I don't think shareware developers should ever be surprised when they implement existing ideas in Mac OS X in a Mac OS style and then Apple replicates the functionality. You could look at it byt saying that really, Apple should have already implemented this technology, and Konfabulator etc saw a gap in the market, from which they've been profitting from for some time. The same could be said for several other apps - how long is it going to take for Apple to implement something like Quicksilver in Mac OS X.
It must be a real bummer to develop a great application and for it then to be redundant, but they were exploiting a lack of functionality in the operating system - an easy way to code up small applications and have easy access to them.
From what I've seen, dashboard looks far superior to every version of konfabulator I've used - I've not seen the build with Konspose (or whatever it's called). In my expereience, Konfab made your desktop look pretty, but wasn't of great use because unless you had the widgets floating on top of the others, it was just as easy to access normal applications as the widgets, which were normally covered by applications. The implementation of Konspose seems like a knock off of dashboard, which Apple obviously have been developing for months. No one says anything against the authors of konsfabulator for doing that.
And finally - think how many more people will benefit from this functionality than would have done otherwise. What percentage of Mac users use or even know about konfabulator? Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
It would be nice if Apple credited shareware developers for stuff like this, but I don't think the konfab developers can really be too upset. Time to improve their product, or develop a new idea.
And finally - think how many more people will benefit from this functionality than would have done otherwise. What percentage of Mac users use or even know about konfabulator? Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
kind of sounds like bill gates talking of internet exploer and netscape here
Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
Again, this is pretty much a billg argument. And it basically kills the whole shareware segment of development for your OS. There are no incentives. Sure you wanna do that? Does it bring more benefits or more damage?
kind of sounds like bill gates talking of internet exploer and netscape here
maybe, but I don't see apple doing this to steal konfabulator's market share, simply to increase functionality in the OS.
Do you think apple shouldn't develop partrs of the OS that third party developers provide. There should be room for both apple's solutions an other peoples. Apple developed Safari - it had tabs - did you hear Camino/Mozilla/Opera developers moaning about how apple had stolen their ideas and implemented them in the OS?
no, they made their products better. Apple have reimplemented their existing desktop accessories in a better way. sure, it's very similar to konfabulator, but that wasn't even an original idea anyway
Point 4: bitch with a vengeance when an OS company wants you to develop for their platform and when your work is flourishing and ripe they rip-off what you've done.
ZoSo
Point 5: Don't base your income on making OS extensions that fills a gap in an OS - gaps are usually filled eventually.
Again, this is pretty much a billg argument. And it basically kills the whole shareware segment of development for your OS. There are no incentives. Sure you wanna do that? Does it bring more benefits or more damage?
That is a good point. In the open source community they often seem to look down on Shareware as inefficient and detrimental to the platform since they feel that if the code was free and open, development would be faster and bugs would be fixed quicker. In addition code could be shared freely and if the licence was appropriate, Apple could either take and enhance it (as they did with much of *BSD) or they could contribute to the open source effort (as they have with gcc). There is no monitary incentive as with shareware of course but that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Certainly if Konfabulator was open source things would have been different.
Not drawing any conclusions since there's too many factors involved but it is something to think about.
It's sad to see Watson being sold to Sun because Watson is till better than Sherlock to this day. I can't say the same for Konfabulator because I have no desire to use it (or Dashboard).
Sure Dan Wood and Arlo Rose might be ticked, but in the end the reason why Apple didn't approach them was because of the following things.
1a) They didn't think to file patents on the technology.
1b) They knew they wouldn't be awarded patents on the technology.
2) Their apps are just plain easy to copy. They're both just glorified web apps...
If Apple wanted either and they weren't easily copiable, then they would have cut a deal. After all, Apple has been buying up plenty of software companies in the past few years.
but I don't see apple doing this to steal konfabulator's market share, simply to increase functionality in the OS.
Do you think apple shouldn't develop partrs of the OS that third party developers provide. There should be room for both apple's solutions an other peoples. Apple developed Safari - it had tabs - did you hear Camino/Mozilla/Opera developers moaning about how apple had stolen their ideas and implemented them in the OS?
no, they made their products better. Apple have reimplemented their existing desktop accessories in a better way. sure, it's very similar to konfabulator, but that wasn't even an original idea anyway
Whatever the reason you might want to put on it, the real one is that they had enough power to unfairly crush the competitor and get away with it. Period.
Camino and Mozilla belong to an Open Source Community--which is something terribly different from an independent shareware developer. IIRC they had tabs first. Safari itself is mostly derived from open source, being based on KHTML. Your argument makes no sense at all.
From a business perspective, I'm not sure why Apple didn't buy Konfab. I don't think it would have been very expensive and would have avoided all this bad press.
At the very least, DB was 'inspired' by Konfab. I never tried the program, but I was aware that it used JavaScript for the widgets. When I heard that Apple had used this same platform for creating their widgets, I was pretty sure I knew where Apple got the idea.
On a side note, will Konfab widget work w/DB? I wonder if Apple will be able to harness the level of community involvement that Konfab has been able to produce?
I think Adobe should be worried. With Core Image how hard would it be for Apple to make a Photoshop killer ? Half of it will be in Tiger and I think Steve gave them the warning on stage. And they have just had a demo of how ruthless Apple can be. Steve wants to be way ahead of longhorn , that includes the apps that run on it. As for ripping off Konfab....well these guys have made a living exploiting gaps in Apples os for years now, and it has come to an end , so find another gap and PATENT.
Noone has implied that Konfabulator was some breakthrough piece of software but it was an innovative implementation. I love the fact that Apple is trying to improve the OS and give it more functionality, and they will probably do a better job with this than Arlo did. The problem I have is that this software was cool, people(geeks) were pretty crazy about it when it first came out. When a developer comes out with something like this they should be praised, not copied, crushed and discarded. Which we all know is going to happen. What better message could a company send to it's developers than admiring some innovation, offering to purchase it or working with the developer to offer a new implementation? Instead they just took it with no acknowledgement.
If Microsoft added a new functionality(and they probably will) to Longhorn that behaved almost identically to Exposé, everyone on this board would crucify them. And rightfully so. What Apple did in this case was wrong not legally wrong, but morally and ethically bankrupt.
Seeing Apple's behavior here, it is a great thing they are locked solidly into the 5% market share. If they had like 95%, they'd behave as shitty as MS.
You can't copyright an idea, only its implementation. As M$ proved when they shafted Apple. And Apple's implementation via Expose seems fresh enough to me. SDK. So Konfab' can prob' keep knocking out widgets? ie like 3rd parties do filters to Adobe's PS?
If Microsoft added a new functionality(and they probably will) to Longhorn that behaved almost identically to Exposé, everyone on this board would crucify them. And rightfully so. What Apple did in this case was wrong not legally wrong, but morally and ethically bankrupt.
I fully expect this to happen, and I won't be bothered in the slightest. That's just the way it goes.
You can't expect apple to just not improve it's OS and tell people "just go buy these 12 third party add ons to gain these various functionalities"
As many people have pointed out, it is like desktop accessories back in the old days, and, I actually think much more similar to the control strip from OS 7-9. There were hundreds of custom control strip mods.
Comments
Originally posted by pesi
konfab was first to market, but that doesn't mean that apple wasn't already developing it. same with the whole watson deal.
Demonstrate it, then we'll see. Til then you might as well shut the fsck up yourself.
ZoSo
It must be a real bummer to develop a great application and for it then to be redundant, but they were exploiting a lack of functionality in the operating system - an easy way to code up small applications and have easy access to them.
From what I've seen, dashboard looks far superior to every version of konfabulator I've used - I've not seen the build with Konspose (or whatever it's called). In my expereience, Konfab made your desktop look pretty, but wasn't of great use because unless you had the widgets floating on top of the others, it was just as easy to access normal applications as the widgets, which were normally covered by applications. The implementation of Konspose seems like a knock off of dashboard, which Apple obviously have been developing for months. No one says anything against the authors of konsfabulator for doing that.
And finally - think how many more people will benefit from this functionality than would have done otherwise. What percentage of Mac users use or even know about konfabulator? Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
It would be nice if Apple credited shareware developers for stuff like this, but I don't think the konfab developers can really be too upset. Time to improve their product, or develop a new idea.
Originally posted by mortigi tempo
And finally - think how many more people will benefit from this functionality than would have done otherwise. What percentage of Mac users use or even know about konfabulator? Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
kind of sounds like bill gates talking of internet exploer and netscape here
Originally posted by mortigi tempo
Isn't it better to improve the experience for everyone by including this functionality into the OS, rather than expect people to download a shareware application (and pay for it) to receive less functionality.
Again, this is pretty much a billg argument. And it basically kills the whole shareware segment of development for your OS. There are no incentives. Sure you wanna do that? Does it bring more benefits or more damage?
ZoSo
Originally posted by applenut
kind of sounds like bill gates talking of internet exploer and netscape here
You beat me to it!
ZoSo
Originally posted by applenut
kind of sounds like bill gates talking of internet exploer and netscape here
maybe, but I don't see apple doing this to steal konfabulator's market share, simply to increase functionality in the OS.
