Dashboard Exposed

[MacRumors]

Apple introduced Dashboard today. Dashboard is an addition to Exposé which gives users quick access to mini-applications called Widgets.

Widgets are mini-applications written in JavaScript that are designed for fun as well as function. They keep you up to date with timely information from the Internet such as stock quotes or the latest view from your favorite Web cam. They can also provide quick, simple access to frequently-used applications such as a calculator, a playback controller for iTunes and a contact look-up for Address Book.

Apple adds a bit of flare to the widgets by taking advantage of the Core Image (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html) technology in Tiger to take advantage of some real time effects.

Two examples from the current implementation of Dashboard include:

Ripple Movie (312k) (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/tiger/dashboard_address.mov) - When current widgets are launched, they appear with a water-ripple effect on the desktop.

Flipping Sticky (159k) (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/tiger/dashboard_flip.mov) - To change the color or font preferences of a sticky note, you simply click on the rotate button and the sticky flips around to offer preferences controls on the back.

[narco]

Wish people would stop with the Konfab-comparisons. Anyway, these look a lot nicer!

// narco

[rdowns]

Apple introduced Dashboard today. Dashboard is an addition to Exposé which gives users quick access to mini-applications called Widgets.



Apple adds a bit of flare to the widgets by taking advantage of the Core Image (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html) technology in Tiger to take advantage of some real time effects.

Two examples from the current implementation of Dashboard include:

Ripple Movie (312k) (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/tiger/dashboard_address.mov) - When current widgets are launched, they appear with a water-ripple effect on the desktop.

Flipping Sticky (159k) (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/tiger/dashboard_flip.mov) - To change the color or font preferences of a sticky note, you simply click on the rotate button and the sticky flips around to offer preferences controls on the back.

Tiger is going to be great on my imac G5.

[Laslo Panaflex]

Sweet, Gotta love the uneccessary Eye Candy.

Edit: Is any eye candy neccessary?

Just improve the speed of the OS, I really don't care for eye candy past the 10 minute WOW factor.

[atari1356]

Wish people would stop with the Konfab-comparisons.

// narco

Why?

It's blatantly obvious that Apple got the idea from Konfabulator. Sure, it appears that Apple is doing some things in the eye candy department to improve upon it... but it's still just a fancy version of Konfabulator.

[Doctor Q]

Flipping Sticky - a little version of the "Looking Glass" feature we've been discussing here recently.

[reaper]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'll really have any use for these "widgets" that float in some strange "layer" on top of my desktop. Hopefully, Apple will prove me wrong, but since I have no basis for comparison (I have never used konfabulator) I am skeptical for now.

The eye candy does indeed look nice, don't get me wrong (especially that ripple effect) I just hope that form is not getting ahead of function here. :o

- reaper

[MacRETARD]

Wish people would stop with the Konfab-comparisons. Anyway, these look a lot nicer!

// narco

Having never heard of konfabulator until yesterday I definately think its a rip-off.

Apple should do the right thing and write this guy a check for 50 or 100K or something. Its chump change to them but would at least provide some good will for the developer community.

[paulypants]

Why?

It's blatantly obvious that Apple got the idea from Konfabulator. Sure, it appears that Apple is doing some things in the eye candy department to improve upon it... but it's still just a fancy version of Konfabulator.

Konfabulator wasn't exactly the first of it's kind either...

[reaper]

Flipping Sticky - a little version of the "Looking Glass" feature we've been discussing here recently.

I think this is a feature that should definitely be looked into for future versions of the OS. If implemented correctly this will be HUGE!!! I guess they are off to a good start with the little stickies widget.

- reaper

[MacFan25]

I think that the flipable stickies will really be a usuable feature for me. In Panther, when using stickies, changing the font isn't that easy...but Tiger looks to solve that problem.

I still want to see more of Tiger in action...I'm hoping they'll put up the keynote soon... ;)

[BornAgainMac]

I am looking forward to viewing the developer's conference in quicktime so that I can see this and other features demostrated. I can hardly wait to have Tiger and iLife '05 next year. Looks like a nice update but I really wanted those Safari and iChat updates today and separate from an O/S update.

Anyways, Dashboard looks really nice.

[nsb3000]

Tiger is going to be great on my imac G5.

Amen to that!

[nsb3000]

I think that the flipable stickies will really be a usuable feature for me. In Panther, when using stickies, changing the font isn't that easy...but Tiger looks to solve that problem.


Ya maybe I will use stickies again...such a great concept ( I remember when they introduced way back in OS 7.5) that gets so little use from me these days.

[ibookin']

Flipping Sticky - a little version of the "Looking Glass" feature we've been discussing here recently.

I guess Apple "started their photocopiers" when it came to that feature. :D

[nsb3000]

Sweet, Gotta love the uneccessary Eye Candy.

Edit: Is any eye candy neccessary?

Just improve the speed of the OS, I really don't care for eye candy past the 10 minute WOW factor.

The question is this. Which is increasing faster? Os X's non-turn-off-able-eye-candy, or your average macs ability to display to gracefully?

[Chobit]

In these videos the apple menu is not white on blue like in others, but the normal blue on white. Does anyone know why?

[mdriftmeyer]

You must be in a generous mood. It's a Javascript API. Big deal. I suppse we should all pay everyone for their web site ideas that blatantly keep getting ripped off as well.

The developer should feel pleased that his widget set was noticed by Apple and for $25 who the hell would pay it when OS X brand new is only $129?

It reminds me of The Jerk when the kid wins the prize and Steve Martin widdles down the best prizes for basically a pencil. Comparing $129 for OS X and all its substance to $25 Javascript widget eye candy.

I'd be learning Objective-C Cocoa in a hurry and Core Imaging to write new applications that I can really charge money for and justify the whining.

By the way these ideas aren't "new" inside Apple. They just finally decided to put them in and make them "cooler."

Having never heard of konfabulator until yesterday I definately think its a rip-off.

Apple should do the right thing and write this guy a check for 50 or 100K or something. Its chump change to them but would at least provide some good will for the developer community.

[BWhaler]

Very, very cool.

Totally useless I suspect. But still cool as hell.

[narco]

Why?

It's blatantly obvious that Apple got the idea from Konfabulator. Sure, it appears that Apple is doing some things in the eye candy department to improve upon it... but it's still just a fancy version of Konfabulator.

Seriously, a clock? Calendar? Calculator? Konfabulator created these things? Last time I checked, Apple put them on the desktop back in '84. Just because they made them more accessible and added some java-nonsense doesn't mean Apple ripped it off. In fact, it's the other way around.

// narco

[nsb3000]

Now that Tiger is "out of the cage", so too speak, I look foreword to learning about all the cool features that are on the developer previews CDS that steve did not tell us about. These two movies are two great examples of this.

You gatta love the power of the Internet!

[Fuchal]

Core Image is gonna make everything so much cooler looking now from what we've seen of Motion. :)

[Sayer]

Apple came up with the idea of mini app "widgets" almost at the beginning of the Mac itself, they were called "Desk Accessories" and were used back when you could only run one app at a time on the Macintosh.

So Apple merely reached back and took an old concept they held title to way before Konfabulator even existed as a concept in someone's mind and brought it into the 21st century.

Yes it is very similar to Konfabulator, but Arlo Rose didn't invent the entire concept - he merely made a current implementation using off-the-shelf technology (JavaScript, AppleScript, Core Graphics).

And don't forget this ONLY work on Mac OS X 10.4. Those 12 million Mac OS X users won't all suddenly switch to 10.4 *next year*.

Lastly Konfabulator is being ported to Windows so it's not like it is dead in the water *next year* when 10.4 finally ships.

The only real bummer is that Apple didn't simply buy Konfabulator and integrate into the OS, which would have made everyone angry that Apple "pulled a Microsoft" on some poor guy who was supporting the platform for years with products Apple should have made on their own.

[bertinman]

um, these widgets are HUGE.

Just because expose helps make the desktop more usable doesn't mean that I want to have my address card be the size of half my screen.

Right now, I'm in the process of making my own little program to make a quick calc and task list on the desktop. The main points for both of these designs start with unobtrusive and fast loading and closing as a high priority. Hopefully Dashboard will have prefs to disable a lot of the eye candy crud.

[~Shard~]

A neat little feature, however there will have to be quite a few more of these announced for Tiger to make me switch from Panther. 150 new features they claim? I guess we'll see...

I wonder if Dashboard will be as much of a resource hog as Konfabulator is...

[oldmanwinter]

Chobit - the videos on Apple.com are actually from an older build... a lot is still being worked out and I suspect the GUI will change a lot from now to the final release.

[MacSlut]

Why?

It's blatantly obvious that Apple got the idea from Konfabulator. Sure, it appears that Apple is doing some things in the eye candy department to improve upon it... but it's still just a fancy version of Konfabulator.

Actually I think Apple took something very old in the Mac OS and updated it. These widgests totally look and feel like as if someone said, "What if we applied Core Image and Expose to those old DAs from the early, early Mac OS?"

Sure Konfab may be similar to this, but you can't lock down Apple and tell them they can't evolve anything in their system if someone else has already made progress in that area.

Just like Watson to Sherlock, Apple would've developed these from evolution of existing features had the other developer not existed.

I think there are many of us who tried Konfab and didn't care for it for a variety of reasons, but are now excited and will probably use the widgets.

[Booga]

You must be in a generous mood. It's a Javascript API. Big deal. I suppse we should all pay everyone for their web site ideas that blatantly keep getting ripped off as well.

I think you are misinformed. Konfabulator is not written in JavaScript itself, it just presents a JavaScript API for widget developers to use. It is the equivalent of the browser, not the JavaScript site. And yes, hypertext existed before the web, but that doesn't make the web any less revolutionary.

It's the combination of an easy API, desktop integration, handy default tools, and the hope of a developer community around widgets that makes it so similar. OpenDoc had some of these features. System 4.2 Desktop Accessories had some. Hypercard had some. But no one brought it all together until Konfabulator.

And now Apple steals it, and-- get this-- announces it at a *developers conference*. How much more tacky and insulting can you get? Do you want to encourage developers or shoot them?

Here's to hoping the Dashboard API is ignored by developers with a concience.

[GrannySmith_G5]

I don't care how "useless" it is, I personally like eye candy and this looks sweet. I think there is enough of a difference between this and konfabulator. I'm looking at dashboard for what IT is, not what it resembles. Because konfab produces javascript widgets does that mean that nobody else should? Why wait around for someone else to maybe produce a killer product, when you have the capabilities and insight to do it right now?

[frem001]

You must be in a generous mood. It's a Javascript API. Big deal. I suppse we should all pay everyone for their web site ideas that blatantly keep getting ripped off as well.

The developer should feel pleased that his widget set was noticed by Apple and for $25 who the hell would pay it when OS X brand new is only $129?

It reminds me of The Jerk when the kid wins the prize and Steve Martin widdles down the best prizes for basically a pencil. Comparing $129 for OS X and all its substance to $25 Javascript widget eye candy.

I'd be learning Objective-C Cocoa in a hurry and Core Imaging to write new applications that I can really charge money for and justify the whining.

By the way these ideas aren't "new" inside Apple. They just finally decided to put them in and make them "cooler."

Yeah...agreed people are always going to copy you the trick is to stay ahead. this won't be the last time it happens, but they should get some credit for it. now they'll copy shapeshifter as well.

[frankly]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'll really have any use for these "widgets" that float in some strange "layer" on top of my desktop. Hopefully, Apple will prove me wrong, but since I have no basis for comparison (I have never used konfabulator) I am skeptical for now.

The eye candy does indeed look nice, don't get me wrong (especially that ripple effect) I just hope that form is not getting ahead of function here. :o

- reaper

From the small demo I have seen the Dashboard appears to have the one feature that keeps me from using Konfabulator. It appears that it will be connected to Expose and have its own key so that if I press said key I will suddenly see all of my "widgets" and choose the one that I want to work with. Currently the only way to do this with Konfabulator is to attach the widgets to the desktop and press F11. The problem with this is that you can not see the stuff under the widgets at that point.

The Dashboard solution appears to solve all of these problems.

One last thing, the widgets that are the actual parts of Konfabulator that the user uses are made by third parties that may or may not support and update them. With Dashboard we will have Apple supported widgets that will continue to work.

Frank

[Anticipat3]

I think that my biggest concern with this whole "dashboard" thing is that it really makes life confusing for newbs.

"Where's my freakin' Address book???"

It could be in the Dock... or in the Apps folder... or just a part of "Dashboard!"

Apple hasn't exactly been consistent with where these little apps should be over the past few OSX revisions. Here's to hoping they actually stick with this system for a while, at least.

[heathpitts]

amen on the resource hog post for konfabulator. From the video that I watched, this looks to be a part of expose that I could really use. I didn't buy konfabulator because of the widgets taking up so much screen space. This may just be what I want so I can pull them up whenever I want them

[iGuy]

I think you are misinformed. Konfabulator is not written in JavaScript itself, it just presents a JavaScript API for widget developers to use. It is the equivalent of the browser, not the JavaScript site. And yes, hypertext existed before the web, but that doesn't make the web any less revolutionary.

It's the combination of an easy API, desktop integration, handy default tools, and the hope of a developer community around widgets that makes it so similar. OpenDoc had some of these features. System 4.2 Desktop Accessories had some. Hypercard had some. But no one brought it all together until Konfabulator.

And now Apple steals it, and-- get this-- announces it at a *developers conference*. How much more tacky and insulting can you get? Do you want to encourage developers or shoot them?

Here's to hoping the Dashboard API is ignored by developers with a concience.


There is an inherent risk for the developers of Konfabulator and similar enhancements. Windows users will remember WinFax. A useful utility that made a lot of money until Microsoft included faxing in their OS. There is a limited window of opportunity for this type of development and it requires that you always be one step ahead of the OS. Konfabulator's time has come. Move on.

~iGuy

[wnurse]

Gee, the WWW is a ripoff of FTP. Why, the ability to transfer files from one computer to another, to view files from remote location</sarcasm off>.

Your comment is stupid. Yes, a clock has been invented but the technique konfabulator used is new. By your logic Java is a ripoff because there has been programming languages before it. I guess people should stop innovating now.. nothing is new. Wow!!.

Seriously, a clock? Calendar? Calculator? Konfabulator created these things? Last time I checked, Apple put them on the desktop back in '84. Just because they made them more accessible and added some java-nonsense doesn't mean Apple ripped it off. In fact, it's the other way around.

// narco

[må¥å]

Hmm 1st half of 2005 and is a 64-bit OS, something tell me that we shall see a PB G5 and an iMac G5(if not discontinued) by next year.

Dashboard looks alright nothing wild about it unless I can create and customise the look of the widgets. And creating and personalising my own Apple Widgets would also be neat.

the AddressBook in the widgets, along with the all the other widgets looks ugly.

A simple solution to skins :)

[PlaceofDis]

Dashboard is starting to look useful to me, i might actually use the stickies and the calculator if they are so easily accessible instead of their current implentation

[macridah]

the ripple effect is pretty cool. i have a very good feeling that tiger will blow people away once released. we just haven't seen the pure awesome-ness, yet.

[Chobit]

I tried konfabulator yesterday after all the talk about it and deleted it pretty quickly. I like quick access to my calculator and my timer (for cooking, etc.) and I keep them in my dock currently, but on an iBook that's a bit of a waste of screen real estate. Konfabulator was the same basic problem. It added yet another menu bar item, unde many apps my menu is already completely full, so that's a waste. I also don't like how they just float around like oddly shaped windows. I know you can set them to different layers, but none of the options seemed to work for me. Having the widgets as a part of exposé seems like a logical, and helpful use for them, and I can't wait for Tiger. Konfabulator may have been viable for me on a desktop with more screen real estate, but I won't have one of those for a few months.

Yes, I'm sure developers saw konfabulator and took ideas from it. Big deal. Konfabulator did the same thing with earlier ideas. Apple's done it before. Every company has done it before. Open Source developers do it all the time, EVERY developer does it all the time.

edit: grammar and clarity

[blueBomber]

Yeah...agreed people are always going to copy you the trick is to stay ahead. this won't be the last time it happens, but they should get some credit for it. now they'll copy shapeshifter as well.

Just wait till MS puts something like this in Longhorn and calls it "Windows Application Shelf™" :)

[173080]

LOL. Why is the hard drive icon in those movies labeled "cabron"? :D

Anyway, Dashboard looks sweet, and these effects are awesome. :)

[mudflapper]

Sorry guys. That's just my gut reaction.

I'm REALLY disappointed, and quite frankly, SHOCKED that Apple blatantly ripped off Konfabulator. They're even calling the apps WIDGETS fer fook's sake. (I don't know the whole story with Watson and Sherlock, but hasn't this happened before?) Unbelievable. I LOVE Apple. I support them 100% in nearly everything they do, but then they turn around and do something so low, like this. I mean, couldn't they have, at the very least, PHONED the developers or something? Offered them jobs? Apple is seen as this great, progressive, friendly underdog of a company. Legally, they probably don't owe anybody anything, but if they want me to think of Apple as a truly great company...They could've handled this a little, well, more friendly.

