Konfabulator pretentious or what?

Check this out

http://www.konfabulator.com/cartoon/partFour.html
I don't have anything against Konfabulator but the makers of it are bringing new meaning to the phrase overhyped. I love widgets. But the last panel says "It was the coolest thing anyone who used it had ever seen on their desktops." Didn't Konfabulator comes out just a couple years ago? I had Object Desktop before that and I've seen some pretty cool stuff, a lot cooler than clocks and weather forecasts. Pretentious thy name is Konfabulator.
4,156 views 4 replies
Reply #1 Top
This isn't anything new. Konfabulator is a nice program. I give them that. But Konfabulator is 90% hype, 10% substance. I believe they've hoodwinked the press and other developers together with all the widget mania. What's the evidence? A typical Konfabulator widget on their own site gets a few thousand downloads tops.

Their hype is based on a falsehood. One they continue to spread and that is that Konfabulator is something original, even revolutionary. It is not. Even if we give them a gimme on applets that came long ago, there is nothing in Konfab that wasn't being done with DesktopX years before. It is style over substance.
Reply #2 Top
Egomania is more like it. If you read the whole series, it is a symphony of arrogance with each act more conceited than the last.

It must be comforting to live in a world where you can define inventiveness based on how little you keep up with the outside world. I wonder, does he also have his own private names for common household items because he wasn't aware that they existed outside.
Reply #3 Top
From a users point of view, if you do not read the "hype" about the program - you can see that it is a simple program that supports some nice widgets - nothing more, nor less.

I personally like it, but my needs for information on the desktop are simple (I prefer to use the built in Task Manager and Administrative tools) - at least until some more advanced tools are developed.

It would be a shame for the publicity tactics of a company to destroy a nice little program.

On the Stardock front, DesktopX certainly is a much more sophisticated program, and obviously the publications are accurate. I look forward to the future development of gadgets.

It certainly would be nice to have some advanced desktop connections to the net, and perhaps some nice office oriented functions (address books, planner calendars, notification posts, appointment/meeting adjendas, etc. - basically, organizational functions found in Outlook on the desktop), that extend beyond the current offerings by existing on the desktop in a unobtrusive manor, yet with the ability to be expanded with one click to display detailed information.

This does not seem to be a path that Konfabulator can tread, and without the need for a support program running in the background, I am sure our processors and memory will better off.

My 2 cents.
Reply #4 Top
I agree with what the other posters said. The Konfabulator guy is incredibly arrogant.

Today's panel is a good example
http://www.konfabulator.com/cartoon/partSix.html

He really tries to pretend that Konfabulator somehow originated something new and unique. Pretty insulting to the DesktopX developers who were doing what the Konfab guy was dreaming years before.