[kman42]

Oh yeah, can you save Spotlight searches (including emails, addresses, etc) as Smart Folders or only Finder searches? I would love to be able to save the system-wide Spotlight searches as that could be really useful to have emails, addresses, files, etc related to a topic all together at the click of the mouse.

kman

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
I'll admit that when I woke up to read the revealed features of Tiger, I barely stiffled a yawn (I live on GMT+8 ). That was an unfair judgment on my part, especially after I saw the keynote. More importantly, it made me realize that Tiger has more to offer the developers than it does the user (which was the point of WWDC). I think a big factor of why people feel "underwhelmed" is because they don't see anything (yet) that Tiger will be able to do for them. If it were Panther being previewed now, I think only Expose, Fast User Switching, and iChat AV would impress them (for the first few minutes). Filevault, XCode, super-fast Preview, and the rest of the new features would probably not be given too much of a second glance.

While Tiger certainly adds an awesome set of tools to developers' arsenals, surely you aren't insinuating that Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, and the new iChat don't do anything for users? I thought Steve did a really good job of showing off what Spotlight can do for people, especially when he made the smart group in Address Book for people whose birthday is next week. That instantly made me think, oh yeah, you can do things like that! Very cool. IMO of course, but I think this will be a very exciting update.

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally posted by kman42:
I certainly agree that Spotlight is much better for finding things than the Finder, but it is still true that there must always be a way to 'physically' group files together for convenience sake.

Let's say I have two projects in folders called Zonkers1 and Zonkers2 each with many files that don't have the name zonkers in them anywhere, but that do have names which are similar between the two projects. For instance, Zonkers1 and Zonkers2 each contain a file called FirstEdit. They also contain files called Rip1 and Roll14. Without tagging each file in the Zonkers1 project with the name Zonkers1, how would spotlight ever sort this out? It's easy for me to do it with the Finder; I just put all of the Zonkers1 files in a folder called Zonkers1 and all of the Zonkers2 files in a folder called Zonkers2. I can then navigate to either directory and work with all the files related to one of the two projects.

Instead of just throwing related files in a folder, I would have to somehow tag each file (either in the name or in the Comments field) to group them together. Nevertheless, I bet Spotlight would find both Zonkers1 and 2 even if I only searched for Zonkers1. Zonkers2 may be farther down on the list, but it will find them.

Searching is for searching, not for organizing. There must always be a way to organize. Even iTunes and iPhoto have this feature (Playlists and Photo Albums). So, people shouldn't be so quick to say that the Finder will be obsolete because it is simply impossible to get around some method of organizing the files in containers. Perhaps the Finder will morph into a unilevel structure where you only have one layer of containers (like iTunes playlists) rather than hierarchical, but I doubt it.

kman

how often do you lose/misplace files?

like never.

[JKT]

It should be fairly obvious that Spotlight and the Finder are complimentary to each other in much the same way as Google is to Browser bookmarks. Some people will rely on one or the other to a greater extent, but both will still be necessary. Google is great for finding things that you don't know the location of, bookmarks are great for taking you to places you already know about.

Also, the Finder is still going to be necessary for e.g. creating Disk images for burning. What Spotlight will allow is for people to be less reliant on the Finder (and for some, much, much, much less reliant), not for it to become obsolete altogether.

As a(nother) comment for those that are underwhelmed by what they have seen or heard of Tiger, I think what you are failing to recognise is that the biggest thing by far about 10.4 is not what is going to be included by Apple with the OS, but what it is going to allow third party software developers to create. Where MacOS has been a set of spanners up 'til now, 10.4 looks like it is going to be an entire toolbox.

[kman42]

Originally posted by JKT:
It should be fairly obvious that Spotlight and the Finder are complimentary to each other in much the same way as Google is to Browser bookmarks. Some people will rely on one or the other to a greater extent, but both will still be necessary. Google is great for finding things that you don't know the location of, bookmarks are great for taking you to places you already know about.

Also, the Finder is still going to be necessary for e.g. creating Disk images for burning. What Spotlight will allow is for people to be less reliant on the Finder (and for some, much, much, much less reliant), not for it to become obsolete altogether.