Do you think apple shouldn't develop partrs of the OS that third party developers provide. There should be room for both apple's solutions an other peoples. Apple developed Safari - it had tabs - did you hear Camino/Mozilla/Opera developers moaning about how apple had stolen their ideas and implemented them in the OS?
no, they made their products better. Apple have reimplemented their existing desktop accessories in a better way. sure, it's very similar to konfabulator, but that wasn't even an original idea anyway
Originally posted by ZoSo
Point 4: bitch with a vengeance when an OS company wants you to develop for their platform and when your work is flourishing and ripe they rip-off what you've done.
ZoSo
Point 5: Don't base your income on making OS extensions that fills a gap in an OS - gaps are usually filled eventually.
Originally posted by ZoSo
Again, this is pretty much a billg argument. And it basically kills the whole shareware segment of development for your OS. There are no incentives. Sure you wanna do that? Does it bring more benefits or more damage?
That is a good point. In the open source community they often seem to look down on Shareware as inefficient and detrimental to the platform since they feel that if the code was free and open, development would be faster and bugs would be fixed quicker. In addition code could be shared freely and if the licence was appropriate, Apple could either take and enhance it (as they did with much of *BSD) or they could contribute to the open source effort (as they have with gcc). There is no monitary incentive as with shareware of course but that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Certainly if Konfabulator was open source things would have been different.
Not drawing any conclusions since there's too many factors involved but it is something to think about.
Originally posted by JLL
Point 5: Don't base your income on making OS extensions that fills a gap in an OS - gaps are usually filled eventually.
This is sterile JLL: by definition an application is a piece of software not included with the Operating System. Point 6 would be "stop developing".
ZoSo
It's sad to see Watson being sold to Sun because Watson is till better than Sherlock to this day. I can't say the same for Konfabulator because I have no desire to use it (or Dashboard).
Sure Dan Wood and Arlo Rose might be ticked, but in the end the reason why Apple didn't approach them was because of the following things.
1a) They didn't think to file patents on the technology.
1b) They knew they wouldn't be awarded patents on the technology.
2) Their apps are just plain easy to copy. They're both just glorified web apps...
If Apple wanted either and they weren't easily copiable, then they would have cut a deal. After all, Apple has been buying up plenty of software companies in the past few years.
Originally posted by mortigi tempo
maybe,
Definitely.
but I don't see apple doing this to steal konfabulator's market share, simply to increase functionality in the OS.
Do you think apple shouldn't develop partrs of the OS that third party developers provide. There should be room for both apple's solutions an other peoples. Apple developed Safari - it had tabs - did you hear Camino/Mozilla/Opera developers moaning about how apple had stolen their ideas and implemented them in the OS?
no, they made their products better. Apple have reimplemented their existing desktop accessories in a better way. sure, it's very similar to konfabulator, but that wasn't even an original idea anyway
Whatever the reason you might want to put on it, the real one is that they had enough power to unfairly crush the competitor and get away with it. Period.
Camino and Mozilla belong to an Open Source Community--which is something terribly different from an independent shareware developer. IIRC they had tabs first. Safari itself is mostly derived from open source, being based on KHTML. Your argument makes no sense at all.
ZoSo
At the very least, DB was 'inspired' by Konfab. I never tried the program, but I was aware that it used JavaScript for the widgets. When I heard that Apple had used this same platform for creating their widgets, I was pretty sure I knew where Apple got the idea.
On a side note, will Konfab widget work w/DB? I wonder if Apple will be able to harness the level of community involvement that Konfab has been able to produce?
If Microsoft added a new functionality(and they probably will) to Longhorn that behaved almost identically to Exposé, everyone on this board would crucify them. And rightfully so. What Apple did in this case was wrong not legally wrong, but morally and ethically bankrupt.
It's fair game.
You can't copyright an idea, only its implementation. As M$ proved when they shafted Apple. And Apple's implementation via Expose seems fresh enough to me. SDK. So Konfab' can prob' keep knocking out widgets? ie like 3rd parties do filters to Adobe's PS?
Lemon Bon Bon
Nuff freakin' said.
Expect Konfab' to really bitch when M$ copies them in 2007?
Lemon Bon Bon
Originally posted by chilleymac
If Microsoft added a new functionality(and they probably will) to Longhorn that behaved almost identically to Exposé, everyone on this board would crucify them. And rightfully so. What Apple did in this case was wrong not legally wrong, but morally and ethically bankrupt.
I fully expect this to happen, and I won't be bothered in the slightest. That's just the way it goes.
You can't expect apple to just not improve it's OS and tell people "just go buy these 12 third party add ons to gain these various functionalities"
As many people have pointed out, it is like desktop accessories back in the old days, and, I actually think much more similar to the control strip from OS 7-9. There were hundreds of custom control strip mods.
2. Konfab had every chance to copyright their stuff and/or sue apple. it's their own damn fault for sitting around.
personally, i think Konfab sucks and I stopped using it. I'm looking forward to Dashboard.