Maybe I'm overreacting and I'm just failing to see that this is the start of something huge in which EVERYONE starts implementing widgets, changing the way we compute. But right now, I'm not liking the way this smells at all.

[drewbert]

um, these widgets are HUGE.

Just because expose helps make the desktop more usable doesn't mean that I want to have my address card be the size of half my screen.
I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the videos posted on this thread were taken at 640x480 resolution. Just by the looks of the icons, menu bar, and dock. So yeah, the widgets are gonna look huge in this case. I'd expect they'll look nice and tiny on that 30" LCD. :p

[jessefoxperry]

hey cnet has about a 8 minute video of steve up on stage

http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-5250702.html?tag=ne.vid

he shows off a little bit of spotlight and the new ichat.
purty cool. :D

[crazymac]

The video is up http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc04/

[må¥å]

The menubar also looks changed it looks like an aqua styled white button, similar to the iPod and iBook casing. Did anyone catch that. Looks sleaker than the current pinstripe.

[jessefoxperry]

The video is up http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc04/

awesome. screw the cnet version ;)

[Chobit]

The video is up http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc04/

I've had that little blue bar going back and forth in my quicktime window for about 5 or 10 minutes now. It's also at the 56k size despite my 3mbit connection. Apple must be trying to save bandwidth, but it doesn't seem to be helping enough. Anyone have luck with it?

[Chobit]

Nevermind.. It's working fine now, and at the normal resolution.

[narco]

Gee, the WWW is a ripoff of FTP. Why, the ability to transfer files from one computer to another, to view files from remote location</sarcasm off>.

Your comment is stupid. Yes, a clock has been invented but the technique konfabulator used is new. By your logic Java is a ripoff because there has been programming languages before it. I guess people should stop innovating now.. nothing is new. Wow!!.

This is where you're wrong. WWW is not a rip-off of FTP and there are a lot of new things.

// narco

[Ups85]

I love the concept of dashboard. It makes it a lot easier to access those smaller apps that I use every once and a while. Still, I think some of those widgets do not go with the whole apple theme at all. They seem bloated and overdone. And what's up with the iTunes widget? It almost reminds me of a skin you'd find on 'gasp' windows media player.

[bennok]

I think there are many of us who tried Konfab and didn't care for it for a variety of reasons, but are now excited and will probably use the widgets.

Count me in that group.

[chuckiej]

Apple should have hired Arlo and Perry to take care of this. Give them access to the OS and they would have an awesome non-hoggy version of K in no time. :confused: (Many of the lag issues I have are more due to my low grade video cards than anything else)

Three other things:

- Konfabulator just added Konspose to bring all widgets to the front like expose does with windows and the Dashboard does with widgets.
- Konfabulator already has a vast library of widgets
- Konfabulator widgets are always available if not covered over by a window.

No hitting F8 or F12 or anything else, my weather widget, and iCal based schedule widget are always at the botttom of the screen. The Dashboard won't be that way. I could very easily see myself using both Konfab widgets and Dashboard "stuff".

Personally, I love the retort on konfabulator.com

[nagromme]

Looks like a "fun" feature: bright colors, extra animation (probably optional), and easy development of lots of weird little apps.

That's OK--it DOES look fun! And you don't have to use it if you don't want.

That said, I'd like to evolve more in a direction of pure usefulness and a more sedate (less Windows!) Apple style.

But there's plenty of time for all that to evolve.

The issue of copying Konfabulator is one I am watching--it doesn't sound good, but we'll see.

[iMeowbot]

From the small demo I have seen the Dashboard appears to have the one feature that keeps me from using Konfabulator. It appears that it will be connected to Expose and have its own key so that if I press said key I will suddenly see all of my "widgets" and choose the one that I want to work with.

The current release of Konfabulator actually does that (it uses F8 by default).

One last thing, the widgets that are the actual parts of Konfabulator that the user uses are made by third parties that may or may not support and update them. With Dashboard we will have Apple supported widgets that will continue to work.

Right, look at the brilliant way they continue to evolve exciting frameworks like HyperCard, OpenDoc and Sherlock. :rolleyes:

[MacFan26]

The video is up http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc04/

awesome, I'm glad they did decide to post it. I'm going to go watch it now :D

[looklost]

I hope Apple follows up with Dashboard and it doesn't end up like Sherlock. I liked Sherlock in it's early stages with all the 3rd party plug-ins but now it seems like a stagnate app with little 3rd party interest. I use the Konfabulator and would hate to see development stopped on it just to be replaced by Dashboard and have Apple lose interest down the road. Hopefully this is one step closer for Apple to providing a way to intergrate mail, address book, ical, ect. in one window.

[whooleytoo]

Up until now, most of the 'eye candy' has had a function:

The 'Genie' effect readily identifies to OSX rookies where windows go when minimized - there's no such thing as the user clicking minimize and wondering where their window went.

The Dock magnification allows more icons in the Dock, and yet have them scale large enough to be visually distinguished from each other.

Likewise, you can find some kind of visual feedback reasoning behind most of the 'candy' in OSX, but the ripple effect above looks to be pure useless gloss to me.

[corywoolf]

Apple has made a wrong turn here. What were they thinking?


Look at Konfabulators homepage and it says "Cupertino, Start up your photocopiers!"

It looks the same as konfabulator ( we all know by now).

I actually use to use konfab back in 2000, it was cool with the weather check but the clock and everything else was obsesive.

Microsoft Bob is much like dashboard, haha. Apple is becoming a microsoft.

Very hipocritical, they talk about microsoft with longhorn copying os x, well if u think about it, thats the same thing apple is doing with dashboard. I hope apple gets sued or at least steve jobs gets his Head out of his (!) before my stock plumits. I must admit the displays are breath taking though. Apple is very COCKY, almost zepplin like!


owner of imac 15 in.( first addition flat screen) w/ superdrive, 2 powerbook 12", an old imac dv edition, 40 gb ipod and every accessory available!

[nagromme]

I don't know the whole story with Watson and Sherlock, but hasn't this happened before?

Well, as I inderstand it, basically Watson copied Apple's Sherlock--right down to using an imitative name--only they offered a different set of channels from Sherlock. Very useful, although annoying to have to have an additional app.

Then Apple added more Sherlock channels for common 'net tasks, and some of them were ones Watson implemented first--there was an overlap, but Apple didn't take over all of Watson's functions.

Somehow that makes people think Apple copied Watson to make Sherlock--which is pretty funny if you think about it :D

And re Konspose: Konfabulator copied that from Apple! And now some people are saying Apple copied Konspose from them. That too is pretty funny :D

Nonetheless, I do support Arlo and Konfabulator for having done a great job, and I'm glad their market will remain large: they have most of a year before Tiger, and they have all the pre-Tiger X users, and they have their expansion to Windows, and they may well find a way to adapt what they've got into Dashboard compatibility in some way. I feel their pain, and Apple MAY be very wrong here, but it's not as cut-and-dried as that yet.

For the record, I tried Konfabulator and didn't like it, but I see lots of potential. I also don't like Dashboard much from what I see--but again I see lots of potential! I WOULD like to call up all those little things quickly, if only the looked the same as the full app verison. Less confusing, less playful--maybe less fun, I'll grant you. But those may be options left to the user, and that's good.

And these widgets will not REPLACE the usual Address Book etc.--that's not my understanding. You won't LOSE anything, in other words.

[gwangung]

You don't own ideas; you own expression of ideas.

[ChrisH3677]

In it's current incarnation, Konfabulator is better than Dashboard.

1) K 1.7 has the bring all to the front (which was released before Tiger announcement but I'd reckon K had inside knowledge that function was coming which is why K 1.7 came out on Sunday). Tho, who wants to bring all their widgets to the fore anyway? You'd usually just want one - eg calculator or calendar or weather

2) With K, I my widgets are always visible if I want, so if i lay my screen out right, i can always see the calendar or cpu processes, say, or have access to my iTunes remote. If Dashboard doesn't include the option to have widgets always on-screen, then it will be inferior to K. Obviously 12" screens don't get this value from K - but they won't from Dashboard either.

3) K widgets can do almost anything because of #2 above. Dashboard will be limited by being off screen.

K is not a resource hog. Watching the CPU processes and KCPU, Safari is using more resources than K - and I've got 9 widgets running! But a couple of widgets do suck juice, so I don't run those. Run the KCPU widget to see. I've never had any resource issues with K, besides those two poorly written widgets.


I expect that Apple will make Arlo & Perry an offer. But why would they do it beforehand? By announcing Dashboard, they've just cut considerably the worth of Arlo & Perry to them, so they don't have to offer them anywhere near as much to bring them onboard. Very cynical, I know, but also very obvious.

[J-Squire]

I think it is quite clear that Dashboard and Konfabulator perform very similar functions. But it seems clear that most of the people posting here have had very little experience with Konfabulator prior to this whole controversy. So would it be too far fetched to assume that your typical Mac user, who enjoys their new iMac/G5 but is not fully aware of all the little $25 3rd party apps available, also has little to no knowledge of konfabulator?
And maybe, these typical Mac users found that they were sick of having to open up all these small applications like calculator etc all the time and have them take up space in the dock. So they thought, why can't Apple make it easier for me to access these functions? They're already built into the OS, but can you make it easier for me to use them?
So Apple thought "well, there seems to be a need for this, and we like to make great operating systems.....AND we already have all these little apps in the OS, so why not help out these customers and give them a solution".
Does that sound like such an offense?

[TSEliotLives]

As many people have suggested, it is a bit dodgy that Apple chose to call the individual DA's widgets, and I'm not sure I would have been quite so ballsy, but it's not necessarily, as nagromme points out, as clear-cut as it first appears.

Arlo, Konfabulator's creator, was already hinting, far in advance (some people have mentioned that it was back in May) that Apple had integrated something very much like his product into Tiger. In a thread on his website, in response to the screen shots when they first came out, he said something to the extent of, "You'd be surprised how low Apple has sunk this time."

The only thing that bothers me about that is, he says it very matter-of-factly, denoting that he had prior knowledge of Dashboard. It seems to me a possibility that perhaps Apple HAD pursued the high road, perhaps making the creators an offer for their product as they had in the past for things like WindowShade and SoundJam, and this offer, probably incorporating an NDA, wasn't "enough" for the Konfabulator folks. Maybe, maybe not.

Konfabulator is not patented. In fact, as has also been pointed out, it borrows a concept of Apple's -- Exposé -- which changes things around a bit.

Apple isn't a charity, and it's not a non-profit. While I've always admired their business practices, and would have expected this to happen a little differently (Arlo mentions that Phil Schiller and Pixar are both registered users of Konfabulator), I guess I can't fault a business for doing something that A) they have legal right doing, and B) will make them money. Granted it's not the most ethical or inspiring action, but it was within their right, and speaks to the evolution of the operating system and of the concept of a GUI.

[yamabushi]

Seems like a functional and possibly useful addition to the GUI. However, I have serious concerns about integrating a Javascript API into the OS. I hope that Apple is able to address the possible security issues that arise because of Dashboard. Since anyone can create and distribute a Widget it could be easy for someone to hide a trojan inside a harmless looking Widget. While this is true of any application many users may not be aware of the potential danger since it can be presented as a fairly trustworthy extension of the OS.

[unsigned]

Apple should have hired Arlo and Perry to take care of this.

Didn't Arlo work at apple before he made kaleidoscope?

Anyway, this is a similar situation as to Watson. Watson couldn't exist if apple hadn't made APIs that were 90% there and given a bunch of examples as to why you'd want to use those APIs.

It'd be like, if I put out some flour, and some baking soda, and some sugar, and a baking pan, and an oven, and then you came along and made a cake with it, and then tomorrow I made a cake too and maybe it even tasted better... did I "copy" you? Do I "owe" you something? Did I impinge on your ability to make more cakes (other than perhaps we'll run out of people to eat them).

Konfabulator can't sue Apple because the product is reliant on so many of Apple's ideas, it's probably 90% Apple's intellectual property. It could never have existed in a vacuum.

Granted it would have been classy to acknowledge Konfabulator. Who knows which has been around longer though. Who knows what Arlo saw at Apple (He's a registered developer, isn't he?) that led him to think up Konfabulator.

Its sort of like "Bittersweet Symphony" isn't it? If the Rolling Stones incorporated some of the Verve's sample of their music into a new single, could the Verve sue? Should the Rolling Stones make Richard Ashcroft their backup singer?

[SWC]

Speaking of starting photocopiers.....that flipping sticky is a COMPLETE rip off of a demo from sun microsystems about 8 months ago for their new version of java where you can flip any window and access prefs, store notes or pretty much anything you want to program in....so much for innovation.

[aftk2]

You know...at first, I was kind of taken aback by what I thought was a pretty clear reappropriation of an existing technology (Konfab) by Apple. But you know what...now I'm not so sure.

I think, with all this free publicity that konfabulator's gotten, they should do several things:

1. ride it out (and attempt to get as many shareware registrations as possible)
2. grab a copy of the Tiger preview, and get _cracking_. I don't imagine it would take a terribly long time to craft some ground-breaking widgets that Apple certainly hasn't thought of (like several of the Watson modules that make it much nicer than Sherlock.) Then, they can put in place an online repository for Dashboard plugins. Maybe they could even host third party plugins, creating a system for delivery to users, and take a (small) cut of the profits.

I mean, come on - once upon a time Windows didn't include a TCP stack, so Trumpet made one. Would it have made sense for them to start complaining, once Windows got a TCP stack?

[aftk2]

Speaking of starting photocopiers.....that flipping sticky is a COMPLETE rip off of a demo from sun microsystems about 8 months ago for their new version of java where you can flip any window and access prefs, store notes or pretty much anything you want to program in....so much for innovation.

Heh, I actually think this is funny, considering Sun demoed more of that system today (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/28/1439250&mode=thread&tid=102&tid=108&tid=117&tid=126&tid=156&tid=187&tid=99).

[MikeTheC]

I don't know if anyone here's gone back to the Konfabulator web site since the Keynote, but you really should. They take a very funny jab at Steve Jobs...

[khall127]

I never used Konfab because I always felt the widgets got in my way, with Apple's implementation of using widgets, I think I may start to use them. Dashboard is the same as konfabulator in respect that it uses widgets, but that's it. Let's face it, someone, someday was bound to create a program that also used widgets, I'm just glad Dashboard seems better then Konfabulator right now. It may spark some competition...

Just my 2 cent's
-Kevin

[pimentoLoaf]

Have a couple of these things on my desktop already -- a stock ticker and local temps/weather meter.

Wonderful that Tiger will have these doohickeys built in.

[macfan76]

I don’t get it... They have a webcam viewer but they don’t have a weather ticker yet. That ocean ripple effect is TOTALLY unnecessary and just shows to me unfortunately that apple makes things pretty but not always useful... :(

[må¥å]

Can't really say that Konfabulator is the same as Dashboard:

1) Dashboard is an extension of Expose (as said in the keynote).
2) Dashboard has widgets (is there a billion ways to design a widget).
3) Dashboard is integrated into the OS and cost included (bonus).
4) Dashboard has just been"previewed" meaning it can change when its finally released. (widgets will have an Apple photo-realistic look).
5) Dashboard calls appears and disappears off the screen in a flash.

1) Konfabulator USESES the Expose METHODS.
2) Konfabulator also has widgets (big deal its JAVAscript).
3) Konfabulator is an add-on to the OS and cost 25 USD.
4) Konfabulator has been around for some year now. (the author worked for Apple is quite possible that he took some ideas and fiddle around with it and added a eye-candy touch).
5) Konfabulator yeah its one too many steps to hide(quite) and activate widgets.

People get a life you don't have to use Dashboard in 10.4 no one is forcing you to do so, hell if you want use Konfabulator your choice. Next you will bitch that Safari is a copy of MS internet explorer, OMNIweb and all the other browsers.

The widgets themselves use pre-disposed ideas from the operating system like notes, clock, etc.

I can't believe people are complaining about something so stupid. When Apple stated that MS copied they did indeed copy them they took a working copy of they OS took it apart and just used a different skin and made it unstable :)

The concept of widgets is not NEW its how its presented with eye-candy might I add they obtained that also from Apple design, have you seen what JAVA apps look like windows 95.

[kenaustus]

For all those upset with Apple. MacNewsBites has a link to folklore's story about the desk accessories Apple developed in 1981 - over 20 YEARS ago:

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=desk%20accessories

Konfab might try to be high & mighty, but Apple does have a history of innovation in this area and I bet the Konfab guys were well aware of it. Fact it that they will pick a huge chunk of revenue from people wanting to play with their offering so there is little for them to cry about on the way to the bank.

It is also interesting reading for those who felt Apple was underhanded with their Dashboard. Take a real close look at the features in the story - notice anything that MS might have copied?

Folklore does a pretty good job of putting things into perspective - especially the date: 1981. How many people raising hell on the boards were even born when the ORIGINAL work was done?

[SWC]

just watched the keynote "new features to drive the copycats crazy...." haha

[bertinman]

I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the videos posted on this thread were taken at 640x480 resolution. Just by the looks of the icons, menu bar, and dock. So yeah, the widgets are gonna look huge in this case. I'd expect they'll look nice and tiny on that 30" LCD. :p

granted that, but I did try to take that into account before posting and I just watched the keynote and they are huge there too.

of course im just going to shutup anyway, cause almost everyone here at the office pointed out that i like everything on my desktop small anyway (icons and dock as small as possible) and should quit whining :rolleyes: .