As a(nother) comment for those that are underwhelmed by what they have seen or heard of Tiger, I think what you are failing to recognise is that the biggest thing by far about 10.4 is not what is going to be included by Apple with the OS, but what it is going to allow third party software developers to create. Where MacOS has been a set of spanners up 'til now, 10.4 looks like it is going to be an entire toolbox.

Yup.

[Millennium]

To remove the Finder completely would be to remove navigability (the ability to see the whole filesystem without knowing anything about it first), and that would be a usability nightmare. There does need to be some kind of standardized way to navigate the filesystem, and that standard needs to be the same for all users of a given machine.

That said, Spotlight makes an excellent complement to a navigable filesystem, and this is why the Spotlight/Finder combination works together so well. We're not going to see either of these go away anytime soon.

[DannyVTim]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:


how often do you lose/misplace files?

like never.

It's not a question of loosing or misplacing files in the terms you suggest, but more a case that one doesn't have the time to spend organizing files, so as more files are added to the file system, things get buried. In addition, sometimes when one is in a group, you are one person in a chain of people who are working on a file and you are not sure where someone else saved the final work.

Than what usually follow is a questions like, "remember that spreadsheet we did that had x in it. Can you get me that because I need to see x again?" And of course they want it in five minutes.

So, if one is generating many files in a day � especially the same looking one like a daily report. It's really impossible over a period of months or years to remember where everything is saved and what exactly is inside of each file. Moreover, why would one want to fill their brain with such useless information? Accordingly, I have yet to see an organization or long time user with many files be able to find a file they haven't used for some time promptly.

Currently, the best you can do currently is save it with a name that you know will make is easier but not necessarily easy when searching later.

Spotlight if it works and stays current, would be a huge improvement over hunting a pecking for a file.

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by kman42:
I certainly agree that Spotlight is much better for finding things than the Finder, but it is still true that there must always be a way to 'physically' group files together for convenience sake.

<snip>

Yeah, I see what you mean. As you and others have said Spotlight and the Finder are complimentary. How we use them depends on our individual workflows. We won't know exactly until we get our hands on them.

I do think Automator will help in your situation as well. You could use it to define a Hot folder for adding keywords and such. I'm really looking forward to using that app.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:


how often do you lose/misplace files?

like never.

My home directory contains 59,378 files right now. That doesn't include my music collection, which is about 12,000 more files on top of that. When I want to find "roux.doc" in there, I could go into Documents, look at a dozen or so subfolders, then find the one I want.

That's now how I do it now. Now, I go into Documents, and I use the "search" box at the top of the Finder window. Simple, two-step process.

With Tiger, I'll just go to Searchlight and find it. One step.

[kman42]

Originally posted by vmpaul:
Yeah, I see what you mean. As you and others have said Spotlight and the Finder are complimentary. How we use them depends on our individual workflows. We won't know exactly until we get our hands on them.

I do think Automator will help in your situation as well. You could use it to define a Hot folder for adding keywords and such. I'm really looking forward to using that app.

Me too.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
Daring Fireball has posted a must read on the subject of dashboard / konfab:

http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/da...s_konfabulator

If this and today's david hyatt's blog entry does not convince people that apple did not "ripoff" konfab then i don't know what will..

Wow. That is the Mother of the Father of all Smackdowns!

Case closed. Arlo needs to STFU before he embarrasses himself. He's got no leg to stand on for his carping about being "ripped off".

[absmiths]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
My home directory contains 59,378 files right now. That doesn't include my music collection, which is about 12,000 more files on top of that. When I want to find "roux.doc" in there, I could go into Documents, look at a dozen or so subfolders, then find the one I want.

That's now how I do it now. Now, I go into Documents, and I use the "search" box at the top of the Finder window. Simple, two-step process.

With Tiger, I'll just go to Searchlight and find it. One step.

Well, each to his own. I would never EVER do that because I use my system as much from the Terminal as I do from the console and I rather like the organization that folders bring. I am not so with it that I always know what the name of the file I am looking for is, but I know it is a letter I wrote to a person around a date for example.

Anyway, other stuff, like Java source code (the second most prolific item in my home directory (1st is mp3, 3rd is iPhoto images)) must be in some sort of folder hierarchy.

[sanity assassin]

I feel that Dashboard is a direct rip of Konfabulator, despite what others are saying, for several reasons.

The concept, the idea might have been around for god knows how many y ears, but the exact implementation of dashboard mirrors that of konfabulator. If konfabulator didb;t exist, or those many Windows progras doing the same thing, would Apple be implimenting this now? Who knows?

