How can they miss DesktopX

A "widget war" article that neglects Stardock (again)

http://www.personaltechpipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163105452
Link

Mike Elgan disects the history of Apple's Dashboard but his version goes MS Active desktop --> Konfabulator --> Dashboard.

Whatever.
4,362 views 11 replies
Reply #1 Top
I think one reason is Stardock doesn't do a good job at promoting DesktopX. I think Stardock is great, I have bought and will continue to buy it's products, but I think it's marketing isn't very good.

Reply #2 Top
Yeah, I agree with Island Dog, only people who auctually go to the stardock sites see the advertisements they haver. Makes me wonder how they get members. I found out about stardock throught a magazine. It mentioned a program (which sucks), called "stylexp." On that website, I went to a partnet site of that site, and there was a link to desktopx. Confusing, eh? I was suprised that I found it (and happy, aswell).

Edit: After reading that article, I've concluded 4 things.
1. This guy is definitally full of him self.
2. He's has no idea what's-what. (For example, DesktopX, and other stardock programs are "Mircrosoft Certified." He was editor of "Windows Magazine" (Or something like that). Yet he didn't know crap about DesktopX.)
3. He's a total dick.
4. I'm gonna send an email to the owner of that site and complain about the lack of inteligence they have.
Reply #3 Top
And then something happened: NOTHING? Fast farward to 2005?

I sent Mike Elgan an email.

Any good journalist who does their homework before printing up an article should have found out about DesktopX.
Reply #5 Top
I just read the article. What an idiot.
Reply #6 Top
In my mind, what makes the guy an idiot is the fact that he credits M$ as starting the whole widget concept with Active Desktop. Apple started the whole thing in 1984 with what they called Desk Accessories. This came up when people started claiming that Apple ripped Konfabulator's idea. Link Wherever they came from...Apple has now made them better and less memory/cpu intensive than Konfabulator, Active Desktop, or DX.
Reply #7 Top
I think this quote from his article shows what nonsense he is talking...... "Unlike on Windows, the concept (widgets) will succeed on the Mac. Why? Again, with my theory: Mac users tend to arrange windows so none are minimized and several are visible at the same time. "Widgets" will merely compete for desktop real estate against other windows." So, we are to assume from this that Mac users never run anything full screen? So how do they work in programs like Photoshop etc? My nephew is a graphic designer, he uses a Mac, he runs everything full screen. I think we can safely ignore this guy.
Reply #8 Top
#7, that's exactly where I stopped reading. At least I got that 30 seconds back that I would have lost reading the rest of the article.
Reply #9 Top
Konfabulator theoretically "stole" it from Microsoft,


Yeah, sure...
Reply #10 Top

Ok ok ok. This is getting closer and closer to flamage.

I actually emailed the guy and wanted to know about the blatant lack of mention of DesktopX and my widget baby. Without pasting his email (which I think would be rude) I will say that he has a very convincing argument for WHY he did not mention the other widget engines. In a nutshell he said that he simply wanted to make note about the origin of Apple's Dashboard.

In that context, he slips by. I did however, mention that he should have been fair to the other apps by at least providing links to them (due to his pimping of 3 or 4 konfab links) -but there again, he admitted that he was not educated about all of the other apps available and wanted to limit it soley to apps directly related to Dashboard.

Think about that for a second. It makes sense.

Reply #11 Top
He's pulling your leg! He's trying to softsoap his lack of a properly balanced article.