[macfan76]

For all those upset with Apple. MacNewsBites has a link to folklore's story about the desk accessories Apple developed in 1981 - over 20 YEARS ago:

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=desk%20accessories

Konfab might try to be high & mighty, but Apple does have a history of innovation in this area and I bet the Konfab guys were well aware of it. Fact it that they will pick a huge chunk of revenue from people wanting to play with their offering so there is little for them to cry about on the way to the bank.

It is also interesting reading for those who felt Apple was underhanded with their Dashboard. Take a real close look at the features in the story - notice anything that MS might have copied?

Folklore does a pretty good job of putting things into perspective - especially the date: 1981. How many people raising hell on the boards were even born when the ORIGINAL work was done?
Wow, haha, thats amazing! THanks for the link. :)

[ChrisH3677]

5) Konfabulator yeah its one too many steps to hide(quite) and activate widgets.

Pressing F8 is one too many steps?? How many steps do you want? Zero?

[nagromme]

I don’t get it... They have a webcam viewer but they don’t have a weather ticker yet.

They'd better get moving fast! Mid-2005 is fast approaching :D

That ocean ripple effect is TOTALLY unnecessary and just shows to me unfortunately that apple makes things pretty but not always useful... :(

No, sometimes merely fun, and optional. Not unlike desktop pictures and animated screen savers and iTunes Visualizer :D

[ChrisH3677]

Dashboard does not equal Konfabulator

K is still superior. It has all the functionality of Dashboard plus more.

For example, let's say you want to develop a widget that sits on your desktop and shows you the currently playing iTune? Dashboard can't do that.

What if you want a widget to always display the current temperature all the time? Dashboard can't do that.

What if you wanted the stock-ticker to be always visible? Dashboard can't do that.

In these instances with Dashboard, you'd have to press a button or move your mouse to the corner. K gives you the option.

And what if you wanted to develop a little application launcher widget? K can (and has) but again, with D, you'd first have to press a shortcut key.

I do expect, possibly by the time D comes out, that it will have the option of always visible widgets, but for now it doesn't.

And for that reason K is still superior.

edit: geez my typos are bad today!

[jettredmont]

Gee, the WWW is a ripoff of FTP. Why, the ability to transfer files from one computer to another, to view files from remote location</sarcasm off>.

Your comment is stupid. Yes, a clock has been invented but the technique konfabulator used is new. By your logic Java is a ripoff because there has been programming languages before it. I guess people should stop innovating now.. nothing is new. Wow!!.

Thanks for proving the point.

Correct: nothing is truly "new". Any "new" thing will have bits and pieces of "old" things. That is precisely the point.

As konfabulator did not spring forth from Zeus's mind fully formed, neither did Dashboard. Of course there are similarities with existing products. However, from what I've seen of Dashboard, the fraction which is similar to Konfabulator is minimal, and, for the most part, just as similar to previous efforts by Apple, Microsoft, and others. The most striking similarity is in the gaudy look of the widgets, frankly. And that's also the most likely feature of Dashboard to be overhauled before Tiger's release.

[jettredmont]

Sorry guys. That's just my gut reaction.

I'm REALLY disappointed, and quite frankly, SHOCKED that Apple blatantly ripped off Konfabulator. They're even calling the apps WIDGETS fer fook's sake.

This kills me.

Little applets like this have a limited variety of common names:

Applets, Widgets, Desktop Objects, Desktop Accessories. In current use, they are generally referred to as widgets or applets.

When Safari put tabs into their interface, I suppose you think they should have called them "Web-Site Handles" or "Quick-Page-Flip Doohickies", right?

Of all the petty complaints ... not to carp on you, but I've seen at least a dozen posters make this same silly comment and I can't take it any more! :)

[CholEoptera36]

***Cupertino, start your photocopiers!***

http://www.konfabulator.com/

Their homepage seems to ressemble someone else's fun and jokes...

[goodtimes5]

That is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen. All these effects are just gonna have us all requiring dual 2.5ghz g5s to run a ripple effect smoothly. Apple used to be famous for function so ever elegantly masked with aesthetics. Now where's the function? (Yes, yes, the Stickies' flip serves a function, but that doesn't make my point.)

[nacl99]

That is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen. All these effects are just gonna have us all requiring dual 2.5ghz g5s to run a ripple effect smoothly. Apple used to be famous for function so ever elegantly masked with aesthetics. Now where's the function? (Yes, yes, the Stickies' flip serves a function, but that doesn't make my point.)

except it will require a decent video card, not processor, image core my friend.

[jettredmont]

In it's current incarnation, Konfabulator is better than Dashboard.

1) K 1.7 has the bring all to the front (which was released before Tiger announcement but I'd reckon K had inside knowledge that function was coming which is why K 1.7 came out on Sunday). Tho, who wants to bring all their widgets to the fore anyway? You'd usually just want one - eg calculator or calendar or weather


Bringing all of them to the foreground is useful because finding one of them is too difficult unless you adopt your workflow around keeping your K widgets always visible.

IMHO, if you ever really only want one of your K widgets, Konfabulator's the wrong solution for you. But more on that later.


2) With K, I my widgets are always visible if I want, so if i lay my screen out right, i can always see the calendar or cpu processes, say, or have access to my iTunes remote. If Dashboard doesn't include the option to have widgets always on-screen, then it will be inferior to K. Obviously 12" screens don't get this value from K - but they won't from Dashboard either.


IMHO, that's the key difference between the two, which reveals the underlying design goals. Dashboard is for getting to common utility widgets fast. And, oh, it can do stuff that you might want to monitor on occasion like stock prices and a web cam ... but it's not for something you're going to be staring at all day. Konfab is designed around the principle that there are lots of little bits of information you want to have in your face 100% of the time. It's awkward to start up new widgets, or close existing widgets (especially if they are in the "float" layer, which apparently disables all interaction, at least in 1.7). They aren't aimed at "quick utilities"; they are aimed at low-overhead monitoring apps.

Now, personally, if I'm going to be monitoring CPU usage or whatever, a small, lightweight app makes about as much sense as having a fairly heavy-weight toolkit with a super-lightweight widget running inside. It really only makes sense when you have multiple such widgets to run, where the savings per-widget makes up for the resources the toolkit itself takes up.

Again, personally, I just never have such a use for it. Weather checking? Yeah, that's nice too. But running a heavy-weight toolkit for something I just want to be easy to check on (I don't need the weather always staring me in the face ... if I wanted that I'd go outside!) is a bit beyond silly.

My desktop space is precious. Keeping things there that I don't need just doesn't make sense.

So, again, for me, Dashboard is the better fit. If Konfab is a better fit for you: great! That's kinda the whole point. You pick one, or the other, or even heaven forbid use both.


3) K widgets can do almost anything because of #2 above. Dashboard will be limited by being off screen.


Dashboard widgets can do almost anything because they can get completely out of my way when I want. K will be limited by staying on screen.


K is not a resource hog. Watching the CPU processes and KCPU, Safari is using more resources than K - and I've got 9 widgets running!


Well, no crap!

K makes lots of sense if you have lots of widgets running all the time (and you actually monitor the widgets). Good for you!

I think K would be in some major trouble if it took more resources than Safari, which is a full-featured web browser which could just as easily host all those widgets itself! The whole idea of K is that those bits of information are too small to justify going through a web browser with all its overhead to get to.

However, I've got a Rev A dual-2.0GHz G5. Konfabulator is running, with nothing but the it-shipped-with-it weather widget right now. Activity Monitor shows that K is taking 1.5-2% of my CPU resources. Completely idle. That's insane, if all I want is a weather widget, or a CPU monitoring widget, etc. That's insane, if all I want is a calculator widget handy when I need it and a calendar to glance at every once in a while.

Is K a resource hog? It is if you don't use it as designed. If you just need one or two widgets, or just need them open on occasion, K is a poor solution for you.

[soosy]

That is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever seen. All these effects are just gonna have us all requiring dual 2.5ghz g5s to run a ripple effect smoothly. Apple used to be famous for function so ever elegantly masked with aesthetics. Now where's the function? (Yes, yes, the Stickies' flip serves a function, but that doesn't make my point.)

Yeah and everybody complained when Quartz Extreme was introduced, but that turned out ok... if the GPU is sitting there, you might as well use it. Apple claims it scales down nicely. :)

From http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html
"The performance gains and features supported by Core Image ultimately depend on the graphics card. Graphics cards capable of pixel-level programming deliver the best performance. But Core Image automatically scales as appropriate for systems with older graphics cards, for compatibility with any Tiger-compatible Mac."

[jettredmont]

I don’t get it... They have a webcam viewer but they don’t have a weather ticker yet. That ocean ripple effect is TOTALLY unnecessary and just shows to me unfortunately that apple makes things pretty but not always useful... :(

I don't think the ripple effect is useless.

Those widgets, despite how they look on a tiny screen, aren't big. When you open most apps, you have two visual indications: the menu bar changes, and the main window of the app (usually) pops up.

Neither of these things is true for widgets. They pop up, somewhere on your screen (wherever it was you last closed them from and/or wherever there is space for them to pop up). The ripple effect gives visual indication that (1) yes, you really did click on that widget's name, and (2) here's where the widget went.

IMHO, what this is a perfect example of is people dissing eye candy without having tried the thing out ... the eye candy is there for a reason.

[CholEoptera36]

You don't own ideas; you own expression of ideas.

That's a good one, now just tell that to Steve Jobs and every freak who whines about M$ basing their products on Apple's 'ideas' all the time. Or for that matter, K with their mockery of the Tiger banners at yesterday's WWDC... (on K's website)

good quote :D

[logicat2001]

IMHO, what this is a perfect example of is people dissing eye candy without having tried the thing out ... the eye candy is there for a reason.

Before you actually use it, it's going to be difficult to accurately gauge how a GUI element/style is going to affect your work.

Think about this ripple effect. On one level it is absolute eye candy.

But, consider now what is accomplished by that visual, and what the purpose of the dashboard and widgets is. Here's a brief scenario:

- I'm working on a project and have several windows open. At the moment i have six full-sized windows open for four different apps. Usually it's ten to twenty windows/palettes of assorted sizes and five to ten apps simultaneously.

- A widget, no matter how huge they seem, is quite small when compared to a window. If one or more small widgets were to suddenly appear floating on my screenspace, they'll blend in rather quickly with the 'background' visual of app windows (plus text, window controls, tables, graphics, etc.).

Instead, the ripple effect distorts everything but the widget in question for a moment, allowing my eye and attention to be focused on the small item.

I'm voting for "ingenious and useful in practice" when we actually start pressing that f-key shortcut for dashboard.

Best,
Logicat

[elmimmo]

Just to add a bit of wind to the fire, doesn't Spotlight seems like a LaunchBar On Steroids™? Sure it seems to have like a dozen more features, but it seems to be inspired from it (I would not call it a rip off, rhough, until I know more of how it works...). I do use LaunchBar to look for folders in my HDD (name of clients, jobs, etc.) at the hit of a keystroke. Unless Spotlight cannot be launched by a keystroke, though, which would be a pitty...

[CholEoptera36]

-logicat2001-

That is a very interesting scinario, and a good point. I see where you're comming from, that does seem like an ingenious addition to the dashboard. Nobody will know for sure how the ripple effect till truely pan out till it's used next year, but it could be something more than just eye-candy. The ripple distorting other objects could also perhaps annoy some other users, but who knows for sure yet? Sounds like an interesting turn of topic as far as the ripple helping you focus on the widget you've selected. ;)

[network23]

I think that the flipable stickies will really be a usuable feature for me. In Panther, when using stickies, changing the font isn't that easy...but Tiger looks to solve that problem.

I still want to see more of Tiger in action...I'm hoping they'll put up the keynote soon... ;)

Ugh! Think about this for a minute, guys!

First off, the flip-to-settings (FTS) "feature" is not consistent with the Apple standard method of adjusting settings, so we have diminished usability due to lack of consistency.

Also, and this is the big negative, how much of a pain is it to make a change in the settings, then have to flip the window over to see what the change looks like, flip it back, modify the change, flip it back, etc. etc.

A very bad direction.

[MacQuest]

Wish people would stop with the Konfab-comparisons. Anyway, these look a lot nicer!

// narco

It's not about the looks, it's about idea theft. :mad:

This is probably the first time that I'm bad mouthing Apple, but this really does suck! :mad:

I'm not even a developer but I'm pissed off as hell at these [I never thought I'd have to say this] MICROSOFT tactics taken by Apple in this case and in the Watson/Sherlock fiasco. :mad:

Come on Apple, don't pick and choose the most popular features introduced by the developer community and then use their ideas without at least somekind of negotiation or even mention! :mad:

This makes me sick... :(

[MacQuest]

Konfabulator wasn't exactly the first of it's kind either...

Oh don't care if it wasn't the first of it's kind, it's the one that popularized the functionality as far as I'm concerned.

What about all the KARMA BS SJ? :mad:

[Gee4orce]

Did Arlo patent the technology in Konfabulator ? No ? Then sorry, but life sucks - get over it.

[CholEoptera36]

It's not about the looks, it's about idea theft. :mad:

This is probably the first time that I'm bad mouthing Apple, but this really does suck! :mad:

I'm not even a developer but I'm pissed off as hell at these [I never thought I'd have to say this] MICROSOFT tactics taken by Apple in this case and in the Watson/Sherlock fiasco. :mad:

Come on Apple, don't pick and choose the most popular features introduced by the developer community and then use their ideas without at least somekind of negotiation or even mention! :mad:

This makes me sick... :(

This seems to be the majority of what people agree on in this thread, along with my own oppinion. I think that the incorporating other ideas into you own development of software/hardware or sometimes flat out taking the same creation is something that happens to computer companies as they grow. Use it or lose it. If it's a great idea by a smaller company, and you can legally use the idea in your own development for your own product, then companies do this. This is a big negative though for how it makes your favorite company look, I'm not saying it's okay to do it... Perhaps though, I think we've seen Apple grow much more since OS X, and I am not absolutely suprised that this has happend. I think that a lot of companies do this sort of thing when you get bigger. Maybe I'm wrong? Just my two cents worth. Still none the less angers me too.

[elmimmo]

Wasn't, BTW, Konfabulator explicitely inspired by SuperKaramaba anyhow? ^_^ (KHTML, SuperKaramba... KDE guys must really be flattered ^_^)

[MacQuest]

Tiger is going to be great on my imac G5.

It'll almost look as good as it will on my single G5 processor headless/mini-tower/pizza box/whatever cpu [$999-$1299] and my 30" Display. :D

[...obviously the mini 'whatever" cpu will have at least 3 expansion slots since the card takes up 2...] :rolleyes:

Just dreaming

[MacQuest]

Did Arlo patent the technology in Konfabulator ? No ? Then sorry, but life sucks - get over it.

So it's okay for Apple to steal ideas from the OPEN-SOURCE developer community who's members may not have the time/money/resources/whatever to go through all the legal hassles?

I don't think so.

I haven't gotten over m$'s ripoff of Mac OS so I've always spoken out for and with Apple. I'll be damned if I'll let Apple slide on slimey BS like this. :mad:

[evolu]

Oh don't care if it wasn't the first of it's kind, it's the one that popularized the functionality as far as I'm concerned.

What about all the KARMA BS SJ? :mad:

Apple will definitely popularize the widget 'functionality', more than Konfabulator ever could. If Mr. Konfabulator was smart, he'd use this to his advantage. By the time Tiger comes out, w*w.konfabulator.c*m will be the place that everyone goes to to distribute their third party widgets. He has a year to figure out how to make money from that model. And a few years head start on everyone else...!

[CholEoptera36]

I just find it ironic how I was about one of two or three people yesterday who was saying those Banners weren't a smart idea, and now look how hypocritical Apple looks... Displaying the K ideas for everyone to see, with banners in the background mocking out borrowing of ideas.

[MacQuest]

Wasn't, BTW, Konfabulator explicitely inspired by SuperKaramaba anyhow? ^_^ (KHTML, SuperKaramba... KDE guys must really be flattered ^_^)

I'm not gonna play the "who came first" game. All I know is that I didn't know what the frick a widget was before Konfabulator on Mac OS X and now Apple has absorbed the functionality without so much as an honorable mention [to anyone]!

Granted, paying homage would be admitting that it wasn't thier idea, so just pay them some chump change or something. It's the least they could do.

[MacQuest]

Apple will definitely popularize the widget 'functionality', more than Konfabulator ever could. If Mr. Konfabulator was smart, he'd use this to his advantage. By the time Tiger comes out, w*w.konfabulator.c*m will be the place that everyone goes to to distribute their third party widgets. He has a year to figure out how to make money from that model. And a few years head start on everyone else...!

Now the developers have to be savvy business people in order to develop something and not have it get ripped off by Apple?!

That blows!

[MacQuest]

I just find it ironic how I was about one of two or three people yesterday who was saying those Banners weren't a smart idea, and now look how hypocritical Apple looks... Displaying the K ideas for everyone to see, with banners in the background mocking out borrowing of ideas.