Seems obvious to me that Apple saw what was being done with konfabulator and decided to adopt it for Tiger.

Why don;t we say that Expose is a blatant copy of what Microsft came up with years ago in their research labs? Might not be the exact same thing, but the concepts and ideas are very similar. If MS bring out something that mirrors Expose to a point, will people be brave enough to not start calling MS copycats and dismissing them as unoriginal, like we are doing with dashboard?

[CharlesS]

^ The thing is that Konfabulator doesn't do the same thing that Dashboard does, from the looks of things. Konfabulator appears to be for littering your Desktop all the time with widgets. Dashboard shows its gadgets only when you invoke it by hitting its F-key. The implementation's not the same either, because Dashboard gadgets are basically small web pages rather than some proprietary format that must be learned. The only real similarity between Konfabulator and Dashboard is that they both allow small accessories to appear on your desktop.

Oh, and Konfabulator makes my Pismo run slower than molasses...

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
I feel that Dashboard is a direct rip of Konfabulator, despite what others are saying, for several reasons.

The concept, the idea might have been around for god knows how many y ears, but the exact implementation of dashboard mirrors that of konfabulator. If konfabulator didb;t exist, or those many Windows progras doing the same thing, would Apple be implimenting this now? Who knows?

Seems obvious to me that Apple saw what was being done with konfabulator and decided to adopt it for Tiger.

Why don;t we say that Expose is a blatant copy of what Microsft came up with years ago in their research labs? Might not be the exact same thing, but the concepts and ideas are very similar. If MS bring out something that mirrors Expose to a point, will people be brave enough to not start calling MS copycats and dismissing them as unoriginal, like we are doing with dashboard?

You haven't adequately(to me) stated exactly why you feel Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip. All I see here is emotive ranting. Please describe why you feel like Dashboard rips off Konfabulator that goes a little deeper than "the widgets look the same"

There are striking dissimilarities.

1. Konfabulator Widgets are meant to be embedded into your desktop. Dashboard Gagdets will never embed they will simply pop on the screen floating above your current work area when you need them and then pop off.

2. Konfabulator Widgets must be programmed to run in a propriatary runtime environment there's no way to repurpose them elsewhere. Dashboard Gagedts are basic web tools programmable by hundreds of apps and repurposable.

3. Konfabulator is a resource hog because it's designed to be a portable environment . Dashboard is designed to be functional without sapping too many resources

While the difference may seem small the philosophical chasm between the two is large indeed(IMO).

Apple isn't trying to provide widgets for your desktop. They are trying to provide a more efficient way of using small Desktop Accessories. I know I'll be creating or using a floating Dictionary like daily since dictionary.com is a site I hit most often.

There are those who will want embedded widgets and Konfabulator has them covered. But many of us simply want quick access to those "lil apps" that can be conjured quickly and then dismissed just as fast.

[:dragonflypro:]

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:


There are striking dissimilarities.

1. Konfabulator Widgets are meant to be embedded into your desktop. Dashboard Gagdets will never embed they will simply pop on the screen floating above your current work area when you need them and then pop off.

2. Konfabulator Widgets must be programmed to run in a propriatary runtime environment there's no way to repurpose them elsewhere. Dashboard Gagedts are basic web tools programmable by hundreds of apps and repurposable.

3. Konfabulator is a resource hog because it's designed to be a portable environment . Dashboard is designed to be functional without sapping too many resources

4. You have to buy a product to develop for Konfab and there is no IDE. Just docs, at best.

[kcmac]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
I feel that Dashboard is a direct rip of Konfabulator, despite what others are saying, for several reasons.

The concept, the idea might have been around for god knows how many y ears, but the exact implementation of dashboard mirrors that of konfabulator. If konfabulator didb;t exist, or those many Windows progras doing the same thing, would Apple be implimenting this now? Who knows?

Seems obvious to me that Apple saw what was being done with konfabulator and decided to adopt it for Tiger.

Why don;t we say that Expose is a blatant copy of what Microsft came up with years ago in their research labs? Might not be the exact same thing, but the concepts and ideas are very similar. If MS bring out something that mirrors Expose to a point, will people be brave enough to not start calling MS copycats and dismissing them as unoriginal, like we are doing with dashboard?

