Apple has widgets, Microsoft has gadgets

I read about this story at Macdailynews.com Here's a story they linked to about the 'Who invented this first' debate. http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator

I read about this story at Macdailynews.com Here's a story they linked to about the 'Who invented this first' debate. http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator

Why the hell have we had so many years of programming language revolution and we just cannot settle on some sort of happy medium. Something as simple as a widget should be entirely cross-platform, be it OSX, Windows, or Linux. Look at video game development, the easier you make it on developers the more successful you are in getting product. Make it easy for a developer to build a cross-platform widget and we'll have more of them that are more robust and dependable. Sorry for the rant...

I wonder how many viruses are now being written to take advantage of Microsoft's "gadgets" as they'll probabaly be full of security holes.

Actually, you young 'uns stole the name widget from we crusty old Unix types. The X Windowing System used the term for 'window gadgets', any part of a GUI you could interact with. It's been in use since at least 1986, and possibly even since 1984 ...

Apple/Konfabulator copied widgets from Active Desktop, a Microsoft invention which is about 8-9 years old now. *disclaimer* I am a fan of apple, and a hater of fanboys.

#13 Al Gore is on the board of directors for Apple so he may have had a hand in Widgets for sure :-)(http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bod.html) Anyway, it seemed to me that I remember MS coming up with a dashboard that they had announced in Longhorn that they never released back in 2000 or so. There is still some question in my mind regarding the whole dashboard idea. Granted the Longhorn dashboard is not as stylish as the Apple Dashboard but the ideas are the same to use a sidebar/area of your computer to run mini programs... I do think that Apple ripped Konfabulator to some degree even calling the widget, widgets. regardless of if Al invented it or not Konfabulator came out with them first. As for the Acqua look of the next version of Office... I really could care less what they do with it as long as it doesn't crash ever so often for no reason like 2000 & 2003. The acqua look is also somewhat welcome for those of us who are forced to use a PC at work.

Ever used Konfabulator lately? Have you used Konpos鿠(F8 I think) So in that way Konfabulator copied Apple back, so now they're even. We should focus all our hate to Micro$oft's really "creative" team. Oh, and btw, have you clicked the top right corner of you screen lately? and, have you seen a screenshot of the open Start menu in Vista? It shoud bring you memories.

and they are going to have web based gadgets which you can access from anywhere, so that is pretty cool. Don't fall for this Microsoft sucker punch. They practically invented vaporware. While I'm sure at some point they will actually deploy something called a gadget, one must keep in mind that everything at this conference could simply be marketing. MS loves to tout the coming features of software that is years away, if it will ever ship. They're just trying to forestall any of the (rare) switchers out there that love the Dashboard. When, or if, they deliver this, it will be in a paired down version, probably less functional than Dashboards are now. Maybe they'll upgrade it to meet all of their originally promised specs, maybe they won't. When it comes to product announcements, MS is about as honest as combo used car salesman, TV preacher with a nasty smack habit.

Is Bill scheduled for another pie-time soon?