Another developer ripoff by Apple: Dashboard

Nod, I can't believe Apple ripped off the Omniweb and Opera folks by developing a browser.

Nice attempt at comparing two very different cases.

Noreally.

Go to bed now.

Umm... no.

If you remember, back in the day Apple had originally created the concept of widgets. Remember the Calculator? Scrapbook? Stickies? And I'm sure there were a lot of others that I forgot. Small applications�identical to widgets�existed back before the days of System 7.

They were missing in OS X, and the Konfab dude's brought them back. It wasn't an original idea. Apple now improved upon it, and by doing so, makes these great features available to all. Very few people know what Konfab is, but when windows users and your parents see this built into Tiger, they'll fall head over heels.

Additionally, if Apple were to throw money to every independent developer who came up with an idea they improved upon, they'd have to pay all the people who came up with simple things like the menubar clock, etc.

Edit: btw, just to add another application to your list, I think the search feature in the menubar was a complete rip off of LaunchBar, which was an original application like Watson. For truely innovative and original work like this, I think Apple should have at least offered to buy his code or something...

How on earth can you say Apple ripped off LightSwitch when this feature has been in Windows since god-knows-when?? Putting an application switcher in the middle of the screen was not an amazing, original idea by LightSwitch.

The difference between Konfabulator and Dashboard is that Dashboard actually looks useful.

So good for Apple.

both look like crap.

I'm going to agree with Big Canada to an extent here. I also thinks it looks a bit more useful. It looks more to me like the new version of desk accessories, and I like the idea that I can call on and sort my "accessories" with one command. And then git rid of them right away. I never liked Konfabulator's interface of these widgets just hanging around on your screen. I agree that Apple's Dashboard may be more useful than the functions of Konfabulator�at least, I think they might for how I use my machine. Konfabulator I didn't find very useful at all, with any of the widgets, and I got tired of it pretty quick in my personal experience. So Dashboard may hold promise, or it may suck. I'd like to try it, though.

I do think they can do way better on the widgets, and Steve said that they were still "working on them," so that's a good sign.

Another "widget"?

Hmm.
I have a few seperate opinions on the whole issue here. I don't think its a bad idea for any OS to push forward on what really fits into the OS, even if a 3rd party does it. For example, Superclock!, a 3rd party shareware app for System 6/7 added a menubar clock to the system. It obviously should have been there (it just fit) and Apple added it into 7.5. I don't think it should be such a big complaint for them to add things which are a natural evolution of the OS / Product.

For example, Liteswitch, yea, no. Floaters were already used in OS X and LiteSwitch just used a floater like dialog to switch between apps. Been in Windows forever and Apple did it too, they just changed the interface from the dock to the floater.

The other ones get tricky, because we don't know how ideas should fit into the natural evolution of the OS.

As far as Watson/Sherlock, I don't know exactly what I think here as much. Neither was an innovative idea per se. Sherlock's natural evolution of internet services was to evolve into Sherlock 3 / Watson. You can't blame Apple for wanting to use a general idea that was a natural evolution of that Sphere of thinking. Karelia just got their first.

As far as Konfabulator/Dashboard, I don't know. I think that it will steal thunder from the as of yet undisputed widget king Konfabulator, but widgets aren't a new idea, its all been there throughout the ages (Desk Accessories) and now Apple just comes up with a different,yet similiar (in some aspects) implementation as Konfabulator.

[Paragraph rant about Konfab usage: I think that first, the hidden nature of Expose use in Dashboard has so many advantages to the always on widgets of Konfabulator. I don't need widgets all the time, and when I do (even info providing one) a nice pop in and out is good enough. Even Konpose doesn't really fix the problem, and I don't like the implementation that it uses]

In a word, I guess I feel this way. Apple has a sort of right as the OS developer to provide extensions and new features to their OS. Sure, It'd be nice if they'd hire a few of the developers of the stuff that inspired the idea, but that may not always be possible (and if they did, would they take said job?). If you feel that strongly about it, Apply at Apple. Or if you think your product is still legitimite, Don't roll over and die, no one expects you to. I hope Konfabulator promotes their software as a good alternative to people who don't like Dashboard. What I don't think is necessary is this massive "OMG! APPLE BULLYS!" like idea, just go on programming.

Imitation *is* the highest form of flattery.

word. apple is giving me a program for FREE. and improved upon the concept.


i would never have bought Konfab anyway.

They also ripped off the name from SNP's Longhorn Sidebar clone called Dashboard. Probably all innocent though.

Is it possible to get a patent for software?-or for ideas?
That way you could sue someone who is ripping you off.
I like the demo of Dashboard-exactly what I need to make life a little easier.

So long as widgets can be manip[ulated, ie. changing the colours, I'l be happy.

Thing is, all of this is very early stuff, just concepts. They've got a whole year to get things honed in, and what was shown was proof of concept, just like when Panther was demoed last year.

