Dashboard rips off Konfabulator

[Randman]

As was mentioned earlier, Konfab still has a year of life as before Dashboard hits the market. And the people creating can still create Widgets. No laws were broken. Just people seeing things from a very narrow perspective.
How many people were in arms when Konposé was introduced recently with 1.7? No one was upset, saying Apple was ripped off.

[mi5moav]

Any developer that believes he is going to make 500 million on his idea has a real big head. Most great developers do it because they love what they do. And some of the greatest apps are freeware or actually are worth the money. I would never pay $20 bucks for konfabulator on the whole scope of things. I'm sure Apple approached the guys and said hey i'll give you $50,000 for your idea and maybe even a job with them. Then they could have taken the money and like kainjow said created the best website for widgets and sell them for .25 cents to $2.00 a widget and make a mint... bad business on their part... now they look like big cry babies. Apple has helped make developing easier and easier every year they have made many developers very happy and some have made a few coins. You can't make everyone happy all the time.

[bobw]

Maybe the people at Konfab took their idea from Apple;

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?pro...eskaccessories

[powermac]

That is because that is what people use now Java

[mr. k]

Nobody is ripping anybody off, ideas are just ideas, and more then one person can have and hold and even devise the same idea independently of each other! Both Konfabulator and Apple are Software Companies, developing their ideas into products to convince people to but them. They seem to both have a similar implementation, but christ, why re-invent the wheel?
Why do you think that all cars look similar? They all use the same type of engine, and have for the last seventy or eighty years. Because the engine is a good thing, there is more then one engine 'developer,' which in turn fosters competition between those engines.
I think apple implementing a new (and hopefully better) means of doing things that Konfabulator has done for a time now will foster innovation and competition within the Apple developer world, and competition in industry is always a good thing in the long run, What would we do if Apple didn't copy things from microsoft every once in a while to maintain the superior OS? I very much enjoy Fast User Switching, just as one example.

[kainjow]

The truth is, Apple's Dashboard is just competition. That's all it is. Mail.app is competition to Entourage, Eudora, etc. But I don't see them crying about it. Safari is competition to IE, Camino, OmniWeb, Mozilla, but those companies embrace it and continue developing. What about Stattoo? I don't remember everyone getting angry over that. When Apple released Sherlock 3, Watson was made better. Konfabulator needs to just accept it and move on. If their app truly is better then Dashboard, people will use it, as was the case with Watson.

[GroundZeroX]

Ricky, I personally don't care. Konfabulator IS a knock off of Active Desktop and Desktop Accessories. I don't care that it does shell commands, and bla blah blah. There has been programs like this for years on Windows, long before Konfabulator. I can attest to that because I messed with a lot of the ObjectDesktop stuff before a became a Mac user. The information I got was from a friend last night who told me that Arlo worked on the Theme Manager back on the OS8 days, which is unusual to me because I remember the hype over Konfabulator because it came from the creator of Kaliedescope. I don't care what you have to say. Arlo copied Apple. Arlo copied Microsoft. Plain and simple. He didn't "invent" the idea of widgets. He didn't "invent" the idea of Desktop Accessories. He didn't invent the idea of anchored internet data in the form of a mini-app. He didn't "invent" the webkit that Dashboard uses to build Dashboard Widgets. He didn't "invent" Expose which Dashboard relies on. He didn't "invent" Core Image which Dashboard heavily relies on. I know this last one is hard to believe but Arlo certainly didn't "invent" Javascript. I don't see what everyone is complaining about. The only thing that can really be said is that they look similar. Why do they look similar? Because they are basically images held together by Javascript.

You said it didn't matter which one came first DesktopX, which I know for a fact came first, or Konfabulator. Well apparently it does, because Arlo is bringing in the cello and violins trying to get sob story sales off of Konfabulator, because Apple is doing something that is similar to his. Konfabulator is just like DesktopX too. But Arlo wants to play his sob sales games, and thats cool. I hope he does make some money because he did create a nice COPY of Windows products. But don't kid yourself into thinking that this guy is some sort of Genius because he made Konfabulator. Just the FACT that we know that there are so many similar products such as DesktopX, Active Desktop, Desktop Accessories, just goes to show that there is nothing to whine about.

[ged3000]

On the other hand, this gives Konfabulator a lot of press. Id heared of it and wigets before, but havent paid them a second thought. After reading this column, Ive had a look, and Knofabulator is the perfect solution to a number of little problems Ive found. Forget OS X.4, I want this app as soon as a get my own, private computer!

Plus, like others before have mentioned, this encourages the makers of konfabulator to improve their product. People who wouldnt have bought it before (like me), will look at dashboard, and either use it, or think 'this is limited, lets look for something better'. People who have paid for konfabulator will think either 'ill get this for free' or 'i like konfabulator - ill pay for that'. Yes, konfabulator loses some customers, but more people hear of them, so other people will buy it too.

**writes note to get konfabulator when i buy a new mac for me....**