Dashboard rips off Konfabulator

[kendall]

konfabulator is an awesome utility and Apple straight jacked them. have they NO SHAME?

and despite how optimistic konfabulators website is now, dashboard is gunna put dem out of bidnus!

to my knowledge, this is the second time Apple has straight ripped off a 3rd party developers work. why do they do this then use it to promote their next OS? i dont find anything revolutionary about ripping someone off. Apple is lucky someone takes the time to make such an awesome app for their platform and how do they thank them?!

i really like konfabulator, one of the few shareware apps ive actually purchased, and it disgusts me what Apple is doing to them.

[malexgreen]

I thought the Tiger presentation was very impressive. They could have left Dashboard out without diminishing it's impact.

Too bad there isn't a patent on Konfab, else Apple could be in deep doo-doo. Nevertheless I spoke with my pocketbook and bought a Konfab. license. Of couse I'll be upgrading to Tiger when it comes out, but I doubt I'll use Dashboard.

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by kendall

to my knowledge, this is the second time Apple has straight ripped off a 3rd party developers work.

No argument here.

I wish they hadn't done it the first time.

[Zammy-Sam]

Are the konfab widgets compatible to apples dashboard? If not, I see no reason why the developers of konfabulator should feel bad about this. The widgets are the fruity part and there are many more available for konfabulator and the way the developers are increasing its features, ppl will still favour konfab..

[Ricky]

Pixoria got a ton of pity registrations today for Konfabulator (Including one from me for my little bro). I really hope they hang in there. As a Widget developer, I'm really appalled to see this all happening. It's very disheartening.

I got to chat with Arlo about three or four weeks back about this. He was devastated, mentioning that he may not ever develop another Mac application.

For everyone that thinks that Apple's only expanding on the functionality of Desk Accessories, may I point you to this forum post? I think it sums things up best.

[GroundZeroX]

I'm tired of hearing people say that Dashboard is a rip off of Konfabulator. I can't stand Konfabulator. Konfabulator isn't even an original program. I have been a mac user for 4 years, and before that I was a Windows user. I was actually listed as a developer for windows programs, and was constantly shipped Windows and Office Betas. Konfabulator is nothing more then a nicer version of Active Desktop which to this day still exists in Windows world. Active Desktop has been around in one form or another since at least the summer of 1997, I think it actually came out in the winter of 1996. Active Desktop allowed for you to "subscribe" to these URLs that created active information applets on the desktop. It would get updated information from such places as CNet, or ZDNet, or stock portfolio's, airplane maps to see where your friends plane is and etc. It does the exact same thing Konfabulator did, and it did it in 1996. Why did it not take off? Because most people only had 28.8 connections so the program was incredibly slow. With as slow as the Active Desktop elements were, you might as well go to the site to see the updates.

So lets look at the facts.
1. Dashboard is a way to view different types of information with mini applications
2. Konfabulator does very very similar things
3. Dashboard is highly dependent on Expose
4. Konfabulator's concept is a "rip off" of Active Desktop
5. Active Desktop has been around since IE4 came out for Windows 95

Don't believe me about this? Well then, lets look at these links
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...y/default.mspx
http://www.computertim.com/howto/art...windows&idn=45
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/dis...29.eaurora.htm

The concept that Konfabulator, Dashboard, Active Desktop, RSS/Atom are all going for is something we called "push" technology which was a big term used back in 96-97, because it made it easy to get information. There were programs like Pointcast, that pretty much does what we use RSS/Atom for, but it did it through one company. The success of Pointcast is what spawned off such things as Active Desktop, and I believe it was Netcast by Netscape.

People keep making a big deal about them using Javascript as the scripting language for Dashboard. Well, Javascript puts Dashboard programming in more hands then any other scripting language I can think of. Every webmaster should know Javascript, and that would make it within the capabilities of any webmaster to make their own widget.

Please people, keep an open mind when you say this stuff. Konfabulator is definitely not a new idea. It was part of a plan Microsoft almost bet the entire Desktop operating system of. It was part of the basis of the Anti-trust case. Apple uses it, and people accuse them of copying Konfabulator.

[soulseek]

apple just ddoes it better

http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/t...rd_address.mov

http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/t...board_flip.mov

3rd party apps are usually why u get problems in operatin systems...
i pay $129 for a complete operatin system, i dont wanna pay anythin extra...
nothin more need to be said. !!!

[GroundZeroX]

Ricky, how could you have had a conversation about the Konfabulator's supposed rip off a few weeks ago, when it was first shown today, or the earliest Saturday if you read Macrumors.