And by showing what they have in the works the users can give them hints as to what the finished product should look like.
Changing colors would be nice-the current ones are .... well .... "modern".

I'm not sure Apple really listen too much to us. My little brother works at Apple, on OS X, he's always tight lipped, but nothing I ever said made a difference. lol

brotherly love.

Lets hope Apple's version doesn't hog the CPU or memory.

The CPU thing isn't so bad these days. I've got 3 widgets going on in Konfab. and they're fairly running fairly low on CPU usage.

Fixed

Don't you think it's more likely that it'll be nearer a year? If they were going to bring it out at the beginning of 2005, they'd have said 1Q 2005, not 1H. In my experience, when computer companies talk about a quarter or half of a year, they mean the end of that quarter or half not the beginning of it (or at least the product ends up being released at the end rather than the beginning, regardless of what they intended when they announced it). End of 1H is June 30th 2005.

lol, True, they'll be hitting the home run by end of this year, but release could be anything up to next April.

Someone in the other forum said:

"One of Arlo Rose's early claims to fame, long before Konfabulator, was an extension to Mac OS 7.x called "Aaron". What Aaron did was copy the default Copland interface (aka 'Platinum') from the then-planned Mac OS 8. It was a straight up copy."

This does put things in a new perspective. Arlo Rose is in no position to argue if he's done the copying before.

I don't see the problem here. Arlo created something that people liked. Apple saw it, also liked it, and decided to improve upon it. That's what happens with software. If you really expect to write really cool applications that other people want and have no other competition popup, then you're in the wrong business.
jesse ;-)

The original 'widgets:'

Its all up to the Konfabulator authors now, they have the advantage in that they've seen what Apple has planned, and have months and months to innovate Konfabulator to make it better than dashboard.

Innovate, or die (and cry about the competition).

Konfab Home Page

Have you seen it today? Hahhaha!

Damn that calendar and calcultator on Apple's site is hideous.

Wincent puts it well

As he points out, part and parcel of being a shareware developer is that other people pinch your ideas. That is why you shouldn't put your weight behind one app.

(P.S Apple widgets also rotate in 3D space like that looking glass demo).

Personally, I hate Konfabulator.

I don't think it's a ripoff.

By looking the WWDC webcast, Dashboard looks and acts better than Konfabulator.

Sherlock did not rip off Watson. The ideas and interfaces were similar, but the execution was very different.

Panther did not rip off LiteSwitch. Aside from the idea being by no means original to LS, the fact that Proteron followed the existing Apple UI guidelines very closely is not Apple's problem. Indeed, it stands testament to Apple's UI guidelines that someone could have so closely predicted what Apple might do in its own interface.

These things are to be expected. When you write a product to fix a deficiency in an OS, you have no right to complain when that deficiency is eventually fixed.

But what we have here with Dashboard/Konfabulator is markedly different. As with LiteSwitch, the idea is far from original, though Apple has a better claim to the concept (from a UI perspective) than Konfabulator does. However, Apple appears to have gone out of its way to copy Konfabulator's execution right down to the flaws (such as being tied to a single language) and even picked the same language to which it would be tied, namely JavaScript. This is cause for alarm.

well said. he talks about developers being important, yet his actions seem to infer a more sinister motive. muahahahaha and all that.

I totally forgot about that thing! I used it all the time on my 8500.

The big difference that I see between Konfabulator and Dashboard is that Konfab widgets can be integrated [b]into[\b] the desktop, as opposed to being brought up with a keystroke.

I keep my iChat list, IP/Connection, and Weather widgets sunk into my desktop, which it doesn't look like Dashboard will do.

So, yeah. I think there's room for Konfab to move away and improve in a different direction than Dashboard.

But I say that as someone who's used it for less than a week. I like what I see, so far.

[nostalgic picture deleted as requested by Millennium]

Arlo was not involved in the Aaron project. You must be thinking of Greg Landweber. He and Arlo did not join forces until Aaron morphed into Kaleidoscope.

Yeah, and Konfabulator is a rip-off of DesktopX, a Windows widget program that was released three-years before Konfabulator.

DesktopX screenshots

From the creator of DesktopX:

As usual you are wrong.



And there in is the problem with Konfab. Most of the useful applications of it were not made or developed by them. They created a shell to run the Java apps in OS X, nothing more. No innovation, no original concept as has been proven by several others.

I changed my opinion.

