Matt Jones

before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it - Mark Hollis

Heat from the Dashboard

A new feature to be included in Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ is generating much criticism from Mac users, developers and bloggers for its uncanny resemblance to another, independently produced application.

Dashboard displays a number highly customisable mini-applications known as ‘widgets’, and, like Expos

6 Responses to “Heat from the Dashboard”

  1. Rik Says:

    well, i was forced to go home and change into shorts and sandals, sopping wet i was. and we had an amazing thunderstorm which knocked out our power, which was nice, but not enough.

    it’s a jungle in here.

  2. Stuart Says:

    I’m lazy when I’m lovin’, I’m lazy when I play
    I’m lazy with my girlfriend a thousand times a day
    I’m lazy when I’m speaking, I’m lazy when I walk
    I’m lazy when I’m dancin’ and I’m lazy when I talk

    This also applies to when it’s so bloody humid. God darn it.

  3. natis Says:

    I don\’t know, maybe it\’s just me but I personally (and probably) won\’t use Dashboard. I disliked Konfabulator from the start. The problem with many ideas is that hardly any are original. As devil\’s advocate, granted, Rose and Clarke pushed out their product to market first but we really don\’t know what Apple was working on internally as we all know how secretive they tend to be.

    With that said, I personally think it\’s an example of very MS-like behavior.

  4. natis Says:

    Don\’t know if you saw the writing over at Daring Fireball. But you\’re Matt, I\’m sure you have.

    –jj

  5. natis Says:

    You had it hidden between stories.

  6. michel Says:

    it seems apple didn\’t do any wrong

    Konfabulator was not very original and not new (hek, I can think about others previons similar software, of course the most obvious for windows users is desktopX )

    dashboard is in fact a use of Webkit.

    they choose to use jscript, is some people think only one second why ?? because these kind of desktop accessories are tightly connected to the web and what is the most used language for web sites ? JSCRIPT

    so is it a surprise ? no. it\’s common sense people.

    (and jscript has common DOM functions to manipulate html pages , it should be very useful in a dashboard environnment, widgets _are_ html pages)

    nothing new in konfabulator
    nothing new in desktopX
    nothing new in karambar
    nothing new in gdesklet (a gnome imitation of karambar)
    nothing new in nothing !

    just re-invention, improvments, incremental progress. just the way of free(dom) technology .

    and apple was perfectly nice with everyone. I don\’t think Alan Rose is perfectly honest.

    in fact, people seems to believe apple is forbidden to add nice applications in their operating systems.

    if the applications is open to developers (sdk), with STANDARDS PROTOCOLS (dashboard is completely W3C compliant ! : css, html, jscript ) to use and build on it , it\’s NEVER A PROBLEM !

    in fact, dashboard is NOT an application, it\’s a new place to build NEW applications, it\’s just a \”webkit based\” platform.

    konfabulator authors should create a webkit based tools to build widget. I would like that.

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