I still love the banners because m$ desreves to be ridiculed more than anyone for their years and sheer multitude of illegal activities.

I just don't agree with the Dashboard/Konfab issue. There's a big difference between Apple's occasional questionable/[maybe?] justifiable move and m$'s constant, blatant bool sheet.

...and "Dashboard"?!!! I can't believe I'm so upset over an awesome technology that was given such a crappy name. :mad:

Dashboard. :rolleyes:

[CholEoptera36]

I still love the banners because m$ desreves to be ridiculed more than anyone for their years and sheer multitude of illegal activities.

I just don't agree with the Dashboard/Konfab issue. There's a big difference between Apple's occasional questionable/[maybe?] justifiable move and m$'s constant, blatant bool sheet.

...and "Dashboard"?!!! I can't believe I'm so upset over an awesome technology that was given such a crappy name. :mad:

Dashboard. :rolleyes:

lol definitely true, M$ does deserve all those banners. I guess my point was let's just hope that Apple doesn't get to the point where someone makes some banners about them some day, and people don't veiw them the same way as we are M$... Just makes them hipocritical as of the day. (of course I didn't know this yesterday lol, I just had a bad feeling about the public display)

On the bright side, atleast they didn't take it from M$ that would be worse for their publicity.

[evolu]

Now the developers have to be savvy business people in order to develop something and not have it get ripped off by Apple?!

That blows!


Um... yeah. That's the way the business world works. Not saying I agree with it, but that's the way it is. Mr. Konfab apparently did not copywright his idea, and he did not stipulate that any of his source code could not be used for profit, (blah blah blah).

The guy has a great opportunity to have his work reach more people. He basically just got his 'open-source' application installed for free in every Mac that sells with Tiger.

BTW - it looks like Apple 'invented' the idea anyway! I'm sure they have a patent on it from back then...

[MacQuest]

Well, there's a big thread over at Konfab's website with some interesting insight to all of this:

http://www2.konfabulator.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3903&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=105

I guess I'm not so pissed off anymore since this technology was used years before Konfab came around, even in classic Mac OS.

Ok. All better now. [/rant]

:D

[CholEoptera36]

wow that is interesting, and very good to know. I feel much better about those banners now too...

I know a few things about the start of PC's because of my major, and I know that there are lists of companies who had personal computers out before the Apple 1 or the Apple ][ appeared (two of which are HP and IBM - the IBM 5100 to be exact to those who are familiar with that model). Apple did make the first 'affordable' personal computer, and they most definitely did put the computer in the home, schools, and office too... I believe 16K memory on the IBM 5100 sold for over $8,000 no joke... and that was in May of 1975! ouch... Two years before the Apple 1 appeared. Just figured I'd share some interesting tid bits on how computer companies all have ideas at some point but certain companies seem to know how to put it where they want it. I think Apple will do the same with the Dashboard in Tiger, much like they did the personal computer. If it's successful, and you aren't stealing anything from anyone in particular, then it's all gravy. Cause there's a lot of ideas in the computer world that are "shared" or passed around I should say... so it's good to know Apple didn't necessarily take it from K, widgets have been around I assume.

That comming from K's own forums helps too, good deal :D

[Benjamin]

just my rant about it all... http://web.pdx.edu/~bhartig/archives/000025.php

but anyway my personal conclusion is that developers need to develop applications for os x and not extras that apple should have kept since system 6, btw have you noticed that apples widgets became menuextras till they outlawed it by 3rd party apps? and how motion has already implemented a dashboard (by the same name) type system for quick access to various editing tools? alright have a look have fun.

[MacQuest]

Thanks for the insight as well Benjamin. :)

I'm not mad at the Dashboard thing anymore...

EXCEPT FOR THE NAME!!! :mad:

As I said earlier..."Dashboard". :rolleyes:

[Benjamin]

Thanks for the insight as well Benjamin. :)

I'm not mad at the Dashboard thing anymore...

EXCEPT FOR THE NAME!!! :mad:

As I said earlier..."Dashboard". :rolleyes:

thx, are you the same MacQuest that was on Spymac?

[Jalexster]

Dashboard is part of the Tiger SDK, and is closed-source. It will therefore be limited in what widgets it has, because only paying developers will be creating widgets.
Konfabulator, on the other hand, is open-source, anyone can create widgets for it, and therefore will have a wider selection.
It's kinda like Winamp; it's more popular than Windows Media Player, because of the huge fan support, free devopment of plugins, skins etc...

Dashboard: Limited to the developer community.
Konfabulator: Everyone can create content.

(Uh, I hope I didn't make any mistakes here, like "Anyone can make Dashboard widgets", but I don't think that anyone can make a dashboard widget without an SDK

Right?)

[robbieduncan]

Dashboard is part of the Tiger SDK, and is closed-source. It will therefore be limited in what widgets it has, because only paying developers will be creating widgets.
Konfabulator, on the other hand, is open-source, anyone can create widgets for it, and therefore will have a wider selection.
It's kinda like Winamp; it's more popular than Windows Media Player, because of the huge fan support, free devopment of plugins, skins etc...

Dashboard: Limited to the developer community.
Konfabulator: Everyone can create content.

(Uh, I hope I didn't make any mistakes here, like "Anyone can make Dashboard widgets", but I don't think that anyone can make a dashboard widget without an SDK

Right?)

The Panther SDKs (there are lots, not just one) are freely available along with the full developer tools (XCode, Interface Builder and the rest) from Apple's website. You can get a free internet ADC account for the price of telling Apple your email address. Anyone will be able to create widgets, just like anyone can create Cocoa/Carbon/Java apps for Mac OSX. The developer tools are even free for comercial use. The quoted post is just wrong!

[thecombatwombat]

Dashboard: Limited to the developer community.
Konfabulator: Everyone can create content.

(Uh, I hope I didn't make any mistakes here, like "Anyone can make Dashboard widgets", but I don't think that anyone can make a dashboard widget without an SDK

Right?)

Wrong. Apple's development tools are very open.

http://developer.apple.com

I can't think of any apple developer tool I might want that isn't freely available.

Now, what's all this talk about Konfabulator being open source? I've been poking around on their website for a while now, and can't find any source code, or mention of a license. Could someone provide a link?

[ChrisH3677]

This is probably the real killer about who was first...

DesktopX vs Konfabulator (http://www.xpthemes.com/forums.asp?MID=19&CMID=19&AID=4472)

In hindsight, I do remember using demos of DesktopX several years ago and being impressed - but I still think K is the best implmentation of widgets yet.

[unregbaron]

sorry if this is me being stupid:

so Dashboard is a Tiger thing? - unavailable till Tiger uncaged next year?

[robbieduncan]

sorry if this is me being stupid:

so Dashboard is a Tiger thing? - unavailable till Tiger uncaged next year?

Dashboard is part of Tiger. It will not be available for previous OSs (unlike Konfabulator).

[space2go]

I'm not mad at the Dashboard thing anymore...

EXCEPT FOR THE NAME!!! :mad:

As I said earlier..."Dashboard".

Better don't look at the real name for Pipeline then..:rolleyes:

[space2go]

Btw if you look at the bottom navigation for the dashboard preview it says:
Home > Mac OS X > Tiger Preview > Safari 2
Guess someone "prematurly specified" how dashboard will be implemented..
;)

[wnurse]

Of course it's not a rip off... read what i was replying to.

This is where you're wrong. WWW is not a rip-off of FTP and there are a lot of new things.

// narco

[Gee4orce]

So it's okay for Apple to steal ideas from the OPEN-SOURCE developer community who's members may not have the time/money/resources/whatever to go through all the legal hassles?

I don't think so.

I haven't gotten over m$'s ripoff of Mac OS so I've always spoken out for and with Apple. I'll be damned if I'll let Apple slide on slimey BS like this. :mad:
:eek:

So it's open source is it ? So I can ask Arlo for the source code (infact, I shouldn't even need to ask). And under what licence is it open source ? How is he able to sell it for $$$ ?

Hmmm. I don't think so.

I doesn't cost much to patent an idea, and if your idea isn't elligible for a patent then that usually means 1 thing - it's not original, and ergo you've nicked it from somebody else. Pot, Kettle. Black.

[whooleytoo]

I doesn't cost much to patent an idea, and if your idea isn't elligible for a patent then that usually means 1 thing - it's not original, and ergo you've nicked it from somebody else. Pot, Kettle. Black.

For a small developer, it takes a small fortune (and a long time) to patent your ideas, especially if you want to patent it in a lot of countries.

Your suggestion that if it's not patented, it's probably stolen, is just bizarre.

[Jalexster]

Ok, I've made an idiot of myself.

Sorry

Anyway, by the time Tiger is released, Konfabulator will be much better. Konfabulator has a head-start of Dashboard.

P.S: I'm really sorry about my mistake

[wnurse]

Thanks for proving the point.

Correct: nothing is truly "new". Any "new" thing will have bits and pieces of "old" things. That is precisely the point.

As konfabulator did not spring forth from Zeus's mind fully formed, neither did Dashboard. Of course there are similarities with existing products. However, from what I've seen of Dashboard, the fraction which is similar to Konfabulator is minimal, and, for the most part, just as similar to previous efforts by Apple, Microsoft, and others. The most striking similarity is in the gaudy look of the widgets, frankly. And that's also the most likely feature of Dashboard to be overhauled before Tiger's release.

Using your logic, why innovate? Why apply for patents. I say patents are a waste of time since everything has been invented that needs to be. A car for example, is a copy of a bicycle. I mean, according to your logic, this would be true because a bicycle gets you from point A to B, sure a car does it faster but so what? and by your logic, a plane is merely a copy of a car, only thing it does it gets you from point A to B faster. Your logic are a little on the silly side.

Whether something could be done before is not the issue. The issue is whether the implementation has been done before. IE, man has always been able to tell time but when the clock was invented, it was the first time he was able to tell time without looking at the sky or the stars, etc. An application can be functionally doing something that has been done before and yet be new because it implements it actions in a new way. Unfortunately for Konfabulator and dashboard, this has been done before by stardock. So apple saying "Redmond, start your photocopiers" does not really wash. My argument with you is not that Konfabulator is not new (it isn't), my argument with you is your logic. It's ok to defend apple, just do it without the blinders on. Makes your logic much clearer.

[1macker1]

**cough** ripoff of konfab **cough**and looking glass**cough**

[robbieduncan]

Ok, I've made an idiot of myself.

Sorry

Anyway, by the time Tiger is released, Konfabulator will be much better. Konfabulator has a head-start of Dashboard.

P.S: I'm really sorry about my mistake

Everyone makes mistakes! Lighten up :)

[Jalexster]

I'm starting to loose faith in Apple. Spotlight for example seems a bit similar to the searching features in Longhorn. Not that I'm saying that Apple dosen't have the right to rip off microsoft, they do, but Apple is becoming less-inovative nowdays.

It's worrying.
(And I will lighten up)

[cionheart]

I like the idea of Dashboard: I work in my normal environment, then somthing happens, say I want to stop iTunes, make a short note or look up an adress. So all I have to do is press a key and there it is! I think Apple wants to differ between normal work and short every day tasks, that's what Dashboard is for. I will love it (hope so ;) ).

No word about Konfabulator - it's going to be a discussion without end.

[robbieduncan]

I'm starting to loose faith in Apple. Spotlight for example seems a bit similar to the searching features in Longhorn. Not that I'm saying that Apple dosen't have the right to rip off microsoft, they do, but Apple is becoming less-inovative nowdays.

It's worrying.
(And I will lighten up)

Sort of. I've not seem the smart folders idea anywhere but on Mac OSX though. Core Image/Video look like they will be really great too.

[silvergunuk]

After watching these 2 short clips, I think theres waaaay more to Tiger than meets the eye. I have a feeling this core image and video will become a main part of Tigers user interface. Imagine when you have other applications in the background, they could just ripple away in the background using the glass, liquid and transparency filters. You can then just animate the filters transition back to normal when you bring the application or folders to the front. This would look far better than what Longhorn is offering. On another note then I saw those stickies rotate 180 degrees like Suns looking glass OS, it seems apple has incorporated 3D into this technology. I maybe wrong but I think macworld will show a whole new side to Tiger.

[age234]

Ugh! Think about this for a minute, guys!

First off, the flip-to-settings (FTS) "feature" is not consistent with the Apple standard method of adjusting settings, so we have diminished usability due to lack of consistency.

Also, and this is the big negative, how much of a pain is it to make a change in the settings, then have to flip the window over to see what the change looks like, flip it back, modify the change, flip it back, etc. etc.

A very bad direction.

I don't know, I think it's cool. Plus, these are widgets, with a small amount of functionality. I think this will stay a widget thing. But, then again, it *would* be cool to be flipping windows over to see the preferences. But I'm sure it'd get annoying after a while.

[sinisterdesign]

Seriously, a clock? Calendar? Calculator? Konfabulator created these things? Last time I checked, Apple put them on the desktop back in '84. Just because they made them more accessible and added some java-nonsense doesn't mean Apple ripped it off. In fact, it's the other way around.

// narco

riiiiiggghhht. just b/c they're small, floating, customizable, apps called "WIDGETS", i'm sure it's a total coincidence.

don't get me wrong, i LOVE apple, used to work for them, but in some respects they're no better than M$ when it comes to seeing a good idea & swiping it. at least M$ PAYS (or acquires) the companies.

was konfabulator the first to put a clock on the desktop? even a floating one? no, of course not. the Clock was one of the only functional apps in OS10.0. did they take that concept, put a lot of work & creativity (and excellent design, btw) into perfecting the widget? i think so. i downloaded konfabulator a month or so ago & really enjoyed it. i feel sure someone in cupertino did too, steve ended up seeing it & said "i want that. get going"

apple comes up w/ some great concepts, but they certainly lift some good ideas from the developer community. short of acquiring these companies, apple would never be able to compensate them for swiping an idea b/c everyone & their brother would be lined up out the door w/ hands out saying apple stole their widget. but who on this board has, in recent times, downloaded such great little apps as: Audion (http://www.panic.com/audion/), Dragstrip (http://www.monstermarketplace.com/Organizer/Product/651/Landing/1690/DragStripMAC/285/3/13) or Suitcase (http://www.extensis.com/en/products/product_family.jsp?locale=en_US&id=1054) after apple gave us iTunes, OSX's Dock and Font Book?

again, i love apple, but it would be tough to be an apple reseller or developer. at least M$ buys you a nice dinner before they screw you. ;)

[MhzDoesMatter]

Just so we're keeping track

1. The widgets themselves are common place?

2. Konfab uses Apple APIs ?

3. Apple has previously had OS software perform the relatively same function?

4. Konfab was not Open Source, it was unpatented shareware.

5. Konfab's author knew about this before hand (he was commenting way before release and had already altered Konfab to remain a semblance of competitiveness,) meaning he was probably contacted.

So basically...get over it? Why are people being emotional and moral about all of this? Yeah Apple v Microsoft and history of innovation and hypocrisy blah blah blah. Apple is about money. They are a business. And they should employ whatever practices will continue to make them money in both the short and long runs.
And this was not the straw that will break the camel's back. I mean, they only do this once every other OS Revision. So if you are a good developer with a great shareware app just expect it only to have a two year life and be prepared for it to "win" the lottery and end up co-opted. It's really no different than expiring patents for any other invention. After you get a little time to make your money, we're coming to eat your lunch.
Just because Apple likes to play around with their history of being ripped off, you don't see Steve ranting every keynote. No, he touts Office 2004. He has dinner with Bill Gates. He got over it. It's business and its cut throat. That doesn't mean he doesn't appreciate his developer base. Thats why he keeps giving them tools to make better apps. Like Microsoft investing in Apple. This is why they think we're all tree hugging hippie's still. (That, and that and the unfortunate incident with "flower power"...) Geez, go wet yourselves in your own blogs or something.


-Truth Hertz

[dongmin]

I'm starting to loose faith in Apple. Spotlight for example seems a bit similar to the searching features in Longhorn. Not that I'm saying that Apple dosen't have the right to rip off microsoft, they do, but Apple is becoming less-inovative nowdays.

It's worrying.
(And I will lighten up)

Spotlight is based on the search tool used in iTunes, according to Apple. That 'idea' was around long before Longhorn came into being. For sure, before MS demoed it.

[30jan-1972]

This whining is really reaching a fever pitch and I thought I'd chime in as well.

Konfabulator is an application that is written by ex-Apple employees that cobbles together assorted technologies and allows developers an easy means of writing throw-away mini-apps.

Here are some facts:
1) Konfabulator did NOT invent the idea of such mini-apps. They have been around the Mac since the pre-MultiFinder era. They were called desk accessories. They have existed at various levels and in various forms ever since. So much for stealing that idea.

2) Konfabulator did NOT invent the idea of providing an interpretive layer between the System and an easier to use scripting language for the development of mini-apps. HyperCard came first on the Mac. Then AppleScript. So much for some original ideas there.

3) Konfabulator did NOT invent the word widgets. This term has been around for a long time and has been used to refer specifically to mini-apps as well. So much for changing the English language.

What did Konfabulator do? They COPIED ideas #1 and #2 and chose Javascript as their developer language and then applied word #3 to the result. The only originality that can legitimately be argued for is the use of Javascript, however even that falls apart at a closer look.