You need to read the Daring Fireball article. It is outstanding and should change your mind.

[osxisfun]

>The concept, the idea might have been around for god knows how many y ears, but the exact implementation of dashboard mirrors that of konfabulator.

You mean desk accessories with an aqua treatment? how on earth are those supposed to look different. both of them are _supposed_ to look like aqua.

please reread the daring fireball post again. I agree that you have in no way presented your side effectively.

[Developer]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
You mean desk accessories with an aqua treatment? how on earth are those supposed to look different. both of them are _supposed_ to look like aqua.

The Dashboard widgets don't look like Aqua. Address Book looks like Aqua (if you want to count Brushed Metal as Aqua), the black Dashboard thing doesn't. iCal looks like Aqua, but the fire engine red Dashboard widget doesn't. None of the Dashboard widgets have window and/or control appearances that are equivalent to what is mentioned in the Aqua guidelines.
It is so obvious that Dashboard is "inspired" by Konfabulator that everybody who sees the two can tell it.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Developer:
The Dashboard widgets don't look like Aqua. Address Book looks like Aqua (if you want to count Brushed Metal as Aqua), the black Dashboard thing doesn't. iCal looks like Aqua, but the fire engine red Dashboard widget doesn't. None of the Dashboard widgets have window and/or control appearances that are equivalent to what is mentioned in the Aqua guidelines.
It is so obvious that Dashboard is "inspired" by Konfabulator that everybody who sees the two can tell it.

They were clearly demoing the technology rather than the Widgets themselves.

Same for CoreImage, CoreVideo, iSync and everything else they showed off.

Apple seems to have learned a valuable lesson from the Open Source movement: give smart people the tools and let them build what they want.

The Million Hacker Army has just been drafted into OS X Tiger development. How else can we explain the early announcement (product is 12 months away), the seemingly premature demos and the basket full of SDKs?

Not only is Apple's in house dev team way ahead of Longhord, they just commissioned a million people to work for free to increase that lead.

Oh, and Dashboard is as "inspired" by Konfabulator as Konfabulator was "inspired" by Desk Accessories. Just because they solve the same problem doesn't mean they do it in the same way.

[osxisfun]

Of course they do. Each and every one of them. If you don't think so then fine. That's your opinion. Let's just not start a "how many angels can dance on the aqua themed head of a pin" back and forth. It won't be very productive.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
I feel that Dashboard is a direct rip of Konfabulator, despite what others are saying, for several reasons.

The concept, the idea might have been around for god knows how many y ears, but the exact implementation of dashboard mirrors that of konfabulator. If konfabulator didb;t exist, or those many Windows progras doing the same thing, would Apple be implimenting this now? Who knows?

Seems obvious to me that Apple saw what was being done with konfabulator and decided to adopt it for Tiger.

Why don;t we say that Expose is a blatant copy of what Microsft came up with years ago in their research labs? Might not be the exact same thing, but the concepts and ideas are very similar. If MS bring out something that mirrors Expose to a point, will people be brave enough to not start calling MS copycats and dismissing them as unoriginal, like we are doing with dashboard?

I think you're confusing interface for implementation.

It could be said that the way a user interacts with an individual Dashboard widget (the interface) is similar to the way one would interact with a Konfabulator widget. However, this says nothing about their implementation.

Yet, even saying that their interfaces are similar is a stretch, seeing how Dashboard is modal where Konfabulator is not. That's makes a huge difference in how a user will interact with the app.

Further, their implementations (that is, how they work) are vastly different. Konfabulator uses a combination of XML and JavaScript to specify image locations and actions. Dashboard, on the other hand, uses WebKit to allow widgets to use traditional HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and whatever else WebKit supports to govern layout and actions.

In reality, Dashboard is much closer in implementation to Microsoft's ActiveDesktop than it is to Konfabulator. The fact that both Konfabulator and Dashboard use javascript seems purely incidental.


Although - it's a shame that Dashboard has stolen so much attention at this point. It's nice an all, but the gaudy graphic (cool?)-ness will wear off after awhile and it will be just another possibly useful tool.

My 2�: The killer feature of Tiger will be Automator. The ability for me to easily and graphically streamline repetitive or tedious tasks is infinitely cooler and more useful that being able to check stock quotes and phone numbers by hitting F-12.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
My 2�: The killer feature of Tiger will be Automator. The ability for me to easily and graphically streamline repetitive or tedious tasks is infinitely cooler and more useful that being able to check stock quotes and phone numbers by hitting F-12.

