It’s Not Just Microsoft…

Posted in General, Computers, Apple, Windows and Applications 6 years ago.

If you were to turn on any technology news channel, you would likely hear cries targeted solely at Microsoft and their market-dominate products such as Windows. Microsoft has been criticized for years for their extreme lack of security and their cut-throat business ways. Instead of going into the never ending tirade of why Microsoft is bad for the computer industry, I want to point out that they are not the only ones. Apple has been long regarded as a company that cares greatly for its user base and even more so for developers for their operating system. At this years WWDC, Apple announced several new products including their gargantuan 30″ Cinema Display and the latest and greatest update to OSX, 10.4 (also known as Tiger). The new features are great and will in no doubt be enjoyed by it’s users but there are two main additions that shocked and frustrated me; Spotlight and Dashboard.

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Airbag.com

Daring Fireball.com

Why you ask? Well as I said before, [Apple](http://www.apple.com) supports the developers which develop for it’s OS but in these two cases, they took what is one of the most popular externally developed programs, [Konfabulator](http://www.konfabulator.com/) and three extremely popular applications, [Butler](http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&id=butlerabout&sprache=english&kopf=labor) / [LaunchBar](http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) / [Quicksilver](http://blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/) and basically stole their ideas. Specifically with [Konfabulator](http://www.konfabulator.com/), [Apple](http://www.apple.com) has shown a lack of appreciation to the originators of the idea for this from of applications. To fill in, [Konfabulator](http://www.konfabulator.com/) allows [Mac OS X](http://www.apple.com/macosx/) users to create, customize, and place “widgets” on their desktop that display information ranging from weather to movie times to stock prices and everything in between. [Apple’s](http://www.apple.com) “new” [Dashboard](http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html ) has the exact type of functionality while even maintaining a similar look to many of the current widgets out there.

While I do believe it’s great that [Apple](http://www.apple.com) attempts to understand what their own consumers want, I detest the method in which they have gone about it here. Blatantly stealing others ideas is just that, stealing and regardless of size, no company should ever have that right. Good luck to the [Konfabulator](http://www.konfabulator.com/), [Butler](http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&id=butlerabout&sprache=english&kopf=labor), [LaunchBar](http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/), [Quicksilver](http://blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/) creators and if you own a Mac, I strong suggest you support their amazing software.