4) The Javascript access that Konfabulator provides are an extension of existing OS X APIs. Other MacOS X technologies provide a means to use Javascript to write mini-apps - see AppleScript for just one example. Other technologies on other systems have done this as well. Konfabulator merely did the same thing that others have long been working on.

The only claim to innovation (#4) is dubious at best. Which then brings us to why they won't get a penny from Apple.

5) Despite the best efforts of the BSA and its cronies, the copyright or patent of ideas is still not possible. Period. Get this through your heads. Konfabulator essentially has two options:

5A) Original art. They could claim their idea to be original art and therefore protected. However, as #1, #2, #3 even #4 clearly point out, they were not first and first is what matters in this arguement.

5B) Defensive patent. They could file a patent on their IMPLEMENTATION of the idea. When Apple fought the patent they could argue they were first so they should be granted the patent. However, again originality and who truly came first matter. And again, as #1-4 point out, Knofabulator doesn't have a lot of ground here.

6) Apple's legal team undoubtedly studied these issues at length and is confident they are in the RIGHT or they would not have done it this way to begin with. The weight of their expertise and knowledge in this area outwieghs anyone here, including me.

As an aside we also have to remember:

7) The Konfab guys are ex-Apple types. This is a huge can of worms - and all bad for Konfab. Just use a little imagination. Arlo worked on the Copland UI team - were widgets or desk accessories with an interpretive scripting layer ever discussed? Does Apple have the original memos/work product to show that? Maybe the Konfab guys should worry more about that line of reasoning than anything else, because any idiot can see that line of counter-suit.

The interesting thing from my perspective is the outrage. People here have clamored for things like iTunes improvements, OS theming, etc. etc. All of which have already or would in the future, squashed smaller devs. But now the pet favorite of a few fan boys gets hit and the tears are flowing.

My hypothesis:
8) People are pissed because they see themselves in Konfabulator. Scene fades into dream sequence....

A small-time software dev (aka "the little guy", "our hero") without original thought writes a stop-gap app for the Mac.

Though the app copies heavily from earlier OS-work from Apple, our hero believes that they've cornered the market.

Dozens of even smaller-time devs use his app to write their own "Gadgets." These hopeless fools shell out $30 not realizing that the same functionatity is right their on their freshly installed dev CD. Our hero laughs all the way to the bank.

The smaller-time devs dream big, that maybe one day there will be an iTMS for Gadgets and they will get rich having written the 500th calendar for the Mac. They know theirs will succeed however because they used a super secret font that will drive users wild with desire to purchase their calendar for $20. Never mind the free alternatives out their.

One day the dream ends. The OS matures and in its growth it logically expands to consume our hero's work. Unfortunately for our hero it hopelessly squashes him.

The OS includes Waterline, a drag and drop means to automate tasks and interface with existing apps and services. It includes MoronScript, an easy to use standards based scripting system that can fully access any core OS function. It includes Windshield a visually appealing and simple means of bringing everything together.

Our hero is sad, but realizes he scammed hopeless dozens out of $30. He moves on to writing RealBasic plug-ins.

The smaller-time devs burn with anger. Their dreams of greatness are smashed. They realize that IF THEY WANT TO MAKE MONEY WRITING SOFTWARE THEY MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE TO LEARN TO PROGRAM. Eeeek.

Realizing that their anime fetish and community college education won't allow that...they turn to an online forum to whine about the evil of the world.

Oh well, at least they can hope for a G5 iMac for $500. Can't they?

--

Boo freaking hoo.

30 Jan. 1972

[Jalexster]

I meant Longhorn's dynamic folders, in terms of Spotlight being similar to Longhorn.
Longhorn has music, document, image, video and game folders, that have all the relative content stored in them, no matter where the actual files are in the folder-structure.

Spotlight's searching, and smart folders are very similar to Longhorn's system. I know that iTunes had those features first, but that was music only. The branching into the file-structure was done by Longhorn first.

Also, Apple is even ripping off Looking Glass in a way. They are running out of ideas. We know they can do better, rather than just ripping off other's ideas.

And, about Dashboard ripping off Konfabulator:
Konfabulator was not the first of it's kind to do what it did, but it was different, with well-implemented tranparencies, customization, etc... And now Apple has introduced a system that is VERY similar to Konfabulator.

[30jan-1972]

I meant Longhorn's dynamic folders, in terms of Spotlight being similar to Longhorn.
Longhorn has music, document, image, video and game folders, that have all the relative content stored in them, no matter where the actual files are in the folder-structure.

Also, Apple is even ripping off Looking Glass in a way. They are running out of ideas. We know they can do better, rather than just ripping off other's ideas.

Longhorn does not exist. Call me in 2010 when it's released and we'll have this discussion.

Looking Glass does not exist. Call me on the third of never when that one gets out there to anyone beyond comic book collectors.

Boo freaking hoo.

30 Jan. 1972

[1macker1]

Both Longhorn and Looking glass to exist. You just dont have it yet.
Longhorn does not exist. Call me in 2010 when it's released and we'll have this discussion.

Looking Glass does not exist. Call me on the third of never when that one gets out there to anyone beyond comic book collectors.

Boo freaking hoo.

30 Jan. 1972

[duklaprague]

I don't think the ripple effect is useless.

Those widgets, despite how they look on a tiny screen, aren't big. When you open most apps, you have two visual indications: the menu bar changes, and the main window of the app (usually) pops up.

Neither of these things is true for widgets. They pop up, somewhere on your screen (wherever it was you last closed them from and/or wherever there is space for them to pop up). The ripple effect gives visual indication that (1) yes, you really did click on that widget's name, and (2) here's where the widget went.

IMHO, what this is a perfect example of is people dissing eye candy without having tried the thing out ... the eye candy is there for a reason.

agree completely - when i first saw expose, i just thought *so - a way to jump between apps that looks a bit flash. yes...and?*, but once i actually used it i thought *hey - pretty useful actually.*

in the same way these widget things and might well be too, and if you're going to have an effect that distinguishes them from other apps, then why not have a nice one?

not sure about the general look and feel of them tho' - they look a bit inconsistant and garish (i've only seen the pics, not the videos) to be honest, and lacked apple's usual elegant design.

also not sure what all the fuss is about the konfab thing - sure there are presumabnly similarities, but at the end of the day their just introcing quick easy access to existing features - and that folklore article showed their original roots.

Iain

[adamfilip]

i really think apple should update its keyboards with specialized expoze keys. regardless of where i reprogram my keys they always get in the way of shortcuts to apps i use

[dongmin]

Ugh! Think about this for a minute, guys!

First off, the flip-to-settings (FTS) "feature" is not consistent with the Apple standard method of adjusting settings, so we have diminished usability due to lack of consistency.It's not 'consistent' because it's not supposed to be; these widgets are not your standard apps. They are self-contained little doohickeys that exist outside the dock, menu, and desktop. I personally think the flip-to-settings is genius (yes, I know it's a rippoff on a Sun idea) for precisely the reasons you don't like them: everything is self-contained so you don't need to bother with menus or going to preferences to change the settings. More efficient in my opinion.


Also, and this is the big negative, how much of a pain is it to make a change in the settings, then have to flip the window over to see what the change looks like, flip it back, modify the change, flip it back, etc. etc.

A very bad direction.I agree with you on this, although I think the act of flipping back and forth is as efficient as going to the menu and switching settings. Perhaps the use of control-click (right-click) could be implemented as a shortcut.

[iChan]

Sweet, Gotta love the uneccessary Eye Candy.

Edit: Is any eye candy neccessary?

Just improve the speed of the OS, I really don't care for eye candy past the 10 minute WOW factor.

WOW factor creates teh WOM factor. (word of mouth) eye candy is needed so we can say to our Windows colleagues.. "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!!"

[iChan]

Why?

It's blatantly obvious that Apple got the idea from Konfabulator. Sure, it appears that Apple is doing some things in the eye candy department to improve upon it... but it's still just a fancy version of Konfabulator.

do a bit of research and you will see that Konfab is a reimplementation of an old (apple!) idea.

[ndanimal]

Holy crapple, what is all this madness? Suddenly its the cool thing on here to shout about how Big Bad Apple is totally stomping on the little guy.

I've seen several posts about how apple used to INNOVATE and now they're just theiving savages like Microsoft...c'mon, do you REALLY think that every single good idea ever implemented in an Apple OS originated within the company? The key is taking good ideas and polishing them, integrating them into a usable whole.

So someone else came up with the idea first (maybe). If apple can do it better, why shouldn't they?

[iChan]

Flipping Sticky - a little version of the "Looking Glass" feature we've been discussing here recently.

i was thinking the same thing... which makes you think, why do they (sun) need java to do something like that? wouldn't it be much cheaper to do it in C and send it to the GPU for processing?

[iChan]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'll really have any use for these "widgets" that float in some strange "layer" on top of my desktop. Hopefully, Apple will prove me wrong, but since I have no basis for comparison (I have never used konfabulator) I am skeptical for now.

The eye candy does indeed look nice, don't get me wrong (especially that ripple effect) I just hope that form is not getting ahead of function here. :o

- reaper

you state you have never used Konfab before... besically, it's tagline is : "It's anything you want it to be."

so, if on dashboard, there is something it doesn't do, make it yourself?!? (that is if they include the DB SDK with Tiger, however, it might not be needed as the widgets are all written in javascript)

[iChan]

From the small demo I have seen the Dashboard appears to have the one feature that keeps me from using Konfabulator. It appears that it will be connected to Expose and have its own key so that if I press said key I will suddenly see all of my "widgets" and choose the one that I want to work with. Currently the only way to do this with Konfabulator is to attach the widgets to the desktop and press F11. The problem with this is that you can not see the stuff under the widgets at that point.

The Dashboard solution appears to solve all of these problems.

One last thing, the widgets that are the actual parts of Konfabulator that the user uses are made by third parties that may or may not support and update them. With Dashboard we will have Apple supported widgets that will continue to work.

Frank

there is a actually a new version of konfab out, 1.7, that has a new feature called "konposé" (geez, i wonder how they came up with name) that lets you see all your widgets by pressing a hotkey.

[iChan]

amen on the resource hog post for konfabulator. From the video that I watched, this looks to be a part of expose that I could really use. I didn't buy konfabulator because of the widgets taking up so much screen space. This may just be what I want so I can pull them up whenever I want them

i agree... resource hog!

however, you can leave all your widgets on the desktop and use enposé to see them...
and the konfab developers also released a bunch of "mini" widgets...

it was promised that there would be one every thursday, but that never happened...

i think konfab should concentrate on upgrading the engine... with the coreimage SDK, they can hopefully harness the power and update konfab to allow users to resize the widgets to whatever size they want...

just like with icons... no degradation!

does anyone know if the dashboard widgets are PNG or vector based?

[iChan]

the ripple effect is pretty cool. i have a very good feeling that tiger will blow people away once released. we just haven't seen the pure awesome-ness, yet.

yeah, what i love about it is that it takes the OS away from being so static and gives it an almost organic quality.

[Jalexster]

I like the sound of Konfabulator using CoreImage. Scalable widgets.

Anouther advantage that Konfab has over Dashboard, is the faact it can be easily updated, before apple gets a chance, sure there is System Update, but it's still not as upgradable, without having to update core parts of the system, if it is intergrated into Expose.

(I hope I'm not making an idiot out of myself again)

[iChan]

take a look at this people...

http://news.com.com/1606-2-5234982.html

just an example of what MS will be able to do with their Avalon (think quartz extreme - bastardised) graphics rendering system.

is it frankly quite impressive and a MASSIVE leap for them. nothing that coreimage can't do now though (well, in 2005), and do much better.

[netytan]

Well, is it? I love these little guys and i would hate to have to use Dashboard if this is all i would use it for :(. Personally, i think the idea is ok... but lacks all the spark of OSX style!

Mark.

[iChan]

[QUOTE=chuckiej]Apple should have hired Arlo and Perry to take care of this. Give them access to the OS and they would have an awesome non-hoggy version of K in no time. :confused: (Many of the lag issues I have are more due to my low grade video cards than anything else)
/QUOTE]

the thing is, i feel that the dashboard feature is something that was added to show off the capability of CoreImage and to really inspire the development community.

now with Coreimage, many of the problems with Konfab are overcome almost through the technology of CoreImage, now through some fancy coding of the Dashboard app itself. So, in my opinion, Arlo and Perry weren't needed... Apple must move on.

[iChan]

Well, is it? I love these little guys and i would hate to have to use Dashboard if this is all i would use it for :(. Personally, i think the idea is ok... but lacks all the spark of OSX style!

Mark.

well, i see no reason for stickies to go... unless they are going to be permanently embedding into dashboard which is something that i think apple will do...

however, with apps like calculato, they have to keep it for the scientific calulator. but clock?? no...

is there anything that you can do with stickies now that you think cna't be done with stickies under dashboard?

[1macker1]

That's pretty darn cool!
take a look at this people...

http://news.com.com/1606-2-5234982.html

just an example of what MS will be able to do with their Avalon (think quartz extreme - bastardised) graphics rendering system.

is it frankly quite impressive and a MASSIVE leap for them. nothing that coreimage can't do now though (well, in 2005), and do much better.

[SilentPanda]

I don't think the ripple effect is useless.

Those widgets, despite how they look on a tiny screen, aren't big. When you open most apps, you have two visual indications: the menu bar changes, and the main window of the app (usually) pops up.

Neither of these things is true for widgets. They pop up, somewhere on your screen (wherever it was you last closed them from and/or wherever there is space for them to pop up). The ripple effect gives visual indication that (1) yes, you really did click on that widget's name, and (2) here's where the widget went.

IMHO, what this is a perfect example of is people dissing eye candy without having tried the thing out ... the eye candy is there for a reason.

Wow. I never thought of it that way. I installed Konfab last night to check it out and my biggest problem was that I would open some of the smaller widgets and not even know where they were. Especially once I had several on the screen and a widget would appear on top of another one. The water ripple effect would have made it possible for me to easily find my new widgets.

[iChan]

Up until now, most of the 'eye candy' has had a function:

The 'Genie' effect readily identifies to OSX rookies where windows go when minimized - there's no such thing as the user clicking minimize and wondering where their window went.

The Dock magnification allows more icons in the Dock, and yet have them scale large enough to be visually distinguished from each other.

Likewise, you can find some kind of visual feedback reasoning behind most of the 'candy' in OSX, but the ripple effect above looks to be pure useless gloss to me.

I think we will see more of the eye candy, especially with CoreImage because it won't be much of a hit on resources...

actually, i am confusing myself... is there a huge difference between quartz extreme and CoreImage? is coreimage just a set of filters?

[savar]

There is an inherent risk for the developers of Konfabulator and similar enhancements. Windows users will remember WinFax. A useful utility that made a lot of money until Microsoft included faxing in their OS. There is a limited window of opportunity for this type of development and it requires that you always be one step ahead of the OS. Konfabulator's time has come. Move on.

Well I always assumed that if Apple ripped off *my* shareware -- if only in concept and not even in appearance -- that I could expect a check for $5000. Konfab has probably taken a thousand hours to develop (including the website, etc.) and now Apple is poaching its territory. I think Apple will do it a smidgen better and the fact that its free (with purchase of OS, :) instead of $25 means I will actually use it. Nevertheless, the concept is uncannily based on Konfabulator; a small check from Apple would help justify all the work he's put into it.

Otherwise, this is a sign to all shareware developers: don't develop any utilities that are too useful to mainstream users, or Apple might put you out of business.

Clearly that's the wrong message to send. The worst part is that $5000 is so little to Apple and so much to independent shareware developers.

[tny]

You must be in a generous mood. It's a Javascript API. Big deal. I suppse we should all pay everyone for their web site ideas that blatantly keep getting ripped off as well.

The developer should feel pleased that his widget set was noticed by Apple and for $25 who the hell would pay it when OS X brand new is only $129?

It reminds me of The Jerk when the kid wins the prize and Steve Martin widdles down the best prizes for basically a pencil. Comparing $129 for OS X and all its substance to $25 Javascript widget eye candy.

I'd be learning Objective-C Cocoa in a hurry and Core Imaging to write new applications that I can really charge money for and justify the whining.

By the way these ideas aren't "new" inside Apple. They just finally decided to put them in and make them "cooler."

The author of Konfabulator used to work for Apple. Pixar and Schiller are both licensees for Konfabulator (Pixar has a site license). Konfabulator is NOT written in Javascript; the WIDGETS are written in Javascript and XML. That's the fundamental concept that differentiates Konfabulator from earlier desktop tool programs: you can write web application desktop tools. Apple copied that idea (right down to the use of Javascript, from what I heard) and the name of the tools ("Widgets"). They blatantly plagiarized a concept from one of their more successful small third-party developers. Is it illegal? No, it's not; I'm sure they didn't use any source code, and so this is about "work-alike" products. The issue is about developer relations: if you keep annexing the ideas of your best third-party developers, you'll damage the developer's perception of his chances for success in developing for your platform. At this point, I know that I wouldn't try to start a company based on developing an app for Apple;
what's the point? It's hard to be successful with such a small installed user base - to be successful, you need a decent percentage of Apple's base. But if you get enough of a percentage of Apple's base to get noticed by Apple, they'll just copy your idea and put you out of business. Maybe it's worth the risk for a large developer and large projects (where it's more cost-effective for Apple to buy the project from it's originator than to roll its own), but not for the little fry. That's why everyone is so angry about this. Being honored that Apple liked your idea enough to push you out of business doesn't put food on the table.