Just when you thought AppleScript couldn't get any better...BAM!

Automater and Spotlight are 100% Genuine Pure Bred Killer Apps if you ask me.

[zachs]

Originally posted by kman42:
Oh yeah, can you save Spotlight searches (including emails, addresses, etc) as Smart Folders or only Finder searches? I would love to be able to save the system-wide Spotlight searches as that could be really useful to have emails, addresses, files, etc related to a topic all together at the click of the mouse.

kman

Right now, you can only save Finder searches as Smart Searches. But I, too, would like to save Spotlight searches. Hopefully Apple will add this by the time the final is released.

[Developer]

I suggest you all read Paul Thurrott's article Derivative, not innovative: Apple's Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip-off. Don't let the controversial name distract you, this is actually a very insightful and intelligent article. A little bit longish, but well worth the read.

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by Developer:
I suggest you all read Paul Thurrott's article Derivative, not innovative: Apple's Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip-off. Don't let the controversial name distract you, this is actually a very insightful and intelligent article. A little bit longish, but well worth the read.

From Thurrots article:

heck, it wouldn't be an OS X release without Apple ripping off yet another small shareware developer--it's the speed at which Apple apologists raced to defend the company they do desperately love and explain that, hey, Apple would never hurt anyone.

Suggestion #1- Caustic attitudes don't endear you to unfamiliar readers. Thurrot is a master as snide comments based on no factual information.

Provide an extensible platform, on Mac OS X, for providing on-screen alerts to users. "The possibilities for something like this could potentially be limitless," the authors of Konfabulator write on their Web site. Collaborating, they settled on a JavaScript engine, because it would be easier for people to use, and a graphical front-end that would be visually appealing and easy for graphics creators to create.

First I don't buy Thurrots bunk about alerts. Alerts should be handled in the most appropriate way within the context of the applicaton. You don't always need visual alerts. Sound works even better or even merely flashing an icon or gui works. A Javascript engine wasn't chosen because it's easier. It was chosen because was easier for Rose and Clarke to add support in their runtime engine. Dashboard is what Thurrot should be talking about. It offers much more extensibility via webkit and obviates the need for a runtime environment.

In other words, only Konfabulator and Dashboard are the same animal. They are the same solution, implemented in only slightly different ways. And one can expect Dashboard 2 to simply make up any lost ground and completely overtake Konfabulator; it's the Apple way.

No they aren't. Konfabulator "embeds" widgets into the desktop which is nothing new. Dashboard is dynamically loaded upon hitting an F key. Thurrot should spend more time on details and less on giving Apple digs.

In short, Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip-off. To my mind,

How persuasive. Here we have the world according to Paul Thurrot. He writes an article that lacks thoughtful insight, specificity and well reasoned backing for this thesis. We are left to either agree with "his mind" or not. I don't not agree.

Here's what's on "my" mind. If you find yourself agreeing with Thurrot seek a 3rd source because either he's actually made a decent point once a millenium or your just may have a looming case of cognitive dissonance that needs to be checked out.

[osxisfun]

I just read paul thurott and here are my thoughts on his article. (note to paul, i really don't care what you read,watch or listen to so can you save us all bandwidth and reduce the size of you monster pics?)

>t wouldn't be an OS X release without Apple ripping off yet another small shareware developer-

Nice way to start an objective blog entry. Which ones would they been paul? You mean the watson and proteon people? Get over it. Read up on it. Three years, dramatic os changes, thousands of developers, and 3 developers are pissed since they thought they owned a little piece of obviousness?

> Apple apologists raced to defend the company they do desperately love and explain that, hey, Apple would never hurt anyone.

Nice. way to continue on the road to believability. Yah. I love apple. We can't all write books about visual basic now can we paul?

> So an enterprising third party came up with LiteSwitch, a product for which I paid. Apple ripped them off, a

Holey moly i just read this one. Is this guy serious? did he not read the daring fireball article that eviscerated the proteon guy?

