Yahoo acquires Konfabulator

[capvideo]

Doesn't change the fact that the folks at Konfab came out with a popular product, Apple was reminded,

Not quite the timeline I remember:

1) Apple introduced a highly scriptable OS, including several scripting languages such as Perl out of the box.
2) Apple upgraded and expanded AppleScript for Mac OS X
3) Apple continued adding scriptability to OS X's command line underpinnings, such as by adding Ruby.
4) Apple continued advancing the utility of scripting with AppleScript by adding AppleScript Studio.
5) Apple added WebKit to the OS and opened it up to developers so that any developer could use HTML and JavaScript in any applications.
6) Apple continued to try and make writing software easier on Mac OS X using XCode.
7) Apple introduced Automator to make scripting even easier on Mac OS X
8) Apple introduced Dashboard to make scripting even easier on Mac OS X using simple HTML and JavaScript
9) People continue to complain that (a) Apple ripped off Konfabulator, and (b) Dashboard is so bad because it doesn't do what Konfabulator did.

Apple has been trying to make scripting easier on Macs since they introduced OS X. Dashboard was the next logical step for allowing people to create apps using HTML. They couldn't have used Konfabulator if they even wanted to, because Konfabulator only uses Javascript and custom XML, and thus would not have been as simple as Apple wanted it to be. With WebKit they can use HTML and CSS for the GUI of Dashboard apps.

This is the exact same crap that MS pulls all the time.

No. If Microsoft did it, it would have been:

1) Microsoft puts HTML rendering in the underlying OS and then doesn't document it, and makes it difficult for other developers to use it.
2) Microsoft signs a licensing agreement that lets them put Konfabulator on Windows.
3) Microsoft breaks the licensing agreement saying that Konfabulator is unnecessary.
4) Microsoft introduces a JavaScript-only appscripting environment that not only looks like Konfabulator, but acts like it, too.
5) Konfabulator tries to provide added value by adding HTML to their tool using the undocumented HTML rendering calls in Windows.
6) Microsoft changes the undocumented HTML rendering calls so that the new Konfabulator doesn't work.
7) Microsoft adds HTML to their JavaScript widgets in version 3.x.
8) Konfabulator sells their software to Yahoo.
9) Microsoft sues Yahoo for patent violations.

Jerry

 

[movabi]

Yea konfabulator...

Konfabulator is more useful for me... you don't have to invoke any key to have widgets available at different floating levels (defined by user) and can also be invoked by a keystroke justlike like Dashboard (F8). Its definately got more user controls (something apple sucks at) and it can be turned off! I'd rather see Apple devote more of its resources refining Spotlight and meta driven data as well as an overhaul of the Finder than playing with toys like dashboard. Konfabulator is better in every way, and now its free. By the way, I found Konfabulator a novelty a long time ago... to bad Apple didn't.

 

[shamino]

Doesn't change the fact that the folks at Konfab came out with a popular product, Apple was reminded, they embraced the idea, and would have eventually killed Konfab if it wasn’t for Windows and Yahoo.

So you believe that an OS vendor has no right to bundle a program that is similar to a program somebody else is shipping for the platform?

I suppose you would prefer to be back in the days when you had to buy your TCP/IP stack separately from the OS. After all, both Apple and MS put many companies out of business when they started bundling it with their system software. (Anybody remember Trumpet WinSock?)

This is the exact same crap that MS pulls all the time. They steamroll little guys if they are in the way and simply wipe the guts off their shoes at the door to their campus. But since its Apple its OK behavior. The appropriate thing to do would have Apple acquire Konfab and put these guys to work. But no. They steamrolled them. *shrugs* Oh well. Its Apple. They can do no wrong.

Gee, a bit angry are you? Do you have a personal stake in this or are just choosing to blow off steam?

 

[shamino]

I tried Konfab ... I trashed it simply because I didn't want the desktop cluttered.

I don't know about the version you used, but I just downloaded Konfabulator for Windows (and yes, I hadn't tried it before because I didn't want to spend money on it, so sue me.) Every widget can be configured to only be displayed when "Konspose'" is active. This is a hotkey that dims the desktop and shows all your widgets - just like Dashboard.

I don't know if this feature was present when you tried it, however.

Personally, I think I prefer the (current) Konfabulator mechanism. I can display some widgets on the desktop, either above or below my application windows, and some will remain hidden until I press a hotkey to reveal them.

