Manage updates with the Download AppJune 28, 2004 2:28 PM PDT
Developer calls Apple's Tiger a copycat
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Arlo Rose is outraged at the similarity of Apple's Dashboard, previewed earlier Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, to his Konfabulator, a $25 Macintosh program. Both programs allow easy access to small programs called Widgets, which can perform a number of useful little tasks.
"It's insulting, is what it is," Rose said in a telephone interview. "They could have at least offered to work with us or to buy it."
Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer
Apple previews next Mac OS X"The goal isn't to be like anything else," Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller said in an interview. "It's not his stuff. What we've done is ours."
Rose and co-creator Perry Clarke released Konfabulator in February 2003. "There really wasn't anything like it when we came out." Now, Rose said, a number of copycat programs are on the market.
By treading closely on outside developers, Rose said, Apple risks killing the incentive to write Mac software. "Why should developers want to work on their platform?"
Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer
It is not the first time Mac OS X has stepped on what some see as other's turf. Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., previously expanded its Sherlock search tool to add features such as movie times and yellow pages in a format that closely paralleled a third-party tool called Watson.
Rose is trying to make the best of the situation, taking advantage of the fact that Tiger won't ship until next year.
"Cupertino: Start your photocopiers," reads a newly erected Konfabulator home page. It also asks, "Why wait until the first half of 2005, when you can get the original Dashboard now?"
In the long run, though, Rose knows that he will have a tough time competing with something that is a built-in feature of the operating system.
"We're either going to have to move to another platform or work on some other project."
34 comments
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software (although I wouldn't of heard or used it until this
article.) After reading the article I downloaded and started using
the software. It is well written and looks almost identical to the
dashboard feature in tiger. I guess we will have to wait and see
what the folks at apple do next.
Yes, both Konfabulator and Dashboard support widgets. That's of course not anything like new with Konfabulator (there have been widget frameworks and environments around for decades). In Konfabulator the widgets sit all over on your desktop or window stack, something which I personally find rather annoying (and which keeps me from using Konfabulator); they just (finally) added a hotkey to bring them all to the top momentarily, but they haven't figured out how to just get the darned things out of my way until I need them. In Dashboard the widgets don't exist until you hit the "magic key", at which time they glide onscreen, let you do yur thing, and then go away. Where Konfabulator is naturally inclined as a dynamic status display widget land, Dashboard looks to be more geared towards those utilities you just have to have close at hand at all times but don't want to sacrifice real estate to keep available.
There is a reasonably finite universe of easy widget ideas (how many times have media player remotes and calendars been done over and over in the past ten years alone?), so I don't think the similarity of widgets (although, I can't seem to find a Konfabulator calculator widget oddly enough) is a mark against Apple here.
The promise of Dashboard is that the API and underlying library will be significantly advanced over the API of Konfabulator. Again, a widget API is hardly new and so you can't fault Apple for making a better one than the K guys.
I don't know. It really all just sounds like sour grapes to me. When you spend all day working on one implementation of a not-altogether-original idea, it is easy to get defensive when someone else puts out a new implementation of that same idea. The proper reaction though, the one which distinguishes the thriving software company from the has-beens, is to take it as a challenge, invent yourself a new niche, and show that you can do better than the other guy.
The K guys could really step up to the plate here and hit a home run, but only if they stop their moaning and actually innovate. Tiger won't ship for another 6-9 months. They've got a huge window to put in cool and useful features, to stabilize their product, and to build a loyal user base. Beyond Tiger's initial release, they'll have the strong advantage of agility (Apple won't likely be releasing a major new version every couple of weeks).
Either you're a developer, or you're a farmer milking his cash cow. Developers develop.
them off..."
How, precisely?
Konfabulator isn't using WebCore (it's running compiled applets
in its own runtime engine). Dashboard widgets can run inside
Safari, meaning folks with a moderate amount of web design
and javascript talent can make Dashboard widgets. Konfabulator
isn't this.
Konfabulator uses the term "Widget." So does Apple. Big deal.
Both look pretty good, with access to OS X's display compositor
for nice drop shadows and transparency and stuff. Unsurprising,
since Konfabulator is leveraging UI services that Apple already
provides in its OS. Do Rose & co. honestly expect Apple NOT to
make their own widgets look good?
...but the kicker: Konfabulator didn't invent the concept. Apple
did. Desk Accessories have been around since the earliest
beginnings of the Macintosh.
The gripe here seems to be that Apple didn't pay Rose a tidy
sum to license Konfabulator (which would have been inane,
anyway, since Konfabulator isn't all that revolutionary).
How different in concept is what Rose did with Dashboard from Pointcast or one of a dozen other previous ideas?
Of course, it does speak a bit to the hypocrisy of Apple to do exactly what they thought MS was evil for doing to them ... then again, they lost the lawsuit against MS -- if you can't beat'em ....
use of it - it garned a ton of praise, and had lots of eye-candy
appeal. It never clicked for me - I found it to be a resource hog,
and many of its widgets to be unreliable. In fairness, Dashboard
couldn't have duped Konspose (which itself must be influenced
by Apple's Expose) as they were both just recently announced.
