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Only days after the Dashboard Konfabulator battle was in full swing, Apple developer, Dan Grover composed his own Parody song of the situation. We contacted him for a look about him, his thoughts on the Apple Konfabulator battle, and his inspiration in creating this great tune.
What is your website about?
I have many websites. The one I posted that on, DanGrover.com is just the site I use as a personal site to get my views out, post a blog, and put up some of the stuff I've created.
The other websites I have include www.wonderwarp.com, for my Mac software venture, Wonder Warp Software Group, that I run. Some may know me as the author of SimpleChord, a chord reference for musicians for Mac OS X (which has a big upgrade coming up that I'm working on).
My most recent website is WrongPlanet.net (www.wrongplanet.net), which I created with my friend Alex. He and I both have Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, and we wanted to make an online resource and community for others with it to make life a little easier for all of us who have it. Those who have it generally have trouble with social skills and other aspects of life, yet have very strong obsessions and interests. One of mine is Macs and programming in general.
What kind of mac do you own?
A better question might be "What kind of mac *don't* you own?", hehe. But I mainly use my 12" PowerBook running Panther now upgraded to 768 MB of RAM (much faster). I also use an iMac DV 400mhz for downloading, grid computing, and Mac OS 9 stuff (which I still need to do occasionally). I also use a Mac Classic II to hold up a corner of my bed where the leg broke off, and I just got a tuner card off of eBay so I can use an old Performa 6300 I have kicking around as a television.
What inspired you to make the song?
Well, I've written parody songs in the past. I know a few other teen Mac developers online, and there's one kid in the circle, Andrew Kazmiersky (Kaz for short) that seems to get made fun of for some reason. He runs Chronopath, Inc. (www.chronopath.com), and actually does some pretty neat stuff. I joined in on the fun, and wrote a parody called "All That Kaz", to the tune of All That Jazz from the musical Chicago, the others got a chuckle out of it.
Anyway, I'm not sure what inspired me. Last night, I should have been working on schoolwork or programing work for a client that's long overdue. But the idea flashed into my mind as I was getting ready to finish up my summaries for English class on The Odyssey, and before I knew it I had wasted a few hours to come up with a song parody.
Which side are you on? Apple-Partisans or Konfabulistas?
Well, I'm actually split on the issue, but leaning on the side of the Apple-Partisans. This will be long...brace yourself....
I am a developer myself, and one thing that I personally try to do is come up with either really clever, original ideas, or really clever, original implementations of existing ideas. Sort of the Apple spirit, many would say. And it can be heart-breaking to see big companies stealing from small developers. Hell, even when small developers steal from other small developers. That's what people accuse Kaz of.
However, I've also had experiences where there's an existing idea out there and it would be too much of a pain to try to get those who came up with it to improve it, and in those cases sometimes it's best to take matters into your own hands. I don't think Apple maliciously decided "Hey, let's pop this guy's balloon! Bwahahaha!". I think they thought it would be a good thing to include in the OS, and more people would benefit from it that way than as a shareware application that many probably will never hear of. (you'd be surprised how many Mac users there are that don't keep up with that sort of thing).
And as many have pointed out, the idea itself isn't original. We had those with desk accessories, OneClick palettes, independent applications that people would release (things like clocks and talking moose). The idea itself wasn't anything new. But as I've pointed out, sometimes a different take on an old idea can mean a lot. That's one thing Apple did, for instance. A lot of things they've implemented in their programs or OSes have been done before, but not as cleverly or in as quality a fashion. Like take iChat AV (especially the new one). Video conferencing and audioconferencing has been done before, but they had some really clever ways to make it accessible, easy to use, and nice-looking.
And that's what Arlo really did with Konfabulator. Nobody really used widgets before, though they were around. We had widgets in the dock and menubar, but most of the stuff that's reminiscent of Konfabulator ran as separate apps. You had to start them up or put them in your login items most of the time and to make them, you had to have some existing software and programming knowledge. But with Konfabulator, he made it more accessible by having the widgets all run as one application and making it easy to make the widgets. And he made it damn nice looking, as well. So he took an existing idea and made it accessible and nice looking, which is what Apple does.
