Dashboard a Ripoff? Boycott Apple?

The images of the new OS X feature “Dashboard” have prompted more than one compairison to Konfabulator, and some people are pretty pissed off about it - even looking for a boycot of Apple. Russell Beattie says:

It’s very simple. Support your fellow developer or watch as the next application Apple copies wholesale is yours. They’ve done it to Adobe, they’ve done it to Watson, they’ve done it to OmniWeb and now they’re doing it to Konfabulator. I’m a wanna be switcher and a Jobs-devotee and if you’ve been reading this weblog for any amount of time you know I normally never miss a keynote once it’s available online, but this time I don’t have the stomache to bother watching it. This is the biggest ripoff ever.

I think in the past I’ve seen some justification for Apple’s infringing on third party developers. I think we’ve all done that - things that “should” be part of the OS and make wholistic sense, well, we’ll give Apple some leeway. A menu widget or extensions to Sherlock. Okay. A web browser? Why not. Even Brent saw the practicality in adding RSS to Safari, no? RSS is getting more popular every day, it’s only a matter of time before Apple and Microsoft add it in.

But copying the JavaScript-enabled Desktop Widgets? Nonononono. That’s not right. I remember when I first read about Konfabulator about a year ago I was amazed at how cool the app was and how ingenious it was as well. We *all* love elegant, simple to expand solutions like Konfabulator. But vital to the Mac OS? No. Not in any respect. For Apple to copy Konfabulator like they did is just stealing. Not “Great Artist” stealing like what Jobs did at PARC, just plain outright idea theft. A common robbery. A mugging.

And he’s not the only one - Marc Cantor and Scoble are pissed as well, on the other hand, Jason DeFillippo thinks people should calm down:

Look, I understand the backlash against the Dashboard and similarities with Konfabulator. It’s lame and Apple should be pretty ashamed of itself. I’m pretty sure someone is gonna get a reaming thanks to all the bad press but c’mon guys… It’s an open market and if Konfabulator can’t hold up then so be it. I think this will HELP sell more copies of Konfabulator than ever. Why? Apple announced their version WAY early so Konfab is the only game in town right now. Dashboard is not nearly as flexible and customizable (from reports I’ve read) and that’s the beauty of Konfab. Also a LOT of people have to be hearing about Konfabulator that didn’t know about it before. That or they knew about it but didn’t try it (like myself) when it was released. There were just weren’t any widgets that I needed at the time. Yesterday I spent a while going through the widget library and found a TON of great stuff and now Konfabulator is a part of my total Mac experience that’s not going anywhere. As soon as my Google checks get here I’m going to register it proudly. So don’t boycott Apple. Don’t stop buying Macs. Just keep one step ahead of them and writing better software.