Many users that were following Monday’s keynote as Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off Jaguar were impressed with what they saw. The Finder enhancements, iChat, improved mail and more were filling discussion boards around the Internet. Many people also noted the similarities between Sherlock 3 and the popular shareware application, Watson.
Dan Wood of Karelia Software, the developer of Watson, confirmed for MacCentral that he had no part in the development of Sherlock 3. Wood also confirmed that Watson is alive and well and he will continue the development of the product.
“We see no reason not to continue development of Watson, especially basing any decisions on software from other companies that hasn’t been released,” Wood said.
Watson is an extendable application for Mac OS X that gives an Aqua interface to a number of Internet-based services such as stock quotes, telephone lookup and movie schedules. Watson functions much like Sherlock in that it bypasses the Web Browser for specific functionality. But instead of being a search engine, Watson connects to a handful of other useful services available on the Internet.
“Watson has been incredibly popular, and seems to have struck an emotional chord with its users,” said Wood. “Many have written us to tell us that Watson is the reason that they finally took the plunge from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and I have even heard stories of Wintel users who have been convinced to buy a Mac based on playing with Watson. It’s incredibly gratifying to hear such stories.”
Wood said that users could expect more plug-ins for Watson in the near future as the third-party developer community continues to develop.
“We do have a ‘Weather’ tool in progress, though I can’t make any promises when it will be ready,” said Wood. “Even more exciting is that the third-party developer community is starting to bear fruit. Watson has an open architecture, and any developer can make their own module. Around the corner, we will be seeing some great plug-ins for News, Genealogy, Sports Scores, Astronomy and so forth.”
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