Where Apple Went Wrong With Widgets

not really. konfab widgets suck.

In reference to Scott's comments - surely it would be equally useful is someone created a Dashboard-widget to Konfabulator-widget converter? Having said that, both ideas are impossible, because the two environments (konfabulator and dashboar) create widgets in completely different ways - conversion would be nigh on impossible in a user-friendly way... looks like i'm going to have to survive without that wikipedia widget...

Apple didn't make a mistake. They probably looked at the Konfablator API and decided they didn't like it. Dashboard is more standards based, which is why you can open most Dashboard Widgets in Safari, but not Konfabulator Widgets. Konfabulator does present a problem with the Windows version. Many users will see it as "Dashboard for Windows" and that will elminate one perceived benefit of OS X. Not that it is much of a win either way. I can't see Apple buying Konfabulator and killing the Windows branch.

Dashboard = Active Desktop. RSS = Channels.

When Yahoo bought it they made it look exactly like Apple's Widgets in Tiger, they call Expos頭 Konspos頡nd all of the icons are completely stolen from Apple. It sucks though..even pressing F8 brings them up and such but you press it to put them away and they're still there just the backround changes, horrible!! Apple should take this program out and sue them for the stealing the interface and everything they can. And with that buy Konfabulator out from them(somehow) so it doesn't get sold to M$. I'm furious just seeing this program and to be honest the first time I loaded it up......it crashed!!! Hahaha, true story!

Apple lists over 800 widgets on their website, and new ones are added every day. Let's see if Yahoo's widgets even reaches 200 in one year... Forget about which one is better, the main problem is that Konfabulator is a third party application that is required to run the widgets. Dashboard is a standard part of OS X and the whole Mac community is exposed to it in the media. There are a lot of talented web designers using Macs, and those are more than happy to produce new Dashboard widgets using their html, css and Javascript knowledge. Pro web designers and programmers on the Windows side though from what I assume, now see Yahoo as an bloated company that has a lack of focus, and I don't see them jumping on the Yahoo widget train. Would developers like to force their user to download some framework on the Yahoo site? This is the kind of step that most people don't like to go through.

Jaguar, Panther, and Windows users can all have widgets for free, thus negating one of the two selling points Apple has used for Tiger. Good for users, bad for Apple.

Small correction to my previous post - the G4 was on Panther, of course...

I tried out Konfabulator a couple of years or so, on my old G4 dual 450, still on Mac OS 9x, and although it looked nice, I have to agree with those who called it a resource hog. It really used up too much memory for me, so I had to throw the whole thing out. I still have that G4 and although it runs more memory now (1gig) the porcessor is the same and it runs Tiger with Dashboard and although I don't use that machine much now, it seems like Dashboard works much better. Aside from that, I also like Apple's implementation and I use widgets a lot. Since I am European with a lot of friends from the US, it is a handy way to convert stuff and I keep track of the time all over and I look up words etc. It's there when you need it and then it is gone. Neat. I am happy the Konfab-people made some money, though. Isn't that a story with a happy ending for all? :)

Why was Apple supposed to pay Konfabulator for work they paid their own engineers to do again? As has been mentioned many times already, while on the surface they look similar, underneath they are different beasts. I'm not sure shareholders would buy into Apple handing out money "just because."