After reading ***Will’s post|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/001875.html*** and then following up and reading ***this|http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator*** and ***this|http://daringfireball.net/2004/07/konfab_confab*** on ***John Gruber’s blog|http://daringfireball.net***, I’ve decided to rethink my position on Konfabulator vs Dashboard. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

I think ***Dashboard|http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html*** is a cool looking feature. Being a web developer, I am intrigued by the possibility of being able to build a Dashboard “gadget” by using JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML. For the moment, that is where my happiness ends.

Gruber encourages us to “look under the hood” to see the real differences between Konfab and Dash. Yep, ok, they’re both different under the hood. Konfab uses its own proprietary XML parser and JavaScript engine, while Apple uses its own WebCore technology. But I didn’t need to be convinced that they were different under the hood.

Gruber puts on a pretty good razzle-dazzle show, pointing us to these under-the-hood differences, as well as showing how Dashboard is similar in scope to Apple’s own Desk Accessories functionality of many years ago. But he doesn’t give adequate treatment to my primary concern. By way of analogy:

Say I want to design my own car. I come up with some really great ideas for new components that will produce tremendous horsepower, amazingly efficient fuel consumption, and a silky-smooth ride. I build these components, and put them all together in a frame that could withstand a drop off of the Grand Canyon (while protecting the passengers). Then, I need to design a body. I look at the Audi TT, and think that it looks really sweet. I have had some trouble coming up with my own design for the exterior, so I “borrow” a lot of elements from the TT, and whip up a “new” body for my car, calling it the PT. When the PT is released, the public is going to think that my car looks a heck of a lot like the TT, and they’d be right. But when they got in and took it for a test drive, they’d realize that it was infinitely superior – especially after they drove it into the Grand Canyon. So, the public would eventually discover that it really was a different machine – under the hood. But does that excuse me from borrowing the TT’s body design to use in my PT? I don’t think so.

Neither should Apple be excused for borrowing the look, feel, and functionality of Konfabulator for use in their Dashboard technology. Look at this now. I don’t really have any thoughts on what would have been the “right thing” for Apple to do with respect to Konfabulator, but I am pretty sure that whatever the “right thing” is, it has not been done yet.

One last point – I do understand the comparison between Dashboard and Desk Accessories, at least in terms of scope. They were both designed to be small, lightweight mini-apps that could be run on screen alongside other applications. But I feel that Gruber is trying to read this comparison into Apple’s actual design philosophy, on their behalf. I haven’t seen any proof as of yet that Apple really did use this as a basis for developing Dashboard. I’d love to see a statement or article on Apple’s website that says something to the effect of “Our idea for Dashboard started way back in the 80’s, when we designed Desk Accessories…” If Desk Accessories was truly an Apple innovation, and if it truly is an ancestor to Dashboard, then why hasn’t Apple made that public knowledge? I’m sure that most modern consumers wouldn’t have any clue what a Desk Accessory was, so I can understand not putting the information on an Apple marketing website. But how about tossing it into a developer note? Or maybe, when Dashboard is finally released, there could be a note in the ‘About’ menu that says “Inspired by Desk Accessories”. I’m waiting.

I’m a paid registered user of the Mac program ***Watson|http://www.karelia.com/watson/***. Watson is a web services application, similar to Apple’s ***Sherlock|http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/sherlock/*** tool. The idea behind web services tools such as this is that rather than navigate to dozens of different websites to get stock quotes, weather, news, movie tickets, flight information, package tracking, etc…. you use one application that has hooks into these websites. The application does the searching and browsing for you, and puts all of the handy tools in one easy to access location.

Well, the latest news is that Watson’s technology has been licensed by ***Sun Microsystems|http://www.sun.com/***. Dan Wood discusses it in a recent ***blog entry|http://weblog.karelia.com/Watson/Now_I_can_talk_a_bi.html***. Watson will reach its end-of-life on October 5, 2004. In the meantime, Sun has created a new, cross-platform, Java-based version of Watson named ***Project Alameda|http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/KitchenSink***.

Watson is a great time-saving tool, and I’m sure Alameda will continue to be just as excellent. Keep up the good work, folks!

Congratulations to the winner (and sole participant) in my Gmail Essay Contest: ***Simon Miner|http://www.simonminer.com/***!

Simon is one of my co-workers at ***Christianbook.com|http://www.christianbook.com/***. He has been interested in receiving a Gmail account for a while, so I was happy to set him up with one.

Simon has granted me permission to display his winning essay on our blog, so here it is!

qqq|If you have ever checked a dog for ticks, you know what a painstaking experience it can be. The procedure basically goes like this. Using your fingers or a fine-toothed comb, you sift through the dog’s fur, feeling for the tiny parasites entangled in the animal’s coat or attached to its skin. Once you find a tick, you must either pull it from its hairy hideaway or extract it from the dog’s hide. The latter can be accomplished by pinching the buried head of the insect and yanking it loose. This task is particularly messy if the tick is engorged from feeding on the blood of its host.

Tick checking used to be one of the most unpleasant aspects of caring for our dog, until we decided to have her groomed.

The grooming package we selected for our dog included a haircut. Our dog, a Cairn terrier, had never had her hair trimmed before, so we chose to style her fur with a standard terrier cut. This type of cut shaves the fur on the dog’s back and flanks very short, but leaves the hair on her belly longer to hang freely.

Little did we know how such a simple choice would revolutionize the tick checking process. Now, scanning our dog for the pests is much easier. With the advent of our dog’s haircut, ticks have much less overgrown real-estate in which to conceal themselves. Furthermore, the short and evenly cut fur on most of our dog’s body makes it difficult for the insects to burrow into her skin. A tick’s only haven is the animal’s belly, which is a small area that is only partially covered with fur. This vicinity can be completely scanned with just a few quick strokes.

A Gmail account offers all the advantages of a dog with a fresh terrier cut. Other email services require you to waste valuable time sorting and sifting through your mail to locate an elusive message. But like ticks on a groomed dog’s belly, Gmail exposes the message you want with a quick and easy search. Gmail offers the ability to categorize a message in multiple ways, a feature which stands in stark contrast to the hairy and tangled single folder filing system imposed by other email providers, which often causes important messages to be overlooked and forgotten. A free email account hosted elsewhere can quickly become engorged with messages due to restrictive quotas on mailbox space. Gmail’s 1 gigabyte accounts ensure that there is always room for more mail.|qqq