you don't even have any real life friends you can show it off to and brag about it to? You have to come on Slashdot to do it? We can't even see it.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Let's take a closer look at this. Yahoo! started as a portal and search engine. Remember the search engine wars? Then Google came along. Back then it was just another search engine (that kinda rocked). However, while we saw search engines come and go (shall we list all the search engines that came to be...and how most of them are gone?) Google didn't sit on it's laurels. They found a profitable way to make money from its searches. Not content with that, they went into other services (maps, blogs, Picasa, toolbars, etc) so people will think of Google for more than searches (sort of like their own "halo effect"...Google is always on their mind). More success for Google. More obscurity for Yahoo. Yahoo, once the Internet's poster child, is not pleased with this and certainly doesn't want to go the way of the other dotcoms, figures adding a whole slew of new features (toolbar, Konfabulator, etc) and mimicking Google is a good way to go. Thus, a new era of "wars" is born.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang