Competing With Apple

It happens every time Apple introduces a new version of Mac OS X: some third-party developer is out of the job. In the case of Leopard, Apple’s newest OS, there is now a backup utility, a virtual desktops manager, a launcher (a la Spotlight), and lots more built-in. Many of these were previously handled by third-party utilities. So what are the makers of these utilities to do? Well, improve upon them, of course!

In this post, I’ll be talking about Web Clip. Web Clip is a new technology from Apple that allows users to create new widgets simply from a part of a web page.

Now, this is a bummer for widget developers. Many widgets are simply Dashboard incarnations of a certain web page. So, many widgets may be obsolete because users can just make their own versions.

At Taco Widgets, we have one widget that may be affected by this: Old Faithful. Old Faithful is a widget of the webcam of the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park. This webcam is available on a web page, so users could just go to that web page, and make their own version of the widget with Web Clip.

This is a problem, right? Sure. But it also has a solution: make our Old Faithful widget better than anything that could be made with Web Clip. Basically, Web Clip doesn’t put widget developer out of business. It just raises the bar and means that widgets must be one level above where they have been.

So, what did we do to Old Faithful? We added features that users can’t get from Web Clip. We added resizing, saving, manual refreshing and a few other things. Sure, Apple’s a really big company, but that doesn’t mean that indie developers can’t do things better. Besides, where would Apple be without developers?

Morale of the story: Apple (or some other big company) may release a product that’s going to put yours out of business. Deal with it. Either move on to The Next Big Thing or make that product even better than Apple’s.

Explore posts in the same categories: Development, Mac, Widgets