July 16th, 2004 As you may or may not know, I am starting work at Apple in two weeks. Once I begin, I will have to be tight lipped about my work, since the motto around Apple is “loose lips sink ships.” In fact, it seems Plastic THW cannot even show his wife his office!
Anyways, at WWDC, I had the chance to talk to several Apple employees about Dashboard. Surprisingly, Steve Jobs’ RDF did not convince anyone Apple was being original with Dashboard. Everyone held the same opinion: Apple blatantly copied Konfabulator, and did a disservice to the shareware market. No one I talked to really knew where Dashboard came from within Apple, and, like the public, were unhappy Apple did not instead negotiate to purchase Konfabulator.
I’m sure I’ll have more insight once I get to Apple; sorry I won’t be telling you more!