"Invented on the Mac"

If I keep ripping out my hair I'll be bald in no time.  When it comes to getting press coverage in the tech industry, it's a lot easier to get it if you're a Mac program than a PC program. The Mac has always gotten far more attention than its numbers warrant. Often times, the media will actually make statements implying that a given program is unique to the Mac helping carry on the myth that the Mac is the land of innovation while Windows is the land of cheap knock offs.

This has always stung us at Stardock because we've come up with some really cool things over the years that are quite popular. And then the Mac will get something like it and suddenly something we've had for years will be treated as if it's the copy -- complete with Mac fanatics attacking us for copying their stuff.

We first ran into this with WindowFX where Mac users claimed we were ripping off the Mac despite WindowFX pre-dating MacOS X.  WindowFX adds alpha blended shadows to windows and lets you morph windows when you minimize them. "Just another cheap Mac rip off, can't these PC users come up with anything???"  Except we were first. But emails from outraged Mac users come in on a regular basis.

WindowFX was the first program to introduce alpha blended shadows under windows. Shadows under windows is an old idea so we never made a big deal about being the first to create realistic looking shadows. But many Mac users started retroactively giving Apple credit for something we did long before.

So when we read articles on MacOS X about how polished and slick and pretty it is as opposed to "ugly old Windows" we grit our teeth.  Object Desktop is $49.95. I suspect the price difference between a high end PC and a high end Mac is greater than $49.95. And in many cases, we were the ones innovating.

DesktopX & Konfabulator

But the introduction of Konfabulator on the Mac has taken the cake when it comes to the media assuming that something on the Mac is unique. Konfabulator is a program that lets you put "widgets" on your desktop. Think of widgets as mini-programs. Widgets can do pretty much anything you want them to do and are powered by a scripting language (Javascript in Konfabulator's case).

Widgets can do things like display the current weather information, put a stock ticker on your desktop, control your MP3 player more conveniently, have a nice looking analog clock, display an appointment calendar, or just replace your desktop icons with nicer, larger versions. So widgets are things that occupy the same importance as desktop icons. They're useful but they're not critical. But they are far better than icons because they are interactive and live.

But moving beyond "icons" into widgets is a revolutionary concept. Icons are static, they don't do anything other than sit there. Widgets can do so much more while using hardly any memory.

Konfabulator is a great program. I use it on my Macintosh. I'm a registered user of it even. And Konfabulator would deserve a lot of credit for this innovation if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that DesktopX preceded it by THREE YEARS. 

To be fair, DesktopX 1.0 wasn't as nice as Konfabulator is when it came to delivering widgets. But that has to do more with where hardware was back in 1999 than software technology. We had to deal with Windows 95 users running on Pentium 100s. In all our demos we made it clear which direction we were going with this. As hardware (and video cards) improved DesktopX would continuously become more and more interactive.  And we had the content. We had the weather widgets, CPU widgets, Stock tickers, Drive space meters, etc.  The kinds of things that people expect today we had back in 1999.  And DesktopX content could be created by end users. No compiler needed.

On DesktopX, widgets are called are broken up into widgets and objects. If you install DesktopX you never even have to load it up to use widgets. Widgets are .EXE's that just use DesktopX as the run-time. So even someone comparing the two will say "Yea, but DesktopX is way more complicated than Konfabulator." No, not if you are comparing the two directly. With Konfabulator, you must run Konfabulator first to run one of its widgets. With DesktopX, as long as DesktopX is installed somewhere you can run a widget as you would any other program -- complete with a task manager icon or system tray icon for it.

Where DesktopX seems more "complex" is that if you're running DesktopX you can then deal with objects and themes, both concepts that Konfabulator doesn't have.  Moreover, DesktopX includes a development environment so that even casual users can create things. By contrast, in Konfabulator, only techies can make widgets realistically. Making a Konfabulator widget involves opening up a text editor and writing Javascript. 

In DesktopX, objects are integrated into the DesktopX GUI. This makes it much easier to create objects. And as a result, you tend to have much more complex content made with DesktopX than you would Konfabulator because it's easier to deal with dozens of objects put together.  These objects can then be exported as either an object pack (for other people to modify), as a theme (to replace ones desktop) or as a widget. So DesktopX may seem more complicated but only because it tried to make it easier for people to create content rather than be purely at the mercy of some small group of techies who have mastered the black art of widget making.

But we've been doing this -- for years. Complete with Javascript and VB Script support. And DesktopX isn't obscure. It has remained one of the top 10 desktop enhancements on Download.com. In fact, it's been on the Download.com top downloads chart for 160 consecutive weeks. That's every week for 3 years straight. At the time I write this, it has about 1.8 million downloads on Download.com.

And yet articles still regularly come out talking about how Konfabulator is unique and that nothing on Windows exists like it. DesktopX can do everything Konfabulator does and much much more. And some of the "much more" stuff is pretty significant -- even for widgets. DesktopX supports animation for instance. Fluid animation. So we've got objects (widgets) of things like fish gracefully swimming across the screen.  And users can easily customize their objects. Color, size, shadows, etc. All from a GUI.

Konfabulator Widgets in action

DesktopX Objects in action

But DesktopX can do much more than just put widgets on your desktop, you can build your own secure, custom desktop, kiosk, etc.

A DesktopX theme in action. And like DesktopX objects, you can export these and share them. Like this one? Make it your desktop by clicking here.

My point isn't to try to argue that one is better than the other. I work for Stardock so any sort of opinion on that would be highly biased. My point is that when it's come to media coverage, Mac programs tend to get much easier coverage in relation to their actual user base. There are a lot more DesktopX users than Konfabulator users out there. It's not an obscure program. Every major skin site has a section for it and has for years. It has millions of downloads on C-net and a ton of downloads on the other file download sites as well. Heck, it's the program movie and TV studios have used to create futuristic computer screens. Don't people wonder how they make those?  I even demoed it on TechTV's The Screen Saver's a year and a half before Arlo Rose showed up on there. 

In conclusion, if you're looking for "Konfabulator for Windows" the answer is, it's existed for years already. Konfabulator could be more accurately described as DesktopX for the Mac (or the closest thing to it). Though listening to the media, you would think it was (again) Mac users who came up with this concept of extending the desktop to have neat little gadgets on them.

Notes:

DesktopX's home page: www.desktopx.net

Object Desktop (a suite of desktop enhancements that includes DesktopX) www.objectdesktop.com

Konfabulator's home page: www.konfabulator.com

Stardock's home page: www.stardock.com