[iChan]

Apple has made a wrong turn here. What were they thinking?


Look at Konfabulators homepage and it says "Cupertino, Start up your photocopiers!"

It looks the same as konfabulator ( we all know by now).

I actually use to use konfab back in 2000, it was cool with the weather check but the clock and everything else was obsesive.

Microsoft Bob is much like dashboard, haha. Apple is becoming a microsoft.

Very hipocritical, they talk about microsoft with longhorn copying os x, well if u think about it, thats the same thing apple is doing with dashboard. I hope apple gets sued or at least steve jobs gets his Head out of his (!) before my stock plumits. I must admit the displays are breath taking though. Apple is very COCKY, almost zepplin like!


owner of imac 15 in.( first addition flat screen) w/ superdrive, 2 powerbook 12", an old imac dv edition, 40 gb ipod and every accessory available!

how is dashboard anything like MS BOB?? MS BOB was a GUI replacement... Dashboard does nothing of the sort and does not get in the way, and can be the ultimate in unobtrusiveness... don't use it!!!

Apple are not becoming MS-like...

you pick out ONE feature that you THINK apple copied from MS and fail to recognise all the features MS took from apple...

but even there you are just plain wrong... i reiterate, Dashboard is NOT an MS Bob clone.

You have EVERY accessory?? wrong again and i know it...

[netytan]

well, i see no reason for stickies to go... unless they are going to be permanently embedding into dashboard which is something that i think apple will do...

however, with apps like calculato, they have to keep it for the scientific calulator. but clock?? no...

is there anything that you can do with stickies now that you think cna't be done with stickies under dashboard?

Not really no,

I just like the idea that you can attach a sticky to your desktop and its just there - say when you start up in the morning; they just seem to be where they belong! Meaning, you dont have to flip to another desktop/dashboard layer to see what your notes say. A note should be visable or whats the point in making it, right?

Maybe they could have both, the standard Stickies app and a widget that you can extend if you want, then everyone would be happy. After looking at the screenshots of the dashboard *shuders* and reading everything i could find about it im just not convinced its something im going to bother with every day, but Stickies are a way of life ;). In comparison anyway.

I'd actually be happy if Apple gave you the option to turn the thing off :D. But I am glad they definatly arnt moving the calculator. If you ask me that thing rocks!

If any of this sounds silly please bare with me, i only just switched ;). Thanks for the reply,

Mark.

[30jan-1972]

... Is it illegal? No, it's not; I'm sure they didn't use any source code, and so this is about "work-alike" products. The issue is about developer relations: if you keep annexing the ideas of your best third-party developers, you'll damage the developer's perception of his chances for success in developing for your platform. At this point, I know that I wouldn't try to start a company based on developing an app for Apple;
what's the point? It's hard to be successful with such a small installed user base - to be successful, you need a decent percentage of Apple's base. But if you get enough of a percentage of Apple's base to get noticed by Apple, they'll just copy your idea and put you out of business. Maybe it's worth the risk for a large developer and large projects (where it's more cost-effective for Apple to buy the project from it's originator than to roll its own), but not for the little fry. That's why everyone is so angry about this. Being honored that Apple liked your idea enough to push you out of business doesn't put food on the table.

[begin sarcasm]Good thing nobody told Alias about this Konfab-Dashboard stuff. They might be nervous about releasgin Maya Unlimited on the Mac.[end sarcasm]

Konfab is not the best of what's out there - far from it. Write real software... eat cake. Write little things that are logical OS parts/extensions and could be written by any ITT grad... eat ramen.

30 Jan. 1972

[MorganX]

Konfab is not the best of what's out there - far from it. Write real software... eat cake. Write little things that are logical OS parts/extensions and could be written by any ITT grad... eat ramen.

30 Jan. 1972

Like transparent windows that fade over time due to inactivity. Pfft.

[stukick]

Gee whiz...another $129 for so little innovation. :(

[Jookbox]

i don't know how to describe it, but those movies were cool and retarded at the same time. i can't believe that much thought is being put into a fake post-it note.

[Sabbath]

I really don't like the look of the dashboard widgets, it just doesn't feel inline with the rest of the OS. The eye candy effects however I love :rolleyes: hehe.

I do like the way these disappear however, I hate desktop clutter, I get rid of everything but mounted removeable drive on my desktop and Konfabulator widgets just feel like clutter to me. Just my perspective however and I do feel bad for the Konfabulator guys, Apple even had to call them widgets!

[iChan]

I meant Longhorn's dynamic folders, in terms of Spotlight being similar to Longhorn.
Longhorn has music, document, image, video and game folders, that have all the relative content stored in them, no matter where the actual files are in the folder-structure.

Spotlight's searching, and smart folders are very similar to Longhorn's system. I know that iTunes had those features first, but that was music only. The branching into the file-structure was done by Longhorn first.

Also, Apple is even ripping off Looking Glass in a way. They are running out of ideas. We know they can do better, rather than just ripping off other's ideas.

And, about Dashboard ripping off Konfabulator:
Konfabulator was not the first of it's kind to do what it did, but it was different, with well-implemented tranparencies, customization, etc... And now Apple has introduced a system that is VERY similar to Konfabulator.

Jalexster... Longhorn was not the first company to state that they wanted to use a Meta data search engine in their OS... I don't know who were first, however, I do know that BeOS had a Meta data file system...

this sort of search has long been seen as a holy-grail of sorts for our incresing amounts of data file and folders.. so to say apple are copying MS is wrong, and even if apple were copying MS, it would still be wrong to state that MS came up with the idea or the tech or the implemention.

Now, what is wrong with what apple has done with their stickies?? allowing them to have the preferences on the back of it??? I don't see how that is a sign that apple is running out of ideas...

it is a good idea that apple implemented and that is the bottom line.

[rastap]

I don`t mind a little competition for Konfabulator, but does seriously anybody think any of the Dashboard widgets do look better than this? If yes, you need a little lesson in taste!



http://muzik.spymac.net/icalevents.jpg

[XForge]

No offense meant to anyone who has use for such things, but I need all that chazerai floating around my desktop like I need another pair of legs growing out of my hips.

[mrsebastian]

konfab is a pretty cool, but very limited... it's eye candy and so is dashboard. i'm not a programmer [i just play one on the internet], but it seems to me that most widgets are either calendars, clocks, css news display, and itunes remotes. sure there are a few useful things and the only one i actually use is the cpu temperature display, but the current widgets are extremely limited. i like the idea of apple using dashboard as a vehicle for lots of little apps like stickies, which in its current form, is less than useful. if anything, it will keep "widget" apps nicely organized. nice to see apple taking a good idea and turning it into something more... all that said apple still needs to pay some respect, otherwise known as financial compensation, to konfab as apple has blatantly stolen this idea and is touting it as their own.

[365]

I don't know if this has been mentioned but for all those moaning about the look of the dashboard modules, Steve Jobs did say that they would be working on this between now and launch and that he wanted the developer community to start working on some knock out modules.

This is beta software, I'll admit that it's arguably fugly beta software but I think we should reserve judgement.

[mrkstu]

Whenever you do two things at once, Apple is likely to take the ground out from under you:

1: Write an interesting extension to the OS

2: Create an API for it

Something like the Haxie extensions are almost *pure* API and not so vulnerable.

Watson was a direct extension of an Apple concept and Konfab is an extension of the Desk Accessory/Applet concept- and they both provided API's. Apple is the OS provider- they want to provide/control the ecosystem that their developers write to- that means controlling the API.

I don't blame them for wanting the control either- its an essential component to delivering a high quality end user experience. By the time you see Tiger actually rolling out, I think you'll also see the GUI's on the example applets conform much closer to the standard Apple GUI.

[rastap]

Its very useful for me because otherwise I always would have to wait one minit until stupid iCal decides to open a window when a beautiful women is asking me out for dinner (for example ;) ).

[jettredmont]

Using your logic, why innovate? Why apply for patents. I say patents are a waste of time since everything has been invented that needs to be. A car for example, is a copy of a bicycle. I mean, according to your logic, this would be true because a bicycle gets you from point A to B, sure a car does it faster but so what? and by your logic, a plane is merely a copy of a car, only thing it does it gets you from point A to B faster. Your logic are a little on the silly side.


That's because you missed it.

The point is, "idea theft" is not "proven" by a scant set of similarities between products. All products will share similar traits merely due to the fact that they coexist in one marketplace and one world. FTP and HTTP share the trait that they can both transfer files, to borrow the previous example. However, this doesn't mean that HTTP is an FTP "ripoff"; it is different in core purpose, in fundamental design, and in intended audience.

Likewise, the fact that both Dashboard and Konfabulator have a similar set of widgets does not mean one is a ripoff of the other. They differ in fundamental ways, at their very mission statements.

As for patenting ideas ... well, generally the software developer community frowns upon that, while the software suits community loves it. But, in the end, for something to be patentable it has to be innovative in some way. Taking a technology du jour (javascript) and an age-old idea (widget toolkit) does not generally yield a patentable idea. And, believe me, the standards for a patentable idea are absurdly low.


Whether something could be done before is not the issue. The issue is whether the implementation has been done before. IE, man has always been able to tell time but when the clock was invented, it was the first time he was able to tell time without looking at the sky or the stars, etc. An application can be functionally doing something that has been done before and yet be new because it implements it actions in a new way. Unfortunately for Konfabulator and dashboard, this has been done before by stardock. So apple saying "Redmond, start your photocopiers" does not really wash. My argument with you is not that Konfabulator is not new (it isn't), my argument with you is your logic. It's ok to defend apple, just do it without the blinders on. Makes your logic much clearer.

Ummm... okay. I never said Dashboard was a completely new or even a patentable idea. I wouldn't put StarDock as a predecessor of Dashboard (although it is certainly more in line with Konfabulator), but there are several more tenable instances of previous art, the most pertinent of which continues to be Apple's own Desk Accessories. The real set-apart innovation here, which is simple yet killer, is that Dashboard gets out of your way when you're not using it. Stardock doesn't, and Konfabulator doesn't. This isn't a "feature", it is a core difference of approach. I'm not sure if there is a pertinent predecessor there.

On the note of the "start your photocopiers" jab, do you think it may be possible that Apple was talking of Tiger as a whole instead of a specific individual feature of Tiger?

[datafatmunger]

those widgets are ugly for eye candy. . .

[Freg3000]

I personally think the flip-to-settings is genius (yes, I know it's a rippoff on a Sun idea)

This is not meant to single anyone out, as many people have said it before as well, but why does everything have to be a rip off of something else? Why can't it be that Apple was developing that type of "flip" technology at the same time as Sun, but Sun showed it to the public first. Does that mean Apple stole it from Sun? No! For all we know, Apple may have started development before Sun, but was slower in creating it. There is a chance that neither sides knew about each others concurrent development.

Face it: we are at the bottom of the totem pole, and we know the least about the situation. We just try to form our opinions on the limited information we know. Not to say that we shouldn't try to form opinions, but we shouldn't be wanting to sue Apple and accuse them of ridiculously unethical behavior.

(My Sun/Apple "flip" technology was just an example, it probably didn't work out that way, but it could have.)

[tny]

[begin sarcasm]Good thing nobody told Alias about this Konfab-Dashboard stuff. They might be nervous about releasgin Maya Unlimited on the Mac.[end sarcasm]

Konfab is not the best of what's out there - far from it. Write real software... eat cake. Write little things that are logical OS parts/extensions and could be written by any ITT grad... eat ramen.

30 Jan. 1972

Ok, if Konfabulator "is not the best of what's out there," point to a better widget hosting service for the Mac. Don't make apple-and-oranges comparisons between a major developer who's got the resources for a big application that it would not be cost-effective for Apple to and a small developer who's using limited resources in a creative way. (Of course, one could also point to Premiere as a counter-example to Maya).

Maybe you're trying to say that Apple doesn't need small developers; if so, what is the point of WWDC? WWDC is a forum for Apple to talk to SMALL DEVELOPERS. Big developers with lots of resources have their own channels for communicating with Apple. For Apple to demo Dashboard at WWDC without first taking care of the Konfab developers and doing a shout out smacks of really, really incompetent developer relations (comparable to their recent incompetences with Mac resellers). Buying Konfab wouldn't have cost them much, and would have given them a nice little bit of good publicity for WWDC.

[whooleytoo]

actually, i am confusing myself... is there a huge difference between quartz extreme and CoreImage? is coreimage just a set of filters?

The way I understand it:

Quartz Extreme consists of two parts, Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositing. Q2D is a 2D graphics API. It (along with QuickDraw, QuickTime and OpenGL) passes it's resultant bitmap data to Quartz Compositer, which takes those bitmaps and renders them onto OpenGL polygons and offloads them to the GPU, which is ideally suited for handling translucency, layering etc.

CoreImage is an API for manipulation of bitmaps, so you most likely will only be using it if you're using a Tiger-requiring graphics or video app. (Then again, who knows what uses developers will find for it and CoreVideo. My first thought was - wouldn't it be cool to use that to send ripples across my desktop picture periodically, or have it shimmer like it's underwater. Very relaxing.. ;) )

[30jan-1972]

Ok, if Konfabulator "is not the best of what's out there," point to a better widget hosting service for the Mac. Don't make apple-and-oranges comparisons between a major developer who's got the resources for a big application that it would not be cost-effective for Apple to and a small developer who's using limited resources in a creative way. (Of course, one could also point to Premiere as a counter-example to Maya).

Maybe you're trying to say that Apple doesn't need small developers; if so, what is the point of WWDC? WWDC is a forum for Apple to talk to SMALL DEVELOPERS. Big developers with lots of resources have their own channels for communicating with Apple. For Apple to demo Dashboard at WWDC without first taking care of the Konfab developers and doing a shout out smacks of really, really incompetent developer relations (comparable to their recent incompetences with Mac resellers). Buying Konfab wouldn't have cost them much, and would have given them a nice little bit of good publicity for WWDC.

Better widget maker? AppleScript. RealBasic. XCode. Anything you can make in Koncrapulator can be made in all three of those. And I can make them just as fast. And they will use fewer resources. And they'll likely end up free and sans bloat. Better widget environ? OSX. Native code runs faster.

Simple logic for CC grads: widgets != software.

As to dev size, there are degrees of small. Two ex Apple employees scamming people on widgets is tiny. TINY. RealBasic is small. Ambrosia is small. A couple of guys and their Javascript widget maker are not the target audience of WWDC - sorry.

Did they expect that Apple would never do this? Duh.... Did they expect to get paid for something they didn't think up? Did they expect to get paid when Apple's will not use their code implementation (bloat gurgle bloat)? Whatever.

boo freaking hoo

30 Jan. 1972

[stingerman]

TNY Who copied who? Desktop Accessories have always been part of the Mac OS, since 1984 and Apple was the first to allow you to have them alongside Apps. Especially in the days when you could only run one app at a time. In those days you had to program them in assembly and C. Now Apple builds an SDK that allows you to build widgets using Webkit, Expose and Core Image/Video. So what? You could create widget type apps using AppleStudio and Applescript before that.

Being that the core is Webkit, it address a major limitation of Konfabulator, namely integration with other web standards like CSS - something many of us have been waiting for. What Apple did was integrate webkit, so you get Javascript along with everything else. Konfabulator just gives you Javascript, hardly an invention of their own.

Konfabulator should be smart and take advantage of the free press Apple is giving them by legitimizing the space. How many new customers will they get between now and 2005? They could get plenty and extend their features in ways Apple has not yet, thus giving users a compelling reason to buy konfabulator. It is only a fool of a company that views this as a bad thing.

[network23]

It's not 'consistent' because it's not supposed to be; these widgets are not your standard apps. They are self-contained little doohickeys that exist outside the dock, menu, and desktop. I personally think the flip-to-settings is genius (yes, I know it's a rippoff on a Sun idea) for precisely the reasons you don't like them: everything is self-contained so you don't need to bother with menus or going to preferences to change the settings. More efficient in my opinion.

I mostly agree here -- are we both assuming that these widgets are unique in that they really don't have a "menu bar", but how much better would it be if they used Apple's current standards relating to dialogs related to an app: the pref windows can either slide out the side or squeeze/unsqueeze out of the title bar (wherever it may be located on the widget). I think it's cool that the squeeze technique they developed for instances when the dialog box is larger than the window it emerges from, is so easily adaptable to these widgets that can be almost any size or shape.

I'm just saying that it's sometimes very important to be able to see the widget in question while you're making changes on that widget. Especially in color/font situations.

[craigiest]

bright colors, extra animation (probably optional)

I pray the animation is optional. The ripple effect is ugly and obnoxious. Why does an unassuming little desk accessory like a calculator need to announce itself with a system-wide earthquake? The best visual effects help you notice and understand what is happening. Magnification of the dock allows you to see the items you are interested in while still allowing many small icons in the dock. Genie effect is just a distraction and provides no more usability that the scale effect, so I use the latter. I do not need to have my whole screen shake for me to understand that I have opened a new item. I have no interest in my OS looking like TV News and Sports title animation.

