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posted by Editor on Friday May 17, @01:09PM
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Greg Weiss writes "I don't have a Mac to try it, but Business 2.0 had an article on a slightly new web UI called Watson. Has anyone tried it? Is it good, or is this hype?" According to Apple, Watson is an extendable application for Mac OS X that puts an Aqua user interface on a number of Internet-based services such as stock quotes, telephone lookup, and movie schedules. Watson functions much like Apple’s Sherlock in that it bypasses the Web Browser for specific functionality. But while Sherlock is designed as a search engine, Watson connects users to a handful of other useful services available on the Internet. It can be obtained as a free download (DMG file, requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later).
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by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18, @07:22PM EST (#1)
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some people say this is the "killer app" for Mac OS X. it's certainly one of the most elegant, useful tools i've seen; i'm not surprised that apple's next-generation Sherlock, due out this summer, looks very much like Watson. (Dan Wood has said that apple is developing the new Sherlock independently, though, and that he will continue to develop Watson.)
watson has custom interfaces for each service it provides, so the user experience is highly task-focused, usually on searching, whereas the web page paradigm is more general and more appropriate in a publishing context.
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by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18, @11:43PM EST (#2)
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Some love Watson, but I don't particularly care for it. All it is is an alternate way to scrape and display HTML (or, I suppose, XML services if available). If you've already got a portal set up with your viewing preferences, I don't see many advantages to having an app like Watson with a customized view of every section. For some things it makes a lot of sense, like only displaying new software on VersionTracker. For other things it doesn't make sense at all, like not displaying a full 3 hour prime-time block for the TV schedule. So, while nifty, it can be rather limited.
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Well, Watson isn't a product put out by Apple but is more something that Apple believes is an 'innovative' product that was created because Cocoa is such an amazingly simple and powerful application creation environment that all sorts of people can manifest their ideas quickly. (most notable example was the creation of the World Wide Web on Cocoa, aka NextStep).
However Watson is not that amazing a product and sure isn't a 'killer app'. On the other hand, it is pretty cool that it is the work of pretty much one guy. There is a whole slew of 'one guy one month' apps on OSX that are quite amazing given that fact.
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Anything limiting is by the plugin, not by Watson. So ask the guy who made the TV listings plugin to add more. Now for the technical - What services does it use for Movies for example - fandango? What if they modify their format and worse, rearange files? What will the 'service' providers say about loosing advertising?
Mike
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