Comments on: Konfabulator Will Have Some Company

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 23:34:47 +0000

) you’re dragging out that old and *completely discredited* chestnut of “Dashboard was stolen from Konfabulator”. That’s completely wrong and you should definitely know by now why.

You’re right, one is for running javascript-based, user customizable, desk-accessory-type objects called “widgets”, while the other is for running javascript-based, user customizable, desk-accessory-type objects called “widgets”. Or is it the other way around?

Seriously, sarcasm aside, if any part of what I just said is incorrect, please provide an argument or link to back that up beyond “you should definitely know” because I don’t.

By: Chris Stolzenberg

Chris Stolzenberg — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:13:03 +0000

Nik you are right:

iPhoto sucks, its like letting the system control your files, reminds me of win. I prefer GC to control, organize and manipulate my pictures.

Besides that its good to know Apple watches the useful 3rd party helpers and integrates them if useful into the system even if its frustrating to developers, I loved for example my iTunes Control: Synergy it was well worth the couple of bucks.

By: Eliah Hecht

Eliah Hecht — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:52:14 +0000

Re: Spotlight: the killer for me is really that it defaults to “Show All” instead of “Top Hit”, so even if it picked the right result for me every single time, to launch something would be Cmd-Space, Down, Enter, instead of QS or LB’s Cmd-Space, Enter. That extra keystroke is really annoying.
Also it seems to search on substrings, instead of finding everything that contains your letters (as QS/LB do), so for instance “ffox” never finds Firefox, and “ps” never finds Photoshop.

By: Jan-Hendrik Dorner

Jan-Hendrik Dorner — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:48:12 +0000

I programmed a while ago a personalized calendar, which includes the current weather condition and a forecast (please see my site
http://www.project24.info/weather.php for details). The calendar is quite popular ( over 1000 downloads from different persons every 24h).
But I think, the traffic will stop, because of the weather - widget.

By: Richard Dalziel-Sharpe

Richard Dalziel-Sharpe — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:18:58 +0000

A not re Spotlight to Eliah Hecht.
Spotlight requires several hours to fully index your HD so 15 minutes is hardly a trial.
Let it do a full index and use it for a few days as it has algorithms that learn how you use files.

By: nik

nik — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:13:52 +0000

Apple has long decided on integration vs. 3rd party - if they see something worth integrating they will. If that destroys / hampers 3rd party app writers, too bad.
I can understand this because it does indeed produce more value for the consumer. We get lots of extremely useful and highly polished applications for free with the OS. Do i mind? No.
As for the argument that 3rd party application developers will turn away from the Mac and do (what exactly?) instead, it’s not true. What is good for the platform is also good for 3rd party app developers.

ps; Except iPhoto - it keeps getting better, but it keeps sucking, too.

By: Dmitry Markman

Dmitry Markman — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 00:53:19 +0000

actually you can navigate Tiger’s Safari embedded
PDF document: use right click (or ctrl-click)
and you’ll see popup menu with all you need to
navigate the document

By: Dmitry Markman

Dmitry Markman — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 00:34:21 +0000

Safari’s PDF’s viewer isn’t rudimentary it’s based
on the new powerful PDFKit framework
what you see in the Tiger’s Safari isn’t an image
what is true that it doesn’t have controls to navigate pdf document
but I don’t like to see large pdf documents in the browser anyway and for short pdfs I don’t need
the controls

By: response to articel

response to articel — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:48:29 +0000

Apple’s display of PDFs inline is rudimentary at best. Basically, it displays it as an image. I don’t think anyone (Neither Schubert nor Adobe) has to worry about their implementation.