[shen]

The way I understand it:

Quartz Extreme consists of two parts, Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositing. Q2D is a 2D graphics API. It (along with QuickDraw, QuickTime and OpenGL) passes it's resultant bitmap data to Quartz Compositer, which takes those bitmaps and renders them onto OpenGL polygons and offloads them to the GPU, which is ideally suited for handling translucency, layering etc.

CoreImage is an API for manipulation of bitmaps, so you most likely will only be using it if you're using a Tiger-requiring graphics or video app. (Then again, who knows what uses developers will find for it and CoreVideo. My first thought was - wouldn't it be cool to use that to send ripples across my desktop picture periodically, or have it shimmer like it's underwater. Very relaxing.. ;) )

my worry is "how much of CoreImage is needed?" since i own two Macs, and neither can handle CoreImage, what will be in Tiger that I simply can't use, or will it be similar to Quartz Extreme in that i will have the function but lose some speed/eye candy? will i not have widgets at all? or will they not have the ripple effect. that sort of thing. be a real shame to not get all that cool stuff when I upgrade a Mac i have owned for less than year to a new OS......

[Fender2112]

Didn't Micrsoft demo something similar about a year ago for the upcoming Longhorn release? Seems like I remember them calling it Areo or something like that. You click on a button and the page flips over revealing info about the document. There was also some sort of ripple effect done on the desktop.

[egdiroh]

IT is really funny seeing the mac worlds perspective to some of these implimentations.
Widgets are a really old concept. they have been around for a long time, and they have had varying deployment frameworks.
The point of the konfabulator framework is to allow for simple devolopment, in fact the initial idea was basically for a simple xml gui scripting language, to make writing small guis easy. The idea got changed to javascript because it is a better language for it.
The point of the dash board is for convience in getting to simple application or performing simple functions. Do you know how much of a pain it can be to get at calculator, if you just need to do a quick calculation?
It makes getting at info in simple apps easier and simple controls for bigger apps easier.
More over none of the apple widgets look like they were copied and it does not look like the frame work was copied, because it looks like it behaves differently.
Really the "copied" things are javascript and widgets. Widgets aren't new. Also konf... switched to javascript, because they realized that it was the right choice for this sort of thing, so you can hardly blame apple for the
same decision. Really all these claims of theft are unfounded. I understand believing them if you have not had a lot of experience with unix or X, but since the writers were working at sun, they should no better then to call this a rip off.


Sorry guys. That's just my gut reaction.

I'm REALLY disappointed, and quite frankly, SHOCKED that Apple blatantly ripped off Konfabulator. They're even calling the apps WIDGETS fer fook's sake. (I don't know the whole story with Watson and Sherlock, but hasn't this happened before?) Unbelievable. I LOVE Apple. I support them 100% in nearly everything they do, but then they turn around and do something so low, like this. I mean, couldn't they have, at the very least, PHONED the developers or something? Offered them jobs? Apple is seen as this great, progressive, friendly underdog of a company. Legally, they probably don't owe anybody anything, but if they want me to think of Apple as a truly great company...They could've handled this a little, well, more friendly.

Maybe I'm overreacting and I'm just failing to see that this is the start of something huge in which EVERYONE starts implementing widgets, changing the way we compute. But right now, I'm not liking the way this smells at all.

[logicat2001]

I pray the animation is optional. The ripple effect is ugly and obnoxious. Why does an unassuming little desk accessory like a calculator need to announce itself with a system-wide earthquake?

Remember, this OS is not yet ready or meant for public consumption. If it's going to arrive in the first half of 2005, we've got nearly a full year of development prior to it's release.

What we're seeing today is not the OS that we'll see when we purchase the OS next year.

Best,
Logicat

[sethypoo]

Chuckle. :)

Taken from the Konfabulator website. I'm sure most of you have seen this. Worth a laugh, or at least a smile!

[MorganX]

The full screen ripple is totally ridiculous. The sticky flipping is sweet. I like it. I loved it when Sun demo'd it in Looking Glass some time ago. Apple's doing a lot of copying this generation. What's good for the goose.. I don't have a problem with that, I have a problem with Jobs' thinking people are so brainwashable they don't know better.

[MorganX]

Didn't Micrsoft demo something similar about a year ago for the upcoming Longhorn release? Seems like I remember them calling it Areo or something like that. You click on a button and the page flips over revealing info about the document. There was also some sort of ripple effect done on the desktop.

they had some effects, nothing as garish as the Tiger Ripple. It's Sun's looking glass that demo'd the window flipping about a year ago.

The good news is now, maybe MS will release a Longhorn Beta with the new UI and effects. They've shown about 10% of it. Now that Apple has blown their wad, they can stop holding out.

[MorganX]

this sort of search has long been seen as a holy-grail of sorts for our incresing amounts of data file and folders.. so to say apple are copying MS is wrong, and even if apple were copying MS, it would still be wrong to state that MS came up with the idea or the tech or the implemention.


Correct. WinFS is being built on SQL Server, which ultimately was purchased by MS years ago. Hey wait, iTunes was also purchased by Apple years ago. Well whaddya know, they're not so different after all. Muahahaha! :D

[Mr. G4]

Actually the widget do not stay on the desktop.
You press F12, the screen darken, the the widget appear, then you click on the widget you want to use or change the preference, once you are done click anywhere on the screen beside your widgets and they all disappear in the background...it's like Exposé option of showing the desktop.

The Widgets are on the same concept as the Konfabulator widget...3rd party can develop it.

From the small demo I have seen the Dashboard appears to have the one feature that keeps me from using Konfabulator. It appears that it will be connected to Expose and have its own key so that if I press said key I will suddenly see all of my "widgets" and choose the one that I want to work with. Currently the only way to do this with Konfabulator is to attach the widgets to the desktop and press F11. The problem with this is that you can not see the stuff under the widgets at that point.

The Dashboard solution appears to solve all of these problems.

One last thing, the widgets that are the actual parts of Konfabulator that the user uses are made by third parties that may or may not support and update them. With Dashboard we will have Apple supported widgets that will continue to work.

Frank

[iChan]

i'm sureprised that the majority of people on this board thought that the leaked shots were fake, that they could be knocked up in PS in a few minutes... if they can be knocked up in a few minutes, then what makes you think that apple or its thousands of developers and designers come up with soemthing nicer in a whole year? get real about the design... focus on the tech man... that's where the true appreciation of the dashboard lies.

[iChan]

The way I understand it:

Quartz Extreme consists of two parts, Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositing. Q2D is a 2D graphics API. It (along with QuickDraw, QuickTime and OpenGL) passes it's resultant bitmap data to Quartz Compositer, which takes those bitmaps and renders them onto OpenGL polygons and offloads them to the GPU, which is ideally suited for handling translucency, layering etc.

CoreImage is an API for manipulation of bitmaps, so you most likely will only be using it if you're using a Tiger-requiring graphics or video app. (Then again, who knows what uses developers will find for it and CoreVideo. My first thought was - wouldn't it be cool to use that to send ripples across my desktop picture periodically, or have it shimmer like it's underwater. Very relaxing.. ;) )

thanks for the description... but i read somewhere that coreimage is like Quartz Extreme x 4... that puts it into perspective.

I think quartz is the technology to actually get the image on the screen... coreimage is a very efficient, cheap (in terms of processor cycles) way to manipulate what Quartz shows.

[MacQuest]

thx, are you the same MacQuest that was on Spymac?

That's me. In the cyber-flesh! :D

[tny]

TNY Who copied who? Desktop Accessories have always been part of the Mac OS, since 1984 and Apple was the first to allow you to have them alongside Apps. Especially in the days when you could only run one app at a time. In those days you had to program them in assembly and C. Now Apple builds an SDK that allows you to build widgets using Webkit, Expose and Core Image/Video. So what? You could create widget type apps using AppleStudio and Applescript before that.

Being that the core is Webkit, it address a major limitation of Konfabulator, namely integration with other web standards like CSS - something many of us have been waiting for. What Apple did was integrate webkit, so you get Javascript along with everything else. Konfabulator just gives you Javascript, hardly an invention of their own.

Konfabulator should be smart and take advantage of the free press Apple is giving them by legitimizing the space. How many new customers will they get between now and 2005? They could get plenty and extend their features in ways Apple has not yet, thus giving users a compelling reason to buy konfabulator. It is only a fool of a company that views this as a bad thing.

You don't show any evidence of having read my posting. The point here is that Konfab was designed for lowest-common-denominator users to be able to create their own widgets, NOT PROGRAMMERS. Thus it fits in nicely with the AppleScript philosophy, leveraging a technology that a lot of non-programmers have learned to do webpages. It's very hypercardish in some ways, but is has a "hipper" look and feel than a hypercard app.

[whooleytoo]

thanks for the description... but i read somewhere that coreimage is like Quartz Extreme x 4... that puts it into perspective.


Sounds like something straight out of Steve Jobs blog! ;)


I think quartz is the technology to actually get the image on the screen... coreimage is a very efficient, cheap (in terms of processor cycles) way to manipulate what Quartz shows.

Of course, how useful it is depends largely on how (and how much) developers adopt the API. And in particular, how much Apple use the technology in OSX itself. Since they did seem to be emphasising it being real-time, we might be seeing a lot more effects like the widgets 'ripple' effects.

[tny]

Simple logic for CC grads: widgets != software.
30 Jan. 1972

Widgets actually can be software. Of course the idea is that Konfab "widgets" can be written by non-developers with a few web-page building skills, even those who think the second and third repetition of "bloat gurgle bloat" is funny. But while many of the existing widgets are little more than spruced up documents, javascript is I believe a Turing-complete language, and so in theory can be used to implement any algorithm within the resources of the system and environment.

The most common definition of software is something on the order of "instructions for manipulating data or hardware." The only other widely-used definition I can think of would consider even data to be "software," so we'll table that for the time being. If a widget performs some application task, like a calculator or a remote control, it's software. Of course a widget doesn't deserve the respect that Maya, or BBEdit, or even a simple text editor deserves, but a widget that performs a task (in contrast to one that merely presents data in a format even vaguely reminiscent of its raw form, as for instance structured markup - XML or HTML - does) is software. A good rule of thumb is that if the application requires a Turing-complete language, the implementation should be considered software. Yes, that makes even some web pages "software" in some ways. But I suuspect that any reputable arguments that can be presented to deny that widgets that perform application tasks are "software" are arguments that can, in changes only of degree and not quality, ultimately be applied to anything beyond bare-metal programming.

By the way, my own education did not include a community college, so if this was intended as a slam against my intelligence or education, I suggest that you reconsider your attitude toward participation in this forum. I was in grad school when some of those on this forum were still in Pampers.

[MorganX]

The real set-apart innovation here, which is simple yet killer, is that Dashboard gets out of your way when you're not using it. Stardock doesn't, and Konfabulator doesn't. This isn't a "feature", it is a core difference of approach. I'm not sure if there is a pertinent predecessor there.

Come on now. Tiger looks great. A lot of it is about time. A lot of it is borrowed from other products and OS'. I mean, is anyone really capable of doing anything "that" different in an OS with similar hardware limitations?

Let's see, Clippy, the Office paperclip agent thingy, it got out of your way, automagically, when you were not using it. I remember testing the feature myself. Put clippy in the right margin and yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, yep, he moved out of the way. Someone call the patent office. Innovation at its best. A core difference of approach.

[iMeowbot]

TNY Who copied who? Desktop Accessories have always been part of the Mac OS, since 1984 and Apple was the first to allow you to have them alongside Apps.
Then I guess Apple stole the idea from Microsoft, who added TSR programs to DOS a few years before. ;) The most famous of those, Borland Sidekick, appeared right around the same time as Apple brought out its Macintosh.

[duklaprague]

I pray the animation is optional. The ripple effect is ugly and obnoxious.

having seen it now, i didn't really like it either. when i read *ripple effect* i imagined the space the widget occupied to ripple as the widget appeared or disappeared. bit more subtle like.

Iain

[CholEoptera36]

The way I understand it:

Quartz Extreme consists of two parts, Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositing. Q2D is a 2D graphics API. It (along with QuickDraw, QuickTime and OpenGL) passes it's resultant bitmap data to Quartz Compositer, which takes those bitmaps and renders them onto OpenGL polygons and offloads them to the GPU, which is ideally suited for handling translucency, layering etc.

CoreImage is an API for manipulation of bitmaps, so you most likely will only be using it if you're using a Tiger-requiring graphics or video app. (Then again, who knows what uses developers will find for it and CoreVideo. My first thought was - wouldn't it be cool to use that to send ripples across my desktop picture periodically, or have it shimmer like it's underwater. Very relaxing.. ;) )

Kool, I don't know a whole lot about the graphics engine behind OS X so that's interesting. I don't know what you do for a living, but considering what you say is true and you know a thing or two about QuartzExtreme, would you happen to know anything yet about Avalon? How do you think QuartzExtreme will compare to Avalon considering Avalon will be a graphics engine of the future? How would we tell this early if Avalon is ahead or behind it's time by the time Longhorn is released? Just curious as to what you know about that graphics engine so far.

[k2k koos]

hi hope when the tiger is lauched, the appearance of the widgets is a bit more in line with the rest of the OS. I do find them colorful, but a bit "childish". I know, iknow, mac computing should be fun too, but i just prefer them to look a bit more 'proffesional' , i thought the times of color designs were gone, and to be honest make me think a bit of MS XP..... apple can do better than that i feel...... just my thoughts...

[kettle]

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/

This is explaining an important difference between Dashboard and the Konfabulator versions of product.

What pro Konfabulator people are saying is that Apple should pay all other browser manufacturers of Web Browser because they copied an idea?

If Konfabulator is a better product people will still use it.

Dashboard is a better implementation of a very old idea, it's called a graphic user interface. All Konfabulator has been is a recent leader in fashion and style, about to be superseded on technological grounds.

[superninjagoat]

Perhaps it's a rip-off, perhaps not. Doesn't matter. To me, this is a prime example of what Apple is doing wrong, at least from a professional Mac user.

I can't tell you how annoying it would be to see that blasted ripple effect each time I launched the calculator or my address book. And even though I could and would likely turn this "feature" off, just knowing that it's there bugs me. Effects like this -- made simply as eye candy with no design- or form-based function -- only contribute to the Mac's reputation as a toy.

Now, if they wanted to use (a much more sublime) ripple when an alert box apears, that could be useful. At a point like that the OS needs to interrupt you so you can make a decision. I'm getting too deep into this criticism, and it's not even my biggest bone to pick.

OK, main argument: This is nothing more than an attempt to minimize shortcommings of Apple's Doc, which is little more than a eye candy version of the Window's task bar. Except I find the task bar on Windows useful. Now, rather than refining the Doc the way the Apple of the mid '90s would have done, the "new" apple glosses over the problem and introduces the next big thing.

If the problem was having all the DA-style applications taking up room in the doc, wouldn't a better implementation have been to give users an option to use tiny icons in an area on the doc a la the launcher buttons you could drag to the Window's task bar from Win98 on? Or would it be better to add an entirely new GUI interface element?

I'm tired of Steve Jobs smirking over effects that make my OS look ever more like VH1's "Pop Up Video" when my OS GUI is not snappy. I'm tired of an Apple that increasingly shuns the human interface for the GUI widget of the week.

[bitfactory]

hehe.

people need to CHILL.

Tiger is still ~ a year away.

Apple had guts to show this stuff so early - risking people "not putting the bits in perspective."

[jakemikey]

OK, main argument: This is nothing more than an attempt to minimize shortcommings of Apple's Doc, which is little more than a eye candy version of the Window's task bar. Except I find the task bar on Windows useful. Now, rather than refining the Doc the way the Apple of the mid '90s would have done, the "new" apple glosses over the problem and introduces the next big thing.

If the problem was having all the DA-style applications taking up room in the doc, wouldn't a better implementation have been to give users an option to use tiny icons in an area on the doc a la the launcher buttons you could drag to the Window's task bar from Win98 on? Or would it be better to add an entirely new GUI interface element?

I'm tired of Steve Jobs smirking over effects that make my OS look ever more like VH1's "Pop Up Video" when my OS GUI is not snappy. I'm tired of an Apple that increasingly shuns the human interface for the GUI widget of the week.


Wow...someone's got a lot of pent-up anger/frustration.

I'd rather forget that Apple even existed in the 90's. Whether or not you like Steve Jobs or the little effects that pop up here and there in OS X, you have to admit that Apple now at least puts out a respectable OS, (in my opinion, the most advanced OS out there). If Apple still did things as they were done in the stagnant 90's, I'd definitely be using Windows.

And I think you mean "dock" instead of "Doc".

And saying that Dashboard is just a band-aid for a crowded dock is a gross oversimplification. There are many things that we keep on our real desks (staplers, stickies, clocks, etc.) that we'd gladly remove if we could get to them quickly when we needed them. Dashboard makes this possible on our computer desktops. Tiny little icons would be a mess and a joke, but I find the concept of Dashboard (while gaudy in its current incarnation) very elegant. Push button, bring up simple reference tools/utilities. Push button once more, they're gone. Completely gone. No need to hunt for ugly, little Windows-like icons in the dock. No need to keep gaudy widgets permanently on the desktop. They just quickly float off "above your head".

