Widget wars: thoughts on the Konfabulator-Dashboard brouhaha

Posted by Dennis Sellers Jul 5, 2004 at 11:20pm

The Konfabulator-Dashboard issue is a public relations nightmare for Apple. The company should have seen it coming and did nothing to diffuse it (couldn’t they have at least considered using another term besides “widgets”?). However, after culling through all the info I can get my hands on and speaking to some industry folks, I’ve concluded that there are enough differences between the two utilities that Apple’s biggest snafu is exhibiting a major lack of tact.

In case you aren’t familiar with the issue, let me recap: at last week’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple showcased Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), which has a feature called Dashboard. It’s a semi-transparent layer that zooms across your Desktop with a single button click, similar to the way Expos—introduced with Mac OS X 10.3 (“Panther”)—works. Dashboard, as explained by Apple, “is home to a new kind of application called Widgets,” which are “are mini-applications written in JavaScript” and “designed for fun as well as function.”

Konfabulator is a US$25 application developed by Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke that that lets you run small files, called (yep) Widgets, which can perform a variety of tasks. Rose claims that Apple simply snagged the Konfabulator look and implementation and turned it into Dashboard. In fact, a note on the Konfabulator Web site says: “Cupertino, start your photocopiers! Why wait ‘till the ‘first half of 2005’ when you can get the original Dashboard now?” It’s a dig at Apple’s WWDC poster that proclaimed “Redmond, start your photocopiers” and which implied that the next major version of Windows (dubbed Longhorn) will doubtless copy many of Tiger’s features.

On the other hand, Apple says Dashboard is their own original creation and that Widgets were part of NextStep, the operating system that helped “father” Mac OS X.

“It’s insulting, is what it is,” Rose (a former Apple human interface designer) said in a telephone interview with CNET. He and Clarke released Konfabulator in February 2003. “They could have at least offered to work with us or to buy it.” He added that Apple would alienate developers with moves such as this. “Why should developers want to work on their platform?”

However, despite the obvious surface similarities, there are major differences between Dashboard and Konfabulator. As John Gruber elaborated on at length in his “Daring Fireball” blog and Gene Steinberg mentioned in his “Mac Night Owl” column, the concept of mini apps goes back to the Desk Accessories of the classic (pre-Mac OS X) operating system and were unveiled in 1984. They were conceived by Bud Tribble and mainly engineered by Andy Hertzfeld. So Apple, as they see it, may simply be bringing back Desk Accessories in the form of the Dashboard.

“What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of Apples Quartz rendering. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders,” Gruber writes. “Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Mac OS X The crux is that what makes Konfabulator stand out is that its widgets look ‘right at home in Mac OS X.’ But is it any wonder that Apples Dashboard gadgets look ‘right at home’ on Mac OS X, too?

What’s more, Dashboard Widgets are apparently differently than Konfabulator Widgets and supposedly consume fewer system resources. Gruber notes that Konfabulator contains its own self-contained JavaScript runtime engine, based on SpiderMonkey, the open source JavaScript engine from the Mozilla Project. Konfabulator UI layouts are specified in a custom XML format. “Dashboard, on the other hand, is based on WebCore, the underlying open source layout and scripting engine behind Safari,” he explains. “Dashboard gadgets are indeed scripted using JavaScript, the same language used by Konfabulator, but Dashboard uses the JavaScript engine thats built into the system. And for UI layout, Dashboard gadgets are specified using HTML and CSS—using the same rendering engine as Safari.”

Simon Willison, a UK Web developer, has this to say about Dashboard in his “HTML escapes the browser” blog: “What’s really exciting about Dashboard is the way widgets are written. Unlike Konfabulator, where widget layouts are defined using a simple XML dialect, Dashboard widgets are written in HTML and CSS and rendered using Safari’s WebKit engine! They’re essentially mini-web pages, liberated from the browser.”

As I see it, Apple was obviously “inspired” by the look of Konfabulator, but the basic idea of mini-apps is nothing new. What’s more, I think that Dashboard has been on the drawing board for some time. It also offers developers hopefully, including Rose and Clarke the opportunity to make complimentary Widgets (though Apple has called them Gadgets in some documents). Developers can look at current applications and offer to make complimentary gadgets to enhance them. And someone will, hopefully, make a tool to simplify the creation of Widgets/Gadgets. As one developer told me, “Apple’s announcement makes me excited to see that they may have done a lot of the work for me. Now I just need to make gadgets.”

Still, it would have been nice of the company to acknowledge Rose and Clarke’s design work and at least give ‘em a heads-up that Dashboard was coming. But the world of software development is a brutal one, especially when you’re developing features that tweak and/or enhance the look and functionality of Mac OS X itself. Anything that Apple can do to enhance the operating system can and should be done. Still, this can be done without stepping on the toes of folks such as Rose and Clarke. Apple developers and Apple itself should be partners, not adversaries. And does the company really need this sort of bad PR at any time especially during a week that highlights Apple developers?

Of course, not everyone agrees with my prognosis or that of Gruber or Steinberg. In a MacNet editorial, John Manzione writes: “As a user and supporter of Konfabulator I was quite surprised to see Apple emulate it in Dashboard, one of Apples new features in Mac OS X Tiger. That is until I remembered the Watson/Sherlock incident. However, it was only when I heard Steve Jobs use the term Widgets did I come to realize this was no ordinary rip-off. This was personal; it had to be. Arlo Rose used to work for Apple, in the HID division, and was a big player in the development of the Appearance Manager. Mr. Rose has an understanding of Apples operating system that is quite remarkable. Mr. Rose left Apple of his own volition, but it seems that there has been some animosity, at least on Apples part, in his leaving I dont know enough about Dashboard to state that it is in fact Konfabulator under a new name. But you dont have to be a software developer to know when an application has been ripped off. There are enough similarities between the two (not the mention both apps called their applets Widgets) to recognize that Apple decided it liked Konfabulator a little too much.”

An iGeek blog says: “Dashboard is a decent rip-off of Konfabulator with a few improvements; like it uses webkit, has better visuals, and allows you to show and hide. (Konfabulator added a show/opaque function after Apple did, but no hide/go-away). Technically, it is a bit different, in that the renderer is richer (supports HTML+CSS+JS), so it is richer and better in that area. But those are better implementation details; the scope and functionality is very similar This isn’t the first time Apple stole others ideas; there was Watson/Sherlock, dozens of things in System 7, and so on. But in the past, Apple generally at least talked to the people they were stealing from, and tried to buy or integrate I realize Apple’s Dashboard code is all theirs (they rewrote everything), and they only ripped off the idea. If they extended or broadened the ideas, they might have an excuse, ‘we like the concept, but needed the technology to be a little different, so we took the loose idea and extended it.’ But Apple hasn’t done much to extend the ideas; which makes them look like unimaginative crooks, instead of contributing something to the world.”

Jason O’Grady, at his PowerPage site, lists four different Tiger features that “maul” software developers: Dashboard, Spotlight (“looks a lot like LaunchBar”), Automator (“essentially kills macro applications like QuicKeys and Keyboard Maestro”) and Safari RSS (which bumps up against apps such as NetNewsWire).

What’s your take? Is Apple dissing its developers with features such as Dashboard? Or is the company simply making prudent moves to make a good product (Mac OS X) even better? Drop me an e-mail at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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