Dashboard rips off Konfabulator

[ged3000]

wow - still looking through the [link]widgetgallery.com[/link]. Thankyou apple for introducing this product - if it wasnt for all this controversy youve caused, Id never have thought of this utility, and how useful does it look already! I want!

[hulkaros]

Tiger will be a kick a$$ OS no doubt about it Anything else is blah-blah for the sake of blah-blah...

†† AmeN ††

[gerbick]

Uh yea, whaddya want?

I want nothing. just trying to figure out where I knew that name. cool app. resume.

[fryke]

Also look at these things this way: Imagine someone introduced a 'telephone' that could be used 'wirelessly' around town. Such a 'mobile phone' would be quite practical. Do you guess every other 'telephone maker' would just _stop_ innovating and let that new guy in town rule the market?

Konfabulator, to many people I reckon, was new. It wasn't Desk Accessories. It wasn't just web services. It was a truly innovative product, let's give them that credit. HowEVER: Can we blame Apple for copying good (and not patented or not even patentable) ideas when earlier we always had to blame others for copying Apple and Apple many times didn't even get the credit? Apple has learned. And Apple is doing better than before. Competition is what drives markets. Dashboard is a good competitor for Konfabulator. And if Konfabulator can't stand the heat, they won't survive.

I criticised Microsoft for similar - but different - strategies. Microsoft often bought a sub-par product and killed better competition by selling the bought product for (almost or even) no price. That was just unfair. But Apple is taking up ideas and does improve. Not necessarily with Sherlock, but quite surely with stuff like iChat, Safari, Mail, iSync and now Dashboard. I'm glad they're doing it. Because that brings people to the Mac side of computers. And that, in the end, brings people to buying Mac shareware, too. If you think you can get rich with inventing a bit of shareware and then stay selling it without ever bringing out yet another shareware product, then you're probably just wrong. Konfabulator is 'open', so it's improved by third party developers. Means: Arlo et al. get money without even improving the app (although they did and maybe will) because new widgets (have attracted) attract new customers. A bit of a self-runner. And it _did_ run and quite certainly sold better than many a shareware product.

Good, Apple! Next up: The MS Office killer? Yes, please!

[Ripcord]

I think the thing that has really irked people here is that this isn't a matter of Apple saying "hey, other people have made MP3 players, let's make a really, really good one!" . They're not simply taking a good general idea and running with it. In these cases they've practically photocopied the original app and tried to pass it off as their own creation. The amount of duplication without value-add was a bit moreso with Watson than with Konfabulator (the only difference I've seen so far is the expose-only thing, which I'm hoping gets dropped before release, which is still 9 months away), but still...

I think it's particularly hit people because in these cases they're not copying the big apps, i.e. cloning MS Office. They're killing the little guy.

It might also be a different story if Apple was selling the product at a competitive rate, but like you mentioned, they're offering these new apps as part of the OS, which is NOT competitive.

At least since Sherlock looks like an unmaintained garbage pile now, users are beginning to be given a reason to take a look at Watson again, which is actually somewhat maintained and works...

[fryke]

Quite probably MORE than 9 months... Could be as much as 12. Haven't seen an OS released _early_ in quite some time. ;-) And also: Konfabulator will probably sell more licenses now that people anticipate Tiger and can't yet buy it. Arlo and his team have enough time to decide what to do in order to not only survive but strive... They probably also have access to Tiger, so they could even start and make Konfabulator a BETTER dashboard (and/or dashboard replacement) before Tiger ships...

[soulseek]

is it true that the guy at Watson was offered a job but declined ???

if yes, how stupid is that ?

[GroundZeroX]

Soulseek, yes it is true man.