A few days ago, I posted a tirade against Apple, and its predatory ways. Many reactions, and some educational ones. Perhaps I was too premature in my ranting and raving. (That unfortunately is the curse of here-and-now world of blogging!) I was informed that widgets were part of the Mac OS 9. Oops! I also was told that there are a couple of projects like Dashboard for Linux – Beagle and surprise surprise, Dashboard. (I probably should shut up about this! Here are some mixed reactions!
Scott pointed to this, while Frank pointed out that in addition one should listen to “Shawn King’s interview with Arlo Rose in tonite’s editon of Your Mac Life. Click on archives to hear the stream. Arlo states that once again the media ran with the part that creates drama thus making him look like a raving angered lunatic. The most cryptic and delightful response came from Leo Prieto who resides in Chile.
Om,
I actually emailed Steve about this (without having read your post). The subject of my email was “Shame on you, Apple!”, and to my surprise, he replied! This is what he said:
Excuse me, but Mac OS 9 had desktop Widgets long before Konfabulator did. Apple was the first to use the term Widgets as well. We never complained when the Konfabulator guys “ripped off Apple” and I think its a bit unfair for them to be claiming we ripped them off now.
Charlie said: Apple has opened a huge market for the Konfab authors, now they can just shift their efforts into widget coding and marketing, rather than having to maintain the core application. Instead of griping, why don’t they consider this a new opportunity? There will be a huge market for widgets, far beyond whatever they could have reached with Konfabulator alone. Seems like a smart company could figure out how to make more money with Widgets than with Konfabulator.
Folks your point is well taken! I was merely trying to defend a lone coder. I saw the same thing happen to Watson, and perhaps blew my top!
Nice to see that you’re a good sport on the give and take of the tumultuous technology world.
Its always a two way street.
If email is a private asychronous conversation, then these blogs are a public verison of the same.
Coo, Om. It was a mea culpa, but a good-natured and a good-hearted one at that. You get my respect, and I’m sure you earned a lot of other people’s.
Charlie makes a great point. There will now be a huge market for well-designed and functional widgets, things people will be willing to pay money for. I’m sure it’ll be easier to sell a collection of cool-looking, useful widgets than to convince people to buy and install Konfabulator on their machines. Widget writers will be able to know that any Tiger user will be a potential customer!