By: Stephan Huebner

Stephan Huebner — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:39:33 +0000

The best thing about the article is that it doesn’t critizise apple for including new features in its OS. I am really happy that Apple does such a good job (imho) in including useful features in OSX. And why shouldn’t it, even if someone else had “invented” something before? I mean, which software-developer can truely say he has made a program that doesn’t rely on anything else / any other program / any other way of doing things that wasn’t invented in an earlier program?
One last thing: As good as some of the 3rd-party-utilities are, they are just that: Programs that run together with others on the OS. In most cases they consume CPU-Power, RAM, whatever. I think the more elegant way is to have such functions within the OS itself. I personally prefer using the systems own functions over 3rd-party utilities. if they are comparable. I like having a “cleaner” system”. But that’s just me

By: Jeremy Pinnix

Jeremy Pinnix — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:25:58 +0000

I have to agree with Brian regarding Dashboard. There are plenty of examples of prior art.

Good summary otherwise Nick.

By: SmartMarc

SmartMarc — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:13:01 +0000

BTW… Acrobat 7 ships with it’s own Browser Plug-In for viewing PDFs in Safari

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:08:19 +0000

Noah - I don’t know from personal use, I’m just referring to what was said on the Tiger New Features page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeatures.html

I would assume to activate you would single click the time in the menubar. if that doesn’t work, then maybe there’s a setting to turn it on/off in System Preferences Time settings.

By: Noah

Noah — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:00:39 +0000

I’m curious about your comment regarding displaying iCal items in the system clock… I’ve got Tiger and I don’t see any way of doing this.

By: Eliah Hecht

Eliah Hecht — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:48:47 +0000

You forgot to mention LaunchBar being redundant because of Tigers Spotlight.

Negative. I used Spotlight for about fifteen minutes before switching back to Quicksilver. It’s nice for searching, but crap for launching: too slow, and the highlight doesn’t default to the top search result. Now I’m just wishing I could get that stupid icon out of my menu bar…

By: enc

enc — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:44:49 +0000

You forgot to mention LaunchBar being redundant because of Tigers Spotlight.

By: Eliah Hecht

Eliah Hecht — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:13:44 +0000

The modifier key remapping seems to include only the following keys: Caps Lock, Control, Option, Command. It works globally. My guess is it’s primarily so UNIX types who want their control key where caps lock is can have it there.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:30:43 +0000

Why did Apple choose to play dashboard widgets in a seperate konfab-lieke container? That to me is the big limitation.

Check out mProjector. You can make the same kind of widgets that are independent of dashboard — they run as normal apps.

Tell me you favorite widget and I will make a version that doesn’t require dashboard or konfabulator contatiner.

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:16:12 +0000

Steve - thanks. I’d [obviously] forgotten that one.

Kevin - read it again. I was simply stating the arguments surrounding Konfabulator.

“Stolen, a new iteration from the OS 9 days, whatever.”

with the “whatever” portion signifying that it’s a beaten-to-death horse. Dashboard is practically here, and the issue matters no longer.

Good point about Safari. I’d revise my stance to agree with you somewhat on that. For me, I prefer my browser and rss all together in one package. (I’ve got NetNewsWire, but user FireFox/Sage much more often.) In the end, it’ll come down to personal preference.

By: Kevin Ballard

Kevin Ballard — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:02:19 +0000

Nick, you just said two completely wrong things.

1) Konfabulator sucks. Really, it does. It’s a CPU and Resource hog. But of course, that’s not what the problem is. The problem is that, once again, you’re dragging out that old and *completely discredited* chestnut of “Dashboard was stolen from Konfabulator”. That’s completely wrong and you should definitely know by now why.

2) Safari RSS will *not* reduce market share for existing newsreaders. If anything, it will increase the market share. Why? People who currently use a newsreader will stick with it - newsreaders are more powerful and flexible than Safari RSS. What Safari RSS will do is introduce more people to the world of RSS. Sure, there will be plenty of people who will stick with Safari RSS, and that’s fine. But there will also be plenty of people who, once introduced to RSS, will decide they need something more powerful and will move on to other newsreaders.

By: Steve Savery

Steve Savery — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 15:49:39 +0000

iChat Status will also fall foul of Tiger - iChat 3 will sport a new feature to allow the current song in iTunes to be displayed in the status message.