 

[bretm]

FYI- http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/07/29.7.shtml

"Sherlock has a long history, dating back to the Mac OS 8 days."..."Watson, an Internet services application, was originally released by Karelia Software back in November of 2001 as a complement to Apple's Sherlock search software. "

Sherlock was just a web search engine. That's it. You pressed cmd+f and instead of just searching your hard drive, you could also search alta vista, etc. It looked nothing like watson. Nada. Zip. It basically looked like a finder window.

Then Watson came out. It was named so because it was an extended search program. It was more akin to rss or widgets. It put all the useful stuff in one place. Stocks, movies, airline tickets, etc. It was NOTHING like Watson and completely original. It became one of the best selling shareware apps.

Then a year or so later Apple's like "hey check out the new Sherlock" which was an exact nearly pixel for pixel copy of Watson. Especially iin functionality.

Pretty lame.

And to make it even MORE like Watson, they eventually pulled out the hard drive searching function and put that back into the finder like it should always have been.

 

[SilvorX]

why do I have a feeling that Microsoft will try taking on Yahoo for this now...

 

[bretm]

I noticed that the Watson guy had a similar idea that the Konfabulator folks had...

"I am planning on getting Watson ported to Windows as soon as possible to try to recoup lost revenue. I never would have considered this before; it's quite possible to have a successful Mac-only business if left alone! And I'm not inclined to show Apple the next product that I'm working on until the product is ready to release."

 

[homerjward]

w00t! now that's it's free i can use it on my winb0x. konspose's really cool right now im using the weather widget, kalc, wikisearch, and the urban dictionary one in konspose, and mini controller on the desktop all the time. really an awesome widget i must say

 

[aegisdesign]

The reason Adobe hasn't entered the Linux market isn't because Linux users are cheapskates, its because Adobe would have to justify its price for its software against free alternatives. And it can't except among professionals. Why would a home user pay $1000 for Adobe products when they can get 90% of its functionality for free?

Adobe Photoshop Elements is, IMHO, better than the GIMP in every way with a better interface and a very modest price. Perfect for the home user. You'd have to really like being poked in the eye with a sharp stick to use the GIMP instead of paying for Elements or even just sticking with iPhoto.

Adobe aside, I can't see Konfab going free as being any concern to Apple. Like most of these projects, I expect Yahoo! will pick it up for a couple of years and then neglect it letting it die slowly.

 

[aegisdesign]

I don't know about the version you used, but I just downloaded Konfabulator for Windows (and yes, I hadn't tried it before because I didn't want to spend money on it, so sue me.) Every widget can be configured to only be displayed when "Konspose'" is active. This is a hotkey that dims the desktop and shows all your widgets - just like Dashboard.

I don't know if this feature was present when you tried it, however.

Konspose came out after Apple added Exposé to OSX in 10.3.

 

[aegisdesign]

why do I have a feeling that Microsoft will try taking on Yahoo for this now...

You bet.

Longhorn previews even a year or more ago were showing a dockbar into which you could dock widgets already before Apple even showed Dashboard. It subsequently got removed but I'd bet for only a while. And way, way back in Internet Explorer 4.0 days Microsoft had 'Active Desktop' that let you place javascript and active-X objects on the desktop. And way, way, way back StarDock had it's Object-X desktop and X-Windows had them too and way, way, way, way back Apple had it's desktop accessories, GEM had them too and the Xerox Star system I used in the early 80s had them also. Even the GUI I wrote back when I was 15 for a commodore 64 had widgets - written in 6510 Assembler mind. ;-)

Everyone copies off of each other so you can bet Microsoft will have some new take on a kind of Dashboard/Konfabulator/Active Desktop thing that all the uninformed Apple newbies will claim has been copied off of Apple but is actually just standing on the shoulders of previous work.

 

[aegisdesign]

No. If Microsoft did it, it would have been:

1) Microsoft puts HTML rendering in the underlying OS and then doesn't document it, and makes it difficult for other developers to use it.

See Active Desktop circa 1998.

Came free in IE 4.0 and in Windows 98.

Here's some widgets to download for it...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/previous/gallery/default.mspx


At the time everyone thought it was just a huge waste of resources and a horrible hack. And allowing Active-X objects free reign on your desktop wasn't exactly a good idea, even back in 1998 with less security concerns to worry about.