So it's really Arlo's awesome implementation of an existing idea that Apple is copying. And they pretty much copied it right down to the details. But I still think that they should have at least contacted Arlo about it, which they didn't, according to him. They implemented things like SuperClock and WindowShade into the OS by buying it from the authors, but I think that those things were much more than just a new spin on an old idea.
Of course, it doesn't have to be an actual concept to still be theft if someone steals it. The widgets that Apple made are very reminiscent of those that come with Konfabulator, but that's too vague an argument to really be made. I think the ones that come with Konfabulator are nicer anyway, graphically at least. But the eye candy they've done for bringing widgets in and out is really nice.
So to summarize, it's really like Arlo took an existing concept that wasn't all that much his, and did extensive work to build on it and polish it. Then Apple took it back added a couple details, and claimed it all as their own. Legally, it's fine. And ethically, I think it's really a gray area.
Will you be upgrading to tiger?
Definitely. With 10.1, it made Mac OS X bearable. With Jaguar, it brought a huge number of general enhancements to nearly every aspect of the system. Panther, to me, was a bit of a letdown. It seemed to just make the Mac OS cooler and added some nice features, but didn't really change much about being a Mac user for me. Tiger, however, seems as monumental as Jaguar is.
Spotlight, and to a greater degree Automator, I think, will drastically change the way that people use their Macs, and all computers for years to come. And on top of those major ideas are little niceties like the RSS-enabled Safari, the new iChat, Dashboard, and CoreGraphics. It's going to be a great upgrade, and I can't wait to get it when it comes out.
what is your fave mac site? *nudge nudge*
Hmm, I haven't given that a lot of thought. Mostly I just go to MacSurfer and pick and choose the stories that interest me and get a few different perspectives. I haven't developed much of an opinion about most of the Mac sites out there.
I will say, however, that your site is quite nice and one that I haven't gone to much before. It's neat that you have a philosophy section. The opinion article "Nerds and hot girls" is encouraging, too :-D.
Do you want to go in the music industry?
Hmm. Not really. I don't know what industry I want to go into. Most of the time I'm pretty sure I want to go into the tech industry, but then I also have many times where I think I'd be better as a writer or filmmaker or something more right-brain.
How did you make this song? step by step
1. I came up with the idea quite quickly, I don't exactly know how. I guess I was thinking about the whole issue and thinking of song parodies at the same time, and thought, quite randomly, that the slightly melancholic tone of the Billy Joel song would be fun to put it to. Weird Al has a parody of the same song (Piano Man) about Spiderman, maybe I was thinking of that too.
2. Listened to an MP3 of the original song, then found the lyrics and a MIDI so I could just concentrate on the structure and meter of the original song.
3. Started writing the lyrics.
4. Tried to do a little research on Arlo, couldn't find much about the guy other than what I'd already read about him and what came from the horse's mouth on the Konfabulator forums.
5. Finished writing lyrics.
6. Made refinements and changes to the lyrics.
7. Recorded myself singing it (I put the MIDI into GarageBand with Dent Du Midi), then decided not to actually use that for fear of extreme embarrassment and bandwidth concerns.
8. Made the page for it.
9. Showed a few people, and they thought it was funny.
10. Decided to actually announce it, in the spirit of doing so with all the announcements and press releases I've sent in the past week for WrongPlanet.net. I emailed some Mac sites about it. I think MacMinute was the first to add it, then a few other sites started linking to it. I was really surprised that they actually posted it, and even more so when the others did and I started getting email from people, and you wanted me to actually do an interview over a silly little parody I wrote.
11. Edited page to clarify my intentions in writing it after I got some flame mail saying "Do some research before you write something stupid like 'Widget Man' again. Grow up, kid.". So I added a little disclaimer to the page.
Thanks for your time
Find out more about dan at http://dangrover.com
And listen to his parody song at http://www.dangrover.com/widgetman/
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