>Apple's Sherlock 3, which stole Watson's functionality: No one can logically argue that searching for movie times through a Web service should be an OS feature. But they do. Of course they do.

geebus! is this guy so dense that he can not see that this was the _natural_ evolution of an app like this. I saw it within minutes of seeing sherlock. then again i don't put osx kernal panic screen shots on my blog page, lambast apple in most of my entries and write books about windows digital media. But hey. To each his own....

Oh frell this. long story short...

His definition and comparison of dashboard/konfab / desk accessories so restricted its laughable. He completely marginalizes 1984 DAs, leaves out hypercard that let people build mini apps way before konfab, He has COMPLETELY left out an Active Desktop, startdock(zdesktop) and NextStep in his manufactured "comparison" and he's still not gotten the concept that dashboard gadgets are web pages with more power and extensibility then konfab.

compared to daring fireball's article paul thurott's article was IMO worthless bandwidth and paul should stick to writing books about windows apps instead of writing blogs.

Why anyone would go to this site again after reading one of his entries is beyond me.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Developer:
I suggest you all read Paul Thurrott's article Derivative, not innovative: Apple's Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip-off. Don't let the controversial name distract you, this is actually a very insightful and intelligent article. A little bit longish, but well worth the read.

The fraud Thurrottt didn't even bother running his spelling and grammar checkers this time. Far from being insightful and intelligent, this article was poorly-written and poorly-researched even for him. The guy didn't even understand what Konfabulator is (he thought it was some kind of notification system), and you call it "insightful and intelligent"?

That article is trash even for him. Just when I think he can't sink any lower, he has to hastily scrawl out a blind anti-Apple screed so bad that I'd sooner expect to see it on the bathroom wall at a truck stop instead of on the Internet.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The fraud Thurrottt didn't even bother running his spelling and grammar checkers this time. Far from being insightful and intelligent, this article was poorly-written and poorly-researched even for him. The guy didn't even understand what Konfabulator is (he thought it was some kind of notification system), and you call it "insightful and intelligent"?

That article is trash even for him. Just when I think he can't sink any lower, he has to hastily scrawl out a blind anti-Apple screed so bad that I'd sooner expect to see it on the bathroom wall at a truck stop instead of on the Internet.

when I was reading it i didn't think truckstop I thought the bed in a h**ker's house

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
>t wouldn't be an OS X release without Apple ripping off yet another small shareware developer-

Nice way to start an objective blog entry.

Did he make any claim to objectivity? Opinions tend to be somewhat personal.

[osxisfun]

I saw it more along the lines that he was stating his case why apple ripped off konfab but he immediately started with the slanted line you quoted. It seemed to me the credibility he was trying to portray sort of went out the window. i see your point i think. But i am really trying not to think about his a entry again. I really felt like i needed some mouthwash after reading it. It was one of the worse articles i have read in a long time.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
I saw it more along the lines that he was stating his case why apple ripped off konfab but he immediately started with the slanted line you quoted. It seemed to me the credibility he was trying to portray sort of went out the window. i see your point i think. But i am really trying not to think about his a entry again. I really felt like i needed some mouthwash after reading it. It was one of the worse articles i have read in a long time.

nuttin else to say.

[Horsepoo!!!]

What journalism school did he go to? Just asking 'cuz I don't want family members, close relatives, or friends to get screwed by getting a bad journalism education.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
What journalism school did he go to? Just asking 'cuz I don't want family members, close relatives, or friends to get screwed by getting a bad journalism education.

He harkened to the Siren Call of Sally Struthers and got his degree at home with a minor in VCR Repair.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Developer:
The problem is that Apple is stealing ideas from its pool of creative developers, which is legal but "bad karma". And then complains in large posters about Redmond stealing those exact same ideas. That's bold.

daring fireball tells about how dashboard is different from konfab.

[ryaxnb]

At first I thought Spotlight was a launchbar copy. Now I think it's a new foundation that does everything LaunchBar does and so much more.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
At first I thought Spotlight was a launchbar copy. Now I think it's a new foundation that does everything LaunchBar does and so much more.

Does Spotlight show your results while you're typing (no need to press the enter key), and change same result live according to your input? Or does Spotlight adapt to your preferences and show Dreamweaver.app as first choice for "DW" (for example) after telling it to once or twice?
I don't see how Spotlight "does everything LaunchBar/Butler/QuickSilver does and much more".
It may look rather similar, but the functionality is really very different, IMHO.
However, adding Spotlight services to LaunchBar -- that's got me excited!

