Konfabulator vs. Dashboard
I bought Konfabulator about a month after it came out and I’ve regretted it ever since. I was really hoping that there would be great widgets after developers became comfortable with the environment, but I just haven’t seen that happening. How many clock widgets do you need to have access to? How many search engine front-ends? How many “this is your IP” widgets? iTunes controllers? I have not seen a Konfabulator widget I considered using for which there wasn’t a superior, usually free, stand-alone indie application that provided a more logical interface to its preferences and features.
I think the development resources that are going into Dashboard would be better spent refining the interfaces of existing applications. That wouldn’t make for a spiffy demo, but it would benefit users.
FWIW, I think you just summed up my sentiments *exactly*.
Well, I’ll chime in with a “me too”… except that I didn’t register Konfabulator, I just couldn’t get excited about it, as you say, there are just too many, more functional, and OS-compatible, apps out there.
It (Dashboard) looks to be eye candy, and not particularly useful eye candy.
How ’bout spending the time increasing app integration, not only between Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal and the Finder, but inter-application comms in general? The Sync service looks to be welcome here, but what of System Services?
Where are the ‘Smart Calendars’, the ability to flag files, web pages, and emails as tasks; properly attaching files with events; etc. etc. oh yeah, and how about extensible Finder labels to go along with the very welcome Finder Smart Folders, I’d like to have a larger set of labels, to create some meaningful Smart Folders for project management.
Spotlight looks to be a good start, and I look forward to getting a better idea of just how useful it will be…
Dashboard vs. Konfabulator
While I applaud the addition of metadata to the OS and the other cool stuff that Apple announced today will be part of Tiger, Dashboard leaves a bad after-taste… The developers of Konfabulator are rightly pissed and so am I…
I like dashboard for five reasons:
1) I have always hated stickies because you have to load the application separately. The stickies in dashboard appear to be a part of the app that remains up during login. This is a bonus to me.
2) It gets out of the way, just like the original desktop tools from the original Macintosh days.
3) Unlike Konfabulator, dashboard uses xhtml, css, and js (kon uses js+xml)..
4) It’s not just a self-contained engine, either. It uses webcore, which is really showing its power through cross-product integration.
5) It comes with the OS, instead of paying just to use the widgets. I could forgive paying to build widgets, but to use them? come on.
Dashboard does have some interesting possibilites because of its use of WebCore. Also, it looks like it will have a better management UI, something Konfabulator never got right.