[MW Forums]

Yahoo! Inc. on Monday announced the acquisition of Konfabulator, an application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop—the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application. Yahoo! company executives said they would also be giving Konfabulator away for free. more

[bwanderson]

I was thinking of registering Konfabulator. Now I'm very glad I held off.

[TheBoyKen]

Sounds like you'd have got your money back if you had registered in any case (the article says they're giving refunds going back 2 months)
Ken

[mdawson]

In reply to:

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While Schneider wasnt specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac.

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Hmm. This from a Web service that only (fully) supports the obsolete Internet Explorer browser for its e-mail service. Yahoo! Mail only has all of its features available, such as formatted and hypertext if you use Internet Explorer. Never mind the fact that IE is pretty much dead on the Mac and that the only reason IE 7 will see the light of day is because of delays in the release of Longhorn, I mean Windows Virus Incubator Support & Testing Architecture. Yahoo! needs to remove all of the proprietary Microsoft technology from their Web services.

pauldfullerton. Longhorn is now Windows Vista. 07/22/05 08:41 PM.

[TheBum]

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Yahoo! currently makes two Widgets for Apples Dashboard: My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Local Traffic. While the company will continue to develop those Widgets for Dashboard in the short term, no decision has been made on the future development for those products.

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Hmm...Yahoo! is undecided whether they will continue supporting a widget for an operating system (Tiger) that is at least partially responsible for driving many people to switch to the Mac platform and, hence, grow its market share. I, for one, am not going to install Konfabulator on my machine just to get Yahoo!'s widgets and I'm sure many other people -- especially casual users -- won't either.

[webman2k]

"Director of Widget Technology".....
Best.... Title.... Ever. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[PSM]

I think this has just completed my switch to Dashboard. I wouldn't trust anything from Yahoo on my computer. If they had sold it to AOL it couldn't be much worse.
There's something to be said for paying for software. Free stuff doesn't come without a price, especially when you download it off the internet from a large corporation that's trying to make money. I'd rather pay $25 knowing the developer cares about the product and wants to please its customers, than get it for free and be bombarded with adware, pop-ups, and install programs that ask me if I want to change my long-distance service, and only get features when it's financially beneficial for the company.
I hope Yahoo is really turning over a new leaf, as they claim, but I'll believe it when I see it. Becoming more Mac-inclusive only means that we get more of the crap the PC people have.

[SPOOF]

If they wish to be more focused on the Mac...they should start by bringing Yahoo Messenger up to par with the PC version, so all features work cross platform. Yahoo Messenger at this point is so crippled and worthless on the Mac that it is pointless to use (and therefor, I don't, using another client to talk with friends who still have Yahoo).
Once that, and their web services, are fixed to work correctly on the Mac...THEN we can talk about being cross platform and more Mac focused. Until then...they can keep their PR crap.

[ronincali3002]

In reply to:

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There's something to be said for paying for software. Free stuff doesn't come without a price, especially when you download it off the internet from a large corporation that's trying to make money.

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So are we then to assume you are not running Safari, or Internet Explorer, or Adobe Acrobat Reader, or iChat, or iTunes, or iPhoto on your Mac? And, yes, I know the iApps come with all new Macs, but if you have to upgrade, you are essentially replacing the old versions with new, free updated versions. Nuff said, right?

[ronincali3002]

In reply to:

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If they wish to be more focused on the Mac...they should start by bringing Yahoo Messenger up to par with the PC version, so all features work cross platform. Yahoo Messenger at this point is so crippled and worthless on the Mac that it is pointless to use (and therefor, I don't, using another client to talk with friends who still have Yahoo).

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This I wholeheartedly agree with--overlooking the fact that Mac Yahoo! [Messyger] (purposely misspelled) is not up to par with the Windows version. Additionally, I have three Yahoo! accounts which I check one after the other, and after I check all three with Messenger and quit, it crashes...every time. I thought it was just a Panther bug, not alas, it's carried over to Tiger.

[rlavere]

At least Yahoo! had the decency to acquire the company rather than simply rip off their technology and nomenclature.
Classy.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[chewygoat]

Konfabulator's widgets, which I'm trying out now that it's free, tend to be a lot less slick than Dashboard's, and the UI for opening them is a lot less nice, however one area where it has a huge advantage over Dashboard is that widgets can be on the "dashboard"-layer-equivalent, or can have normal windowing behavior, always be on the desktop or always on top - your choice. If Dashboard allowed that I'd use it a lot more! Certainly any iTunes controller/status thingy needs to be available all the time, not just when the Dashboard is displayed! One wonders if Apple will ever have such a feature - the developer hack works, but only with always-on-top behavior, which I rarely want. You can run both Dashboard and Konfabulator, and I'll do that, but I'd sure like to have those windowing options for Dashboard widgets.

[kwill]

Does this spell a name change?

[PSM]

I didn't say I never use free software. There's lots of great free software, especially that created by individuals who give it away without seeking profit. Firefox is a good example of a major free app that doesn't have any drawbacks that I can see.
I was just pointing out that certain companies give away free stuff, but in order to make money they load it with adware and lots of crap you don't need. They have a different agenda than a developer that is solely devoted to their customers because their customers provide the income. Apple's software, while free, is closer to the latter category because the use of their software requires the purchase of one of their computers and/or iPods, so the better it is, the more computers they can sell.
I hope Konfabulator stays true to its roots and continues to put the needs of the users before its parent company, but that doesn't seem to make much business sense. Until I hear more about how it's all working, I will continue to run the old version.