EYE CANDY FOR WINDOWS...
For those of you Windows PC owners who might be feeling left out while your friends with Macs boast about the latest OS X Tiger upgrade on their PCs, don't despair. Because of some unintended consequences of Apple's actions, some of that Tiger look and feel can be had on Windows machines.
Tiger has many terrific features but one of the coolest looking ones is Dashboard (click image for larger picture). Dashboard is a new programming layer that sits on top of the operating system, and allows third-party developers to create mini-applications called widgets, of course, that can do specific things like a small flight tracker, or stickie notes, or a calculator. There are hundreds of these available already, with more coming every day.
The cool thing about most of the widgets is that besides providing cool, specific functionality, they exploit the graphics capabilities of today's Macs, and now PCs, to provide really beautiful, 3D, animated applications that please the eye. You can see an animated demo here on Apple's site.
Although Apple hasn't acknowledged it, Dashboard was likely inspired by a similar idea implemented exclusively on Macs a couple of years ago by a small Mac developer called Konfabulator. They created a software product that allowed other developers to create widgets for Macs.
The effort was well-received by Mac developers, and quickly became popular among Mac early adopters. Well, Apple noticed the success of this software, and announced its similar looking Dashboard initiative as part of the next upgrade to OS X.
This well-done and comprehensive Tiger review at Ars Technica has a lot more of this Dashboard/Konfabulator history, and the controversy, but the end-result to date is that Konfabulator moved its efforts to the Windows platform in addition to Macs.
Well, Jobs' loss of a cool developer's exclusive focus is Gates' gain (click picture for larger image). You can download a trial version Konfabulator for Windows, and then check out these cool widgets on your Windows machine.
It's shareware, so you can officially register Konfabulator for $25 if you like it. Again, as with the Mac, there are already hundreds of third-party widgets emerging on the Windows version.
Now we'll see if Microsoft incorporates a version of this in its next Windows (Longhorn) and call it "Cockpit" or something...
ah well, the Konfabulator lads could then move to conquer the world of mobile devices...
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