[moki]

Originally posted by Developer:
It is so obvious that Dashboard is "inspired" by Konfabulator that everybody who sees the two can tell it.

Prior art by several years:

http://www.stardock.com/products/des...creenshots.asp

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by workerbee:
Does Spotlight show your results while you're typing (no need to press the enter key), and change same result live according to your input? Or does Spotlight adapt to your preferences and show Dreamweaver.app as first choice for "DW" (for example) after telling it to once or twice?
I don't see how Spotlight "does everything LaunchBar/Butler/QuickSilver does and much more".
It may look rather similar, but the functionality is really very different, IMHO.
However, adding Spotlight services to LaunchBar -- that's got me excited!

Spotlight will dynamically adjusts the results as you type. Spotlight indexes an infinite range of metadata.

It'll look through your Address Book vcards, MP3 ID3 tags, QT file metadata, text/document files (txt, rtf, doc...), PDF files, image files (EFIX, JPEG, TIFF, PSD...), mail content, bookmarks, folders, applications.

Spotlight is apparently a bit rough around the edges in the dev release of Tiger but it's got plenty of time to improve.

It's different than Launchbar in that it doesn't incorporate everything Launchbar offers but also offers a much, MUCH, richer search engine.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
What journalism school did he go to? Just asking 'cuz I don't want family members, close relatives, or friends to get screwed by getting a bad journalism education.

the 'illbilly school off badd journalizim

[JCS]

Prior art by several years

The product manager for DesktopX sees things slightly differently. Check out this thread in the Konfabulator forum. ("Draginol" is the guy from Stardock.)

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by moki:
Prior art by several years:

http://www.stardock.com/products/des...creenshots.asp

While I agree with you, I find this statement very bold considering you threatened to sue a kid that released a product that existed in several form before and was implemented differently than the one you released a day later. I think you know what I'm talking about.

The product you released wasn't new in concept or implementation in any way (in fact, the implementation sucked and was a shitty hack), yet you still had the balls to act the same way (worse even) than Arlo Rose.

Andrew, next time, kindly stfu. You have no more rights to defend product concepts being stolen or used in similar manners.

Some of your applications are great...Snapz Pro X and Wiretap are amazing...but your attitude? Holy ****! You gotta go back into the Moki Attitude 1.3 code and fix those bugs.

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by JCS:
The product manager for DesktopX sees things slightly differently. Check out this thread in the Konfabulator forum. ("Draginol" is the guy from Stardock.)

His whole arguement seems to hinge on the "implementation" of ideas. Well Konfabulator loses there. Apple's implementation is far less resource heavy and obstructing(ie they don't embed in the desktop) those two divergent implementation features lead me to believe Apple was no more motivated by Konfabulator than they were when they saw the Xerox Parc. Sure they took an idea and added their own touch on that. That's not stealing.

[osxisfun]

I listed to "your mac life" stream today and they had arlo from konfab on.

First he said you could not use the 1984 desk accessories as an argument that apple did not steal from konfab becuase konfab is a javascript engine that let's you build things. the fact that the default widgets are are nearly identical in purpose was irevellent to him. He then said that konfab was be more like real basic or hypercard in that sense.

So which is it?

On one path he says konfab is not = to DAs.
On another path he says its more like hypercard / Realbasic since you get to build things from scratch.

The only problem for arlo is that BOTH paths lead to prior work BOTH done by apple so how is apple "ripping them off"??

He goes on to state that he is worried less after learning more that dashboard is a web page with hooks. Also, he said that konexpose was an idea that he had since konfab 1.0. Fine. If apple comes out and says dashboard was going to be in expose since jag will he take them at their word?

He also all but admitted that he f-d up in his dialog with the press.

Looks like a classic case of how NOT to handle a situation like this. For a great example of how to handle it correctly, check out the netnewswire guy's blog. Well done.


And one thing most of us are not talking about is that it seems dashboard was more a feature parity "add" to match it towards longhorns "dashboard" feature. Maybe someone more familiar with it can chime in because all i know is that its basically dashboard that is written in XUAL. (sp)?


Maybe its just time for him to put his nose to the grindstone, build their windows version, and build an IDE that will write to dashboard AND konfab. This will go further in ensuring their long time success then accusations-a-plenty....

[Horsepoo!!!]

