Watson was a software program released by Karelia Software for the
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
on November 27, 2001, which provided Internet content through a familiar
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
-like interface through the use of plug-ins.
Plug-ins were programmed in the
Objective-C
Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...
language using the
Cocoa frameworks, included with the Mac OS X
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
.
On September 18, 2002,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
bundled a similar program,
Sherlock 3, with
Mac OS X v10.2. Advocates of Watson claim that Apple copied the features of Watson without permission, compensation, or attribution. Apple, however, claims that a Watson-like program was simply the natural evolution of
Sherlock 2.
At
Sun Microsystems'
JavaOne
__NOTOC__
JavaOne is an annual conference first organized in 1996 by Sun Microsystems to discuss Java technologies, primarily among Java developers. It was held in San Francisco, California, typically running from a Monday to Thursday in summer ...
conference in June 2004, Sun announced that they had licensed the Watson technology and were porting it to the
Java programming language
Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...
under the name
Project Alameda. On October 5, development of the Cocoa-based version of Watson ceased. On November 24, Dan Wood, Karelia owner and Watson lead developer, made the last version of Watson available free of charge by posting a registration code on his blog.
Watson Status
Dan Wood: The Eponymous Blog
See also
* Site-specific browser
A site-specific browser (SSB) is a software application that is dedicated to accessing pages from a single source (site) on a computer network such as the Internet or a private intranet. SSBs typically simplify the more complex functions of a web ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Karelia: Watson FAQ
- See "What is the relationship between Watson and the new Sherlock 3?".
Karelia: Developing Tools for Watson
- See "How does Watson's plug-in architecture compare to Sherlock 3?".
Watson