Hopefully Dashboard will actually be useful
but it was sold, not stolen. Can't say the same for anything MS
misappropriated.
Also it's very ironic that they would display this technology at a developer's conference where they are singing the praises of their OS and asking these folks that have paid for the privelage to attend this conference to continue to write programs for their platform.
background the k guys didnt invent the term its been around in
linux for ages and apple had every right to create there own
solidly integrated interface for those applications (and from what
ive heard theres kicks the pants off of k's). As for apple
developers all of them would have had the common sense to
think of this as nothing more than what it is..a minor
improvement of the os that makes an integrated platform for
already common "applictionettes",
Konfabulator 1.7 is released with it's biggest new feature being a
copy of Apple's Expose. Days later Apple announces Dashboard,
which is a copy of Konfabulator.
So what's the problem here?
Konfabulator is cool (I use it), but it's not an original concept.
-mpm
Apple dilutes their own credibility even further than what it was
after they ripped off Karelia's Watson. I agree that they weaken
the incentive to develop software when they don't even have the
courtesy to acknowledge software that closely resembles a new
feature.
Even if Apple actually did develop this in some dark closet with
no knowledge of Konfabulator or Watson, they owe those
developers a tip of the hat.
Widgets, two years since this article published, have become popular add-ons, especially on web sites like MySpace. Here's an updated article on the web site Web Content Professionals,
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.webcontentprofessionals.org/2006/12/are-widgets-traffic-midgets.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.webcontentprofessionals.org/2006/12/are-widgets-traffic-midgets.html</a>
Perhaps the debate of who really 'invented' widgets will never be solved. But we can still do our best to explain it, from the start to finish.
Please visit
and leave your Comments for others to reviews.
My web site, <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://webcontentprofessionals.org," target="_newWindow">http://webcontentprofessionals.org,</a> focuses on issues, news and trends that effect web content professionals, including desingers, writers, marketing pros, search engine optimization consultants, web project managers and anyone else interested in the world of web content creation, distribution and functionality.
Was it Apple or Konfabulator that invented widgets?
Phil
sunmoonrain@gmail.com
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://webcontentprofessionals.org" target="_newWindow">http://webcontentprofessionals.org</a>
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://indierockcafe.com" target="_newWindow">http://indierockcafe.com</a>
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monkeytypesthebible.com
Korn-y-fabulator and buying Panic's new release. Mr. Rose
must be from a communist country perhaps? He wants to be the
only player with his product, guess he's afraid of competition.
Heck, can you imagine a world with only one OS, only one
financial software, word processing, presentation, only one
computer in the store, 'cause there is only one store to choose
from.... Grow up ARLO! I've uninstalled Kornfabulator.
know how old are you but reading your articles/comment you
look like teenagers.
I would like to remember you that the Desktop Accessories, aka
DA, quite lost in the night of times, were an original idea of the
fabulous team that developed the venerable System 1. When?
On January, 1984 dear milk suckers. Those original DA were:
Calculator, Alarm Clock, Puzzle, Key Caps, Control Panel,
Notepad, and Scrapbook.
I'm sorry, Konfobulator didn't invented the DA, they only --and I
like/love how they did it-- implemented, in a more fashionable
way, what Andy Hertzfeld (at first), Jef Raskin, Bruce Horn, Bud
Tribble, Steve Capps, Bob Belleville and Bill Atkinson invented.
Never speak before having known!
/Stefano Lesandrini
are absolutely right. This was, for me, the original genesis of
"widgets".
It was interesting to see the development of that earlier beta version with the released version (1.0) and the subsequent versions up to version 9.
The great thing about the Mac, for the end user, was that the intereface didn't change with each revision, it simply got new features that were added in that added to the whole system. Once you learned it, it was easy.
Windows on the other hand changed with EVERY version of Windows as to how it operated. The industry loved it cause every end user had to relearn how it operated. Any wonder why everyone went to Windows?
Reginald
about their age, because if they were older, they would do it
more cunningly, masking it better with professionalism and even
taking occasionally Apples side - thus making it more
believable.
Of course you cant count out the possibility, that this is all
intentional in order to rouse heated discussion and attention.
Read 1 Kings 21.
Al
project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt&topic=Software
%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium
Apple didn't steal this concept, look or feel. It's been theirs
since 1981 and has appeared in every Mac OS except OS X since
1984. Until Exposé was developed, Apple didn't have a good
way to re-implement it. They tried docklets, they tried toolbar
apps, nothing caught on. Konfabulator got the presentation
right, but it was never their idea.
or 3rd generation enhancement of a concept invented at Apple
20 years ago. There seems to be some crying over spilled milk
going on with the developer, but the bottom line is "YOU didn't
invent widgets".... Now, go whine about something else. You
need to get original and not merely be in the business of fine
tuning the inventions of others. If you don't, you're in for a lot
of disappointment in the Software industry because there will
always be someone who has a different way to do the same
basic tasks.
MSFT and the Mob have known it's cheaper in the long run to do it that way.
I guess Apple is new to the "problem fixing" business.
best?
For some reason you have an unfounded problem with apple
but at least your smart enough to not say anything genuinely
positive about M$'s idea stealing because you know that would
be ridiculous