I thought the same with Konfabulator (except for security) when I tried it in 2002 on a G3 500Mhz iBook though the Konspose feature redeemed it somewhat a few years later.

Apple's Dashboard is easier to write widgets for and better implemented than either of the other two but it's still an icky idea looking for a reason to exist. Essentially it's Active Desktop for the 21st century.

If it wasn't for the php function lookups, dictionary and css cheat sheet widgets I'd have no use for it. WazzUpServ is quite useful too. Oh and the train timetable widget. And Yell.com lookup. Damn, I like it.

 

[nitropowered]

go to the konfab website, theyre giving a refund to anyone who bought a 2.x licence

I think I bought it pre 2.x

 

[Porchland]

I'm a little surprised that no one has a mark on "Widgets." I don't know whether Konfabulator has called their apps Widgets all along or not, but I figured someone would have taken out a TM on it.

 

[Lacero]

Apple later came up with Dashboard, created the mother of all smokescreens about Desktop Accessories to plead that it was not inspired by Konfabulator and the rest is history.

While I don't care much about Konfabulator per se, it's interesting to see how popular non-browser, web-based mini-apps are becoming. Looks like the first little frothy bit on the wave of the semantic web has arrived. It'll be interesting to see if this ends up generating as much buzz as the last few Next Big Things.

A while back I'd tried Konfabulator after hearing some Mac folks rave about it. Basically (explaining for the non-Mac crowd) it was these eye-candy-ful little widgets that would sit on your desktop all the time, showing you the weather, info about an RSS feed, or somesuch stuff. This seemed pretty pointless, since most of the time my desktop is hidden behind all the apps I've got open pretty much whenever my computer is running - but you'd be amazed at the number of Mac users who apparently just leave a blank desktop open so they can stare at it and drool.

 

[aarond12]

Yahoo Messenger

Maybe this will make Yahoo do something with the stupid Yahoo Messenger. It is so far behind the PC version it's sickening.

-Aaron-

 

[macidiot]

So you believe that an OS vendor has no right to bundle a program that is similar to a program somebody else is shipping for the platform?

I suppose you would prefer to be back in the days when you had to buy your TCP/IP stack separately from the OS. After all, both Apple and MS put many companies out of business when they started bundling it with their system software. (Anybody remember Trumpet WinSock?)

I get what your saying, but I can't think of a single commercial 3rd party ip stack that was out for Macs. There were several freeware control panels/extensions though, I think. I forget the names now, but a popular one was a PPP control panel... Anyway tcp/ip was pretty much integrated by 7.5.2 I think. It was whatever OS rev that included Open Transport, Apple's reworked networking stack. And that was back in 1993-1994? By System 8, tcp/ip was becoming the standard protocol, and I think that's about the time they introduced Appletalk/IP? I'm really fuzzy on appletalkIP since by then most shops were completely abadoning Appletalk if they hadn't already. All I know is that it was Appletalk encapsulated in TCP/IP or something. I believe it was popular for awhile with educators...

Networking was largely built into macs, even though it was usually Appletalk. Netware and token ring(and Banyan Vines if you really want to get all esoteric old school) required extensions and usually a control panel. Which were usually supplied for free.

Windows was another story completely. Networking in early windows and DOS was largely non-existent. Hence the rise of companies like Netware with its own protocol, which functionally was a hybrid of Appletalk and TCP/IP. And the large market for silly things like NICs. I remember when I would talk about things like networked printers and the dos/windows crowd would just look back with blank stares...

In fact, you could argue that co-opting is more Microsoft's domain. Which included outright theft. They did it with winsock, with stacker(the theft part), with all the printing utilities, Quicktime, and others. You can argue that Microsoft was just adding basic functionality, which was true. Then again, maybe Microsoft should have thought to include those things in the first place, or at least before there was a huge market for those things.

 

[stephenli]

congratulations!
The developer really deserves.
Hopefully their works were awarded and appreciated in terms of monetary returns.

 

[Platform]

Hmm.......maby it will give widgets a better future

 

[solvs]

And yet along comes Yahoo and they roll over? Why do I get the impression from the Konfab’s site that they were looking for someone to pick them up but as you said its all speculation.