Seems like Arlo's only argument is that Apple decided to use JavaScript (along with many other languages) as a scripting engine. I find that funny and entertaining.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
First he said you could not use the 1984 desk accessories as an argument that apple did not steal from konfab becuase konfab is a javascript engine that let's you build things. the fact that the default widgets are are nearly identical in purpose was irevellent to him. He then said that konfab was be more like real basic or hypercard in that sense.

So which is it?

On one path he says konfab is not = to DAs.
On another path he says its more like hypercard / Realbasic since you get to build things from scratch.

The only problem for arlo is that BOTH paths lead to prior work BOTH done by apple so how is apple "ripping them off"??

Surely you're not suggesting that Arlo meant Konfab was a direct descendant of (or even really "inspired by") HyperCard. That would be a ridiculous twisting of his words.

What Arlo is talking about there is that Konfab is not really a "developer tool." It isn't a heavyweight framework that Ambrosia will be using to build Snapz Pro X 3. The idea behind Konfab is that more or less "normal users" are able to build some really cool little mini-apps that take advantage of Quartz without having the development overhead of real applications. Desk Accessories were just normal programs, so they fail to meet on this central philosophy. HyperCard was the same in philosophy, but obviously the application was totally different. I don't think either can reasonably be claimed as "prior art."

[osxisfun]

I see how he was / is trying to put the konfab "IDE" (let's call it that since IDEs let you build stuff even though i know his is not a true IDE environment) in the space you mentioned.

But once he gets into that space i am not saying its a direct descendant of hypercard but it has turned out to be hypercard-like only with a great compositor / quartz renderer. Hypercard let's "normal" people program simple apps. I really would not call then "totally different" both have a simple language to build apps. Konfab's just look much much better because hypercard never made it to the OSX world.


edit:

Actually, the more i think of it, if hypercard had continued development by apple, and let's say its OSX savy and all, in which ways would it be different then konfab? I think there _would_ be ways that each were different then another, but they would be _similar_ in more ways IMO.

Of course we won't know for sure since it was canceled but i doubt apple would not have made hypercard do most if not all the visual dohickeys that konfab does.They invented the whole quartz thing after all.

[himself]

The controversy never ends. I've been following this whole debacle, and I think that Dashboard is very similar to Konfabulator, but I don't consider it a ripoff at all. As software development goes, Dashboard is a natural evolution of the functionality that konfabulator (and other apps like it) provided. From the POV of a user, they do exactly the same thing (or have the potential to), they differ only in how they do it. There's nothing wrong with that; it's called competition. But this is where Arlo should be arguing his [futile] point... a small developer can't compete with the likes of Apple. If this were some other 3rd party developer releasing Dashboard, there might be a little controversy, but not nearly as much as we see now. It would have all been about healthy competition. But here, Apple has the power to kill konfabulator without giving it much of a fighting chance (I think konfabulator does have a chance, but Arlo & co. will have to be really slick about it), and that's what Arlo is pissed about. All the talk about the similarities between the apps is moot.

[moki]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Andrew, next time, kindly stfu. You have no more rights to defend product concepts being stolen or used in similar manners.

erm... I expressed no opinion on the matter either way; I was just pointing out that specific prior art that exists. Relax.

[JCS]

I expressed no opinion on the matter either way; I was just pointing out that specific prior art that exists.

That depends on the context of the claim of "prior art", a phrase that is most well-defined when a patent is involved. Since Konfabulator doesn't have any patents, one can only guess at the imagined patent for which you are citing prior art. If the hypothetical patent is for "an application with floating windows", for example, then there are a million examples of "prior art." IOW, it's not a very useful phrase since one can imagine many possible hypothetical patents, and the validity of your claim changes depending on the reader-imagined premise.

Anyway, in the case of DesktopX, it's my understanding that it originally wasn't much like Konfabulator, but changed to become so after Konfabulator was introduced. Apparently the DesktopX people even wrote an article on their web site after Konfabulator was released saying, essentially, "Konfabulator is what we should have done." Then they changed their app to be more like Konfab.

Arlo has a nice summary in his weblog. The fact that the DesktopX guy from Stardock seems to support this view of events also adds weight, IMO. But to the unwashed MacNN masses, please, feel free to continue to believe that Konfabulator is "just Desk Accessories" and therefore has no claim on originality or innovation