While I did find the ripple effect a little over the top, it didn't cause me any emotional distress that it was there (which it apparently did for others...). The "clock-flip" effect seemed to be both cool and functional, which is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of in Dashboard.

[discstickers]

OK, main argument: This is nothing more than an attempt to minimize shortcommings of Apple's Doc, which is little more than a eye candy version of the Window's task bar. Except I find the task bar on Windows useful. Now, rather than refining the Doc the way the Apple of the mid '90s would have done, the "new" apple glosses over the problem and introduces the next big thing.


I think the Dock is far superior to the windows task bar. It's not as cluttered, the icons are more versitle (eg, Adium or iCal). Magnification is there for those that need it, not there for those that don't. It also holds applications that aren't running for easy access, and apps that are running can have custom contextual menus. Even the trash makes sense in the Dock, other applications can use it as a deleting metaphor.

[superninjagoat]

Wow...someone's got a lot of pent-up anger/frustration.

I'd rather forget that Apple even existed in the 90's. Whether or not you like Steve Jobs or the little effects that pop up here and there in OS X, you have to admit that Apple now at least puts out a respectable OS, (in my opinion, the most advanced OS out there). If Apple still did things as they were done in the stagnant 90's, I'd definitely be using Windows.

And I think you mean "dock" instead of "Doc".



You're right, I do have a lot of pent up anger about some of the OS changes in OSX. They mainly center around eye candy and the dock (Don't know what I was thinking about with "doc." Sorry.). I use a computer as a tool. And I need it to function -- even at the sake of the innovation. It's just gotta' work.

Now, this is not to say that the Unix underpinnings of OSX aren't a breath of fresh air; they are. And little things like not having to set my own memory allocations are a god send. I'd never go back.

But for me, the dock bothers me more than it helps. If I have a half dozen html files open for editing, it's hard to tell which icon belongs to which window. I want some sort of filename, not a picture of a file (html documents all look pretty much the same). And I don't want to have to roll over the icon to find out which file I'm dealing with. This slows my workflow down considerably.

I also think using the dock as a launcher is a bit misguided. I preferred to launch applications from the apple menu. But that's a bit of a moot point. We've all got our preferences.

On the other hand, dock icons are great for identifying which Photoshop document I'm working on.

And I think you're right; much of my last post was an oversimplification. But I still see what I interpret as a trend toward forcing users to interface with their computer in a new, novel ways and that implement features that are "fluffier" that necessary. Kinda' like when you get consumer software with a cheap digital camera that is supposed to be so easy that your grandmother can figure it out -- except she can't. And neither can you because it doesn't follow any logic. Apple hasn't gone that far with this; I'm not saying that. But I think I see inklings of it.

I miss the elegance and finesse of the Mac OS. Now I'm getting flash. I don't want flash; I want substance.

I feel as though I'm trolling a bit on this, and that's not my intention. I love Macintosh. I've been using them since '86, and they will always hold my allegiance. But that same passion means that I get ever so pissed when they do something that I feel violates the basic "contract" between a user and his or her computer.

[skipgin]

I, too, have been using Mac's professionally for quiet some time. Not as long as some but since the 512e. I was always taught to believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see. I believe we should all sit back and withhold judgement till all the facts come out. I have used similar "Konfab"-like products in both Windows and Macs for many years. Seems reasonable that Apple is just improving on something they intro'd years ago. But I'll wait to see the final implementation and all the facts from both sides to condemn anyone. Dashboard looks like it could be pretty useful to some of us and not so useful to others. And why shouldn't it look cool while it does what it does. People who think its just eye-candy don't have to use it if they don't want to. But don't condemn Apple for giving me something I think is nicely done and that I may find pretty useful for the way I work which may be different from the way you work. There is plenty of room at the table for all of us utilize Tiger as it suits each of us.

[~Shard~]

I'm starting to loose faith in Apple. Spotlight for example seems a bit similar to the searching features in Longhorn. Not that I'm saying that Apple dosen't have the right to rip off microsoft, they do, but Apple is becoming less-inovative nowdays.

You're starting to lose faith in Apple because they're going to be released yet another revolutionary OS is early 2005? Yah, innovation always make me lose faith in companies too.. :rolleyes:

And Spotlight seems similar to certain Longhorn features? Spotlight's based on the iTunes search tool, so I don't think so, and secondly, how can Apple be rippping stuff off from Longhorn when Longhorn won't even be released for 2 more years?!? :confused: If anything, Longhorn will be ripping off Tiger. News flash - Tiger will be released WELL BEOFRE Longhorn. Saying that Apple is copying Microsoft in this respect is like saying that there are features in the Canon PowerShot S500 camera that are copying a Sony camera that's going to be released in 2 years. Give me a break... :rolleyes:

[superninjagoat]

I think the Dock is far superior to the windows task bar. It's not as cluttered, the icons are more versitle (eg, Adium or iCal). Magnification is there for those that need it, not there for those that don't. It also holds applications that aren't running for easy access, and apps that are running can have custom contextual menus. Even the trash makes sense in the Dock, other applications can use it as a deleting metaphor.

I beg to differ, and as I recall, the Macintosh community balked big when apple first showed the dock. I know a lot of that was resisting change, but some of the dock's criticism is valid (see my filename rant in my last post). As for the Windows taskbar: It's ugly, blocky and cluttered as hell. But it doesn't slow down my workflow when I have to use it.

I like the idea of the dock. Before I ever used it, I lauded it. I thought Apple was going to take a good idea executed poorly on Windows and give it the panache of Macintosh. While my icons dance and shimmy on open, and things "genii" in and out -- heck, my movies play down there! -- I don't get to see the name of my file. That's such an egregious oversight. And putting a launcher in the dock isn't a bad idea, but if that's where you're supposed to put the aps you use most -- and for me that's easily a dozen aps -- you start to get clutter. Add some DAs and you've got pandemonium.

But rather than work out a better way to integrate the launcher into the dock (which is where I believe it belongs) they come up with another area to launch from. That's not intuitive, at least I don't think so.

In conclusion, I agree with you on this: The dock is a nice piece of software. (It took me a while, but I finally like the trash in the dock.) Where I disagree is that I think that, for all its shortcomings, being able to see window names at a glance gives the Window's task bar a usability edge when working with multiple, similar documents. And that's what I do much of the time.

[jakemikey]

I like the idea of the dock. Before I ever used it, I lauded it. I thought Apple was going to take a good idea executed poorly on Windows and give it the panache of Macintosh. While my icons dance and shimmy on open, and things "genii" in and out -- heck, my movies play down there! -- I don't get to see the name of my file. That's such an egregious oversight. And putting a launcher in the dock isn't a bad idea, but if that's where you're supposed to put the aps you use most -- and for me that's easily a dozen aps -- you start to get clutter. Add some DAs and you've got pandemonium.



I understand a little better where you're coming from now...If I understand you correctly, you want the dock to be more of a document manager than an app manager (like windows, as you said). That's a valid point, and you also have a valid point about Apple pressuring people into working a certain way, but I still can't relate much because I worked "Apple's way" before I even used OS X.

If you want better document management, I suggest using Expose a little more. F10 is my best friend when working with multiple docs within an app. It may take some getting used to, but I find it much more effective than the "Windows way" of just having names in the taskbar. I relate to things visually, not really by doc name (but like you said, that's just a matter of preference). So when I see what the doc looks like rather than just the name, I can identify it much more quickly.

As for the dock being an app launcher, I wouldn't have it any other way. I hate having to hunt through menus to find an app (I have to use Windows at work and this is a pain for me). Yeah, yeah there's the little launcher there, but if you have more than 4-5 (I use more apps than that), you encroach on the space you'd use for document names, etc.

[billyboy]

I understand a little better where you're coming from now...If I understand you correctly, you want the dock to be more of a document manager than an app manager (like windows, as you said). That's a valid point, ....

As for the dock being an app launcher, I wouldn't have it any other way. I hate having to hunt through menus to find an app (I have to use Windows at work and this is a pain for me). Yeah, yeah there's the little launcher there, but if you have more than 4-5 (I use more apps than that), you encroach on the space you'd use for document names, etc.

I use pop up dock to launch apps , ie a dock on the left with folders of logically arranged apps (my logic anyway), and unlike Apples dock, this dock is fixed in size and does not get filled up with open app icons, so muscle memory actually works, going to the same point everytime to launch something. Expose keeps me in touch with what is up and running document ways. Basically Apples dock has become redundant, and is mainly a repositry for open apps. I hardly ever go there. Even to force quit I find it easier to go to pop up dock to open Application Monitor

[logicat2001]

If you want better document management, I suggest using Expose a little more. F10 is my best friend when working with multiple docs within an app. It may take some getting used to, but I find it much more effective than the "Windows way" of just having names in the taskbar.

Try this:

• Use Exposé to reveal the current app's windows (sorry, I don't know what the official keyboard shortcut was - I changed it long ago)

• Use Command-` to move between each open app and it's own set of windows.

• Point and click at the one window you want when you locate it.


I think it's a brilliant design.

[superninjagoat]

I understand a little better where you're coming from now...If I understand you correctly, you want the dock to be more of a document manager than an app manager (like windows, as you said). That's a valid point, and you also have a valid point about Apple pressuring people into working a certain way, but I still can't relate much because I worked "Apple's way" before I even used OS X.

If you want better document management, I suggest using Expose a little more. F10 is my best friend when working with multiple docs within an app. It may take some getting used to, but I find it much more effective than the "Windows way" of just having names in the taskbar. I relate to things visually, not really by doc name (but like you said, that's just a matter of preference). So when I see what the doc looks like rather than just the name, I can identify it much more quickly.

As for the dock being an app launcher, I wouldn't have it any other way. I hate having to hunt through menus to find an app (I have to use Windows at work and this is a pain for me). Yeah, yeah there's the little launcher there, but if you have more than 4-5 (I use more apps than that), you encroach on the space you'd use for document names, etc.

Honestly, I've never related to the dock as an aplication manager before. And I guess that's exacly what it is. I'd always tried to use it as a document manager. Perhaps the reason I've been so frustrated before is that I've been using the wrong tool. While I do like expose, it doesn't help me when differentiating between two of my most common documents: html source code and press releases (not from each other but between each subset).

I feel frustrated because the "Apple way," which has always made me feel at home, is now making me feel frustrated. Frustrated is for WinTel users -- not me. :(

I think its that frustration that fueled my first post. :o

[superninjagoat]

I use pop up dock to launch apps , ie a dock on the left with folders of logically arranged apps (my logic anyway), and unlike Apples dock, this dock is fixed in size and does not get filled up with open app icons, so muscle memory actually works, going to the same point everytime to launch something. Expose keeps me in touch with what is up and running document ways. Basically Apples dock has become redundant, and is mainly a repositry for open apps. I hardly ever go there. Even to force quit I find it easier to go to pop up dock to open Application Monitor

This is almost exactly how I find myself using OSX. And for most computing tasks, it's quite useful -- except when trying to differentiate between windows with visually similar content.

All: I'm getting redundant now, so I'll get off it. </high horse>

[Surreal]

competition.

"rip off"...or simply a better version.

"but...but...of course apple could make a better version..."

exactly.

*sigh* it's not a DUPLICATE of konfab... just a better interpretation.
and apple did things akin to this before as discussed.
and cucumbers may or may not taste better pickled.

[whooleytoo]

Try this:

• Use Exposé to reveal the current app's windows (sorry, I don't know what the official keyboard shortcut was - I changed it long ago)

• Use Command-` to move between each open app and it's own set of windows.

• Point and click at the one window you want when you locate it.


I think it's a brilliant design.

Am I the only one who (even when using PC's) keeps nudging the cursor into the corner out of habit, expecting Expose to kick in? ;)

[Surreal]

Oh don't care if it wasn't the first of it's kind, it's the one that popularized the functionality as far as I'm concerned.


LMAO

come one...no one sees how funny a statement like this is?

it WASNT the first of it's kind..BUT APPLE should be accosted for "stealing" the idea which ISNT the first incarnation of this idea from Konfab?

confused.? you're supposed to be...this is dumb

[Tulse]

Following up on an earlier post, here's what Dave Hyatt (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/) has to say:I wanted to blog briefly to clear up what the widgets actually are written in. They are Web pages, plain and simple (with extra features thrown in for added measure). Apple's own web site says "build your own widgets using the JavaScript language", but that's sort of misleading. The widgets are HTML+CSS+JS. They are not some JS-only thing.

In other words, each widget is just a web page, and so you have the full power of WebKit behind each one... CSS2, DOM2, JS, HTML, XMLHttpRequest, Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc.
All I have to say is "wow". It sure sounds like this could be a quantum leap past Konfabulator (and I love Konfabulator). All that functionality wrapped into widgets could produce some really interesting mini-apps.

[kettle]

Following up on an earlier post, here's what Dave Hyatt (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/) has to say:
All I have to say is "wow". It sure sounds like this could be a quantum leap past Konfabulator (and I love Konfabulator). All that functionality wrapped into widgets could produce some really interesting mini-apps.

And the next logical step - with the use of the new spotlight type file search locate systems, a collection of widgets would replace the need for a Finder at all. Finder would become a secondary application found (or search located) as a Utility for the organisation of data/documents, a way of browsing the physical directory hierarchy.

[jakemikey]

Try this:

• Use Exposé to reveal the current app's windows (sorry, I don't know what the official keyboard shortcut was - I changed it long ago)

...
...



It's F10. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that (command + ` with Expose at F10) worked like that, but I never used it much. Thanks for suggesting that -- works great!

[ajv2003]

Konfabulator wasn't exactly the first of it's kind either...

So what? It's the first time in the OS. Just think how far Konfabulator is ahead in writing widgets. Tempest in a tea pot, IMHO. :rolleyes:

[jragosta]

LMAO

come one...no one sees how funny a statement like this is?

it WASNT the first of it's kind..BUT APPLE should be accosted for "stealing" the idea which ISNT the first incarnation of this idea from Konfab?

confused.? you're supposed to be...this is dumb

You forgot one thing.

Konfabulator's product is essentially an improved Desk Accessory. So Apple should be chastised for 'stealing' an idea from someone who copied an earlier Apple idea?

It's amazing how far people will go to bash Apple.

[Surreal]

jgrosta; that was what i was pointing out


i quoted someone pretty much saying that apple stole the unoriginal idea from konfab.

they said "sure, it wasnt konfabs idea 'per se' but they made it good, so it's theirs."

my tongue in cheek retort was...perhaps apple made it better.


perhaps too tongue in cheek?

[jakemikey]

Wow if anyone has a few minutes, you should DEFINITELY read this:

http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator

It's a Macbytes.com link. This is bar none the best evaluation of the whole controversy. Very well written and completely irrefutable. I'd like to see somebody try and counter it (especially Arlo Rose).

[moki]

Quartz Extreme consists of two parts, Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositing. Q2D is a 2D graphics API. It (along with QuickDraw, QuickTime and OpenGL) passes it's resultant bitmap data to Quartz Compositer, which takes those bitmaps and renders them onto OpenGL polygons and offloads them to the GPU, which is ideally suited for handling translucency, layering etc.

One thing people seem to be missing (perhaps because it was underplayed at the keynote) is that Apple has implemented an optimized hardware pipeline for Quartz 2D in Quartz 2D Extreme. This is a very cool technology.

Currently, you compose something in Quartz (in software), and then the bits are flushed to the video card. They've created a pipeline that implements most of Quartz 2D on the video card. The speed gains for many specific optimizations were quite impressive.

[whooleytoo]

Currently, you compose something in Quartz (in software), and then the bits are flushed to the video card. They've created a pipeline that implements most of Quartz 2D on the video card. The speed gains for many specific optimizations were quite impressive.

Now that's interesting. Do you currently use Quartz 2D in any of your products? I'd love to hear some before/after benchmarks.

[whooleytoo]

Incidentally, does anyone know when the WWDC sessions start appearing up on ADC TV?

[MacQuest]

LMAO

come one...no one sees how funny a statement like this is?

it WASNT the first of it's kind..BUT APPLE should be accosted for "stealing" the idea which ISNT the first incarnation of this idea from Konfab?

confused.? you're supposed to be...this is dumb

Hey "genius", you're late to the party! :rolleyes:

I was pissed at Apple too because I also believed that they "should be accosted for 'stealing' the idea which ISNT the first incarnation of this idea from Konfab."

Then I discovered that Apple itself may already have the patents to this technology that was first used in the early '90's in the form of "desktop accessories". The look was not at all the same because the technology was incapable of such visual displays at the time [translucency, etc.], but the CONCEPT and implementation were the same. It seems that this may be an old Apple technology afterall.

Here's an older post of mine about all of this:

"There's a big thread over at Konfab's website with some interesting insight to all of this:

http://www2.konfabulator.com/forums...r=asc&start=105

I guess I'm not so pissed off anymore since this technology was used years before Konfab came around, even in classic Mac OS.

Ok. All better now. [/rant]"