If they had copied DesktopX in the first place, then they might as well burn in hell.

haven't the konfabulator type apps existed on Linux for a while now?

and for picking javascript, i can see why: its a fairly easy language to understand, learn, and write. i can open up a ".kon" file and practically know what each thing does, even though i don't know a bit about javascript.

i find konfabulator almost usless. i have it and the only time i use it is when i boot or reboot and it starts up with the weather widget. i then turn konfab off. my desktop is messy enuf, i don't need an app to do it for me with a bunch of goofy widgets.

as someone else said dashboard at least looks like it may be useful and may be everything that konfab is not.

adam, greg landweber was aaron's creator.

and arlo, if you and greg are listening...you should have stuck with kaleidoscope for x. the guy working on shapeshifter has hit a brick wall and i think he's in over his head.

my two canadian left wing cents worth.

Did they rip off a developer? i don't know if i'd say RIPPED-OFF....although Apple may have borrowed the idea, I can't foresee their program being as awful as Konb, which is just slow and a complete CPU hog. I hope Apple can really improve on the original idea of Konb. so they get a

he is? since when?

Well, on the sae lines, Microsoft didnt 'RIP-OFF' the MacOS in the 80s and 90s either. I have to side with the third party developer in this case(as i did with Watson). It's really sad to see Apple playing this game this way. I would have admired their move if they chose to buy the Porduct (like they did with iTunes/Visulaizations) and then sell it to customer, thus preventing Konfaulator(which i think is an AWESOME X App) from making it to Windows.

The way they chose to go about it, has me placing Apple and Microsoft in the same boat. Come on Apple....you more than anyone knows what it's like to be ripped-off, don do the same to the people who promote your system. You dont have to analyze this situation to see that it's just plain wrong.

Cheers.

Another tangent;

In systems 1 - 9, the Apple Menu was home to Desk Accessories, such as the calculator, stickies, puzzle etc. It was nice, easy to remember and quick to access. This scheme got a bit confusing later, as the difference between apps and accessories got fuzzier.

So in OS X, Apple had decided that all apps go into Applications and the Apple Menu becomes something else. Logical move, kinda, but it left all these little apps that you'd like to access _quickly_ without a home and diluted their 'special' role as accessories.

I'm sure they noticed that, possibly when observing konfab. Apple didn't want to go back to an OS 9 Apple menu or overload the Dock, or menubar. So I think Expos� kinda neatly provided a new 'location' for these widgets, the Dashboard 'layer'.

For me, in the end, this is just the return of the Apple Menu (DA aspect) to OS X. Konfab, though great, is more or less 'just widgets'.

J

Not sure this is totally correct.
David Hyatt chimes in on dashboard.

That makes sense actually. I was just about to go on a rant about Apple neglecting their own technologies, namely OSA. But if they're nothing more than small HTML widgets, JavaScript seems pretty logical.

Are they insane?!

If this is true, then God help us all. The extensions WebCore would need to support an adequate widget API are nothing short of complete and utter lunacy from a security perspective. The possibilities for exploitation are enough to make me sick to my stomach. Note, for example, that in order to put together that demo page, they had to make AddressBook available through JavaScript. Can anyone else here see the possibilities for Safari-specific worms?

However, I will now concede that they did not in fact steal from Konfabulator. No need to, if you're going this route. But I can honestly say now that I wish Apple had; that would be far better than this insanity.

What really amazes me is back in 1984 a personal computer was put out in the general market.

At the time we said "no-one will use this...it's too technical and too expensive"

Not long after a new OS was seen. It had "folders" and "widgets" and "windows". It had "drop down menus". You used a "mouse" and it was called Mac. You were greeted with a smiley face.

In 1995 a new kid on the block came into play. It had "drop down menus", "folders". etc and it was called Windows. Where were the martyrs then? Where were the cries of "rip off" then?

Today's developers have just utilised what was already there and had been indentified by Apple years before. They didn't re-invent the wheel they just found another way to make it roll.

According to Arlo Rose "The use of the term "Widgets" in Dashboard led many people to the conclusion that Dashboard was somehow based on Konfabulator. While Rose readily admits that the term has been around for many years to describe a variety of things, he contends that in the Mac market "Widgets" have been closely associated with Konfabulator." - MacCentral 29/6/04

Infact the term widgets was pegged by Apple many years ago, Rose now tries to convince his client base that his application made it a common name. Does he not realise calculator, stickies etc had been with Apple OS for a long, long time?

Rose then spreads a rumour that Apple tried to buy konfabulator from them but Rose held out. This makes no sense at all. Apple develope software and have done for over 20 years. Rose has merely taken advantage of the hard work Apple did to develope something that always existed.

The widgets may be web pages, but that doesn't mean they're loaded automatically at all. You add a widget, you take the risk of it doing something nasty. Just like you do with a normal application. They won't automagically spread around your computer.

Edit: oh I think you meant that normal web pages would be able to access everything? I highly doubt that, that would be a very illogical (and stupid) thing to do.

Ok wait...Rose is now saying Apple tried to buy Konfabulator? So basically he creates all this hype that Apple stole his idea and then claims they tried to buy it? Good thing I never found Konfabulator useful enough to purchase it...