You do know Arlo Rose used to work for Apple right? I'm not saying Apple is always innocent (.Mac anyone?), but yeah Desk Accessories and all. And the fact that Arlo actually knew about Dashboard before the rest of us did, so I'm sure there is more to this story. Can't say I blame him for being unhappy though.

Apple has done in a lot of folks. Let's not forget Watson, and LiteSwitch. Watson probably is the most legit rip. Even the name! Watson, sherlock... c'mon. Looks the same, works the same. They never even contacted the Watson developer and made an offer.

I was hoping you were joking, but judging by the rest of your posts, I guess not. They did actually. He turned them down. They were already working on improving Sherlock, which was all Watson did. He even called it Watson, as you've noted yourself. I suppose Apple should have sued him. But he was making a third party product that helped Apple's, they wanted to make their product better, he didn't want to work for them, they made their product anyway.

And if anyone is going to bring it up, they did the same thing with the guys who were competing with SoundJam or the Xerox thing.

On-topic, I do hope Yahoo continues to support their Dashboard Widgets. But if not, there are alternatives. As with Yahoo search, mail, videos, IM, TV listings, shopping. All of which I used to use, but stopped because I found better alternatives. Yahoo's poor service and even poorer customer service (the same canned, and very unhelpful, response everytime I submitted a bug) lost me as a user awhile ago. Here's hoping they can make some improvements, not just to Mac users but to FireFox users as well, or they will continue to lose to those other sites and services.

 

[iMeowbot]

On-topic, I do hope Yahoo continues to support their Dashboard Widgets. But if not, there are alternatives.

It will be fine. The real news with yesterday's announcement wasn't Konfabulator, that's just a showcase for the cool stuff.

The interesting part is that Yahoo will be making all their content available in XML form, so other applications (including Dashboard widgets) can grab information from Yahoo without resorting to mickey mouse HTML scraping that breaks whenever they decide to make cosmetic changes.

 

[slackpacker]

Well Apple Shouda bought this company. Dashboard is clearly a rippoff of Konfabs Idea.

 

[shamino]

A while back I'd tried Konfabulator after hearing some Mac folks rave about it. Basically (explaining for the non-Mac crowd) it was these eye-candy-ful little widgets that would sit on your desktop all the time, showing you the weather, info about an RSS feed, or somesuch stuff. This seemed pretty pointless, since most of the time my desktop is hidden behind all the apps I've got open pretty much whenever my computer is running - but you'd be amazed at the number of Mac users who apparently just leave a blank desktop open so they can stare at it and drool.

I don't know what previous versions were capable of, but the one I just downloaded for my Windows box gives you the choice to make a widget "floating". In this configuration, it is displayed over everything, but clicks on it are passed through to whatever's underneath. When combined with an appropriate amount of transparency, this is actually useful.

I'm currently running my Windows system with a clock and a weather widget floating over the right-side of my display. They typically don't overlap anything of importance (just the min/max/close buttons, scroll bars and a few desktop icons), so I never have to actually read text through them, and I can click through them to access the controls they float over.

 

[shamino]

I get what your saying, but I can't think of a single commercial 3rd party ip stack that was out for Macs. ...

No, you're missing my point. You've written paragraphs about something I mentinoed as and example, without saying a thing about my point.

My point is that over time, people start expecting more and more from their operating systems. Modern OS's (from any vendor) include tons of features that used to only be available as purchased add-ons from third parties. For example:

• Networking
• Graphics/Windowing (Windows 1.0-3.11, X11 for UNIX, etc.)
• Disk maintenance/repair/optimization tools
• Multitasking
• Application support for large amounts of memory
• Security/encryption
• Screen savers
• Word processors (WordPad on Windows or Text Edit on OS X are more powerful than full-featured word processors from 15 years ago).
• Web browsers
• Mail clients

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

To claim that Apple has no right to develop and bundle a program similar to Konfabulator is to also claim that nobody should've started bundling any other features that were once sold separately. Using your logic, our operating systems should be shipped with all of these features absent, so you can buy them from all the third-party vendors that used to sell them as separate products.

If you want to say that it's OK to bundle a network stack, or a multitasker or an X11 server, or a web browser, but not a widget-based applet system, then you are applying a standard that has no logic to it.

 

[shamino]

Well Apple Shouda bought this company. Dashboard is clearly a rippoff of Konfabs Idea.

And Windows is clearly a ripoff of Mac OS. Does this mean Microsoft shoulda bought Apple?