Interview with Watson's Dan Wood
Pages: 1, 2
DS: Obviously Apple needs independent developers to be productive and creative in order to move the platform forward. My personal experience at the ADC level (Apple Developer Connection), is that those folks have much respect for independents. How do you think that respect could be better translated in to support?
DW: Well, it's obvious to us, but I wonder if it's really obvious to the leadership at Apple. I've had wonderful experiences with some individual people in ADC, but their leadership seems disingenuous, pushing Apple's anti-developer interests rather than really trying to help out developers. Apple could do so very much to build up a healthy economy of Mac developers and cross-promote their products, but they only seem to push the products from the big companies that they need in order for the Mac to survive, like Microsoft and Adobe. Just imagine if Apple were to take the one million dollars that they spend on a fancy staircase in their Manhattan store, and instead invested that in their developer community to help some small companies with fresh ideas get off the ground? Or heavily promoted third-party applications instead of writing replacements for them?
DS: Speaking of developers and writing software, let's talk for a moment about what's happening around Watson. As I understand it, Watson has an open architecture. Is that correct, and if so, could you say a few words about it?
DW: Right, we publish an API at http://www.karelia.com/developer/watson/ that describes the protocol that an individual Watson tool must follow, and the big toolkit that comes with Watson that makes it easy for the tools to load and parse web pages or XML streams. We provide header files, class documentation, and sample Cocoa code. We also have a developer community email list with over 150 members, so people can exchange ideas and help.
DS: Does this mean that there's opportunity for developers to write plug-ins for Watson?
DW: Absolutely! Many have, in fact. Some people are writing in-house tools that aren't for the general public, but we have a handful of smart programmers that have made available some additions that I couldn't have conceived of. One guy, Sujal Shaw, is a big sports fan, and he's contributed an amazing tool to show baseball scores and stats. And now he's working on a similar Football tool that's almost ready for release. Terrence Talbot wrote a tool for recipes that shames our built-in Recipes tool! There are a few others that are hovering near release, including a great genealogy lookup tool.
DW: I think it's really important to have an application be pluggable. For those who are curious, we actually have a comparison online--slightly biased, of course--between Watson's architecture and Sherlock 3's, which was documented online for less than a week. Being able to easily create a front end to an Internet service is a lot of work, and Watson's architecture should make is as painless as possible, because our toolkit has been evolving for quite a while.
|
Related Reading 
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks |
DS: Since you've mentioned comparisons, how is Watson faring now that Sherlock 3 is out and in use?
DW: Sales dropped when Apple first showed off Sherlock 3 in May, and dropped again significantly around the MacWorld Expo New York time frame, when Steve Jobs showed off Jaguar. However, sales are strong again since our new release now that we've taken Sherlock 3 head-on. The jury is still out for the long run, but I think we're back to being a success again. Heck, maybe Sherlock 3 will inspire more people than ever to buy Watson as more users get a taste of the concept but wish for a faster, more powerful alternative.
DS: Do you think Watson is going to help change our idea of the Web? We're still very browser-centric in our thinking. Watson represents a shift away from the browser. More like a Web services thing. What's your take on that?
DW: I get a lot of comments from users that Watson opened their eyes that the Internet doesn't have to be just a Web browser. It's very easy for people to get used to one paradigm and get stuck in it. A year ago, there was nothing like Watson to quickly access the most useful services. And now we're starting to see a few other applications that break the boundaries of the Web browser and use the Internet in completely different ways. Take Spring from UserCreations. It puts a canvas of interconnected icons representing real-world objects like people, books, places, and foods on your desktop, and each object is connected to the net. NetNewsWire from Ranchero gathers up news feeds and presents them in a simple UI. WeatherPop from Glucose puts a quick weather display on your menu bar. I don't think that the Web as viewed through your browser will go away anytime soon, but people are starting to realize that it may not be the best way to view structured information.
DS: Is there anything else you'd like to cover today?
DW: Well, since the readers of this will mostly be developers, I suppose I have something to say to that community: go for it! It's actually possible to get a new product built and selling with a minimal outlay of time and money. Of course, you need a good idea, and you have to work hard, but it is possible to make a living and build a successful software company, even in today's economy, even deploying on a "minority" operating system like the Mac, even Mac OS X only. The new generation of innovative applications like the ones I just mentioned don't come from the Adobes and the Microsofts, they come from the hearts and souls of the little companies with fewer than 5 or 10 people. Apple has provided us a powerful system for building great applications. It's called Cocoa, and the rest is up to us. Just be prepared that a big company with intimidating lawyers might come along and build their own "cheap knock-off" of your idea, and then stay ahead of the game!
DS: Dan, thanks for your time. I'm thrilled with the success you and your team has had to this point, and I wish you all the best for the future.
Derrick Story is the author of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, The Digital Photography Companion, and Digital Photography Hacks, and coauthor of iPhoto: The Missing Manual, with David Pogue. You can follow him on Twitter or visit www.thedigitalstory.com.
Return to the Mac DevCenter.
You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a talkback.
Showing messages 1 through 14 of 14.
-
Internationalisation!
2003-09-02 11:31:31 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I downloaded Watson to see what the fuss was all about, and while it sounded really neat in the blurb, a good number of the tools just don't work if you are not in the USA. Please recognise the rest of the world!
-
Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix Users
2002-10-09 23:20:32 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are
horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
-
Another one man software company
2002-10-02 02:54:38 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
As I saw you were talking about small software companies, you should check out REALmac Software, It's just one guy in his spare time doing this stuff..
http://www.realmacs.co.uk
What do you think?
-
Not sure if Apple should purchase Watson...
2002-09-29 07:13:07 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
The great thing about small developers is that they are great at focusing on a product and making it mature quickly. Small developers also don't upgrade only once a quarter.
I'd go for a partnership. Apple turns Sherlock into a power house search tool (net and computer and Watson is a default install (free for the first install) that handles Web content services.
Apple needs to start embracing the small developer, this is where the next gen. ideas originate and can prosper without the red tape involved in large orginizations.
-
Karelia
2002-09-28 03:17:27 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Is actually a REGION in Finland, not a RELIGION. Spell checkers are no substitute for stupidity :-) -
Karelia
2002-09-29 09:07:30 Derrick Story |
[Reply | View]
And there's no substitute for politeness. Thanks for your tactful remark. We'll correct it now.
-
Web Advertising?
2002-09-28 00:42:54 bradpaton [Reply | View]
My first thought on thinking about the web services tools question is what happens to the ads/site promotion that many sites use to support their content publishing online? This obviously doesn't apply to many of the tools that just give summaries and link to the site for details, but for example, browsing the listings on the TV Listings tool is considerably different from going to tvguide.com and doing the same. Does this open the door to charging for the raw data itself? -
Web Advertising?
2002-09-29 09:12:53 Derrick Story |
[Reply | View]
This is a great question. I think Web advertising is changing anyway, and I'm not sure what direction it's going. A year ago this was a hot market for content producers, but now we see that it's increasingly difficult to support sites with advertising alone. It's possible that tools such as Watson will be part of the new direction we take. I'll try to get Tim O'Reilly and Dan Wood to weigh in on this. -
Web Advertising?
2002-09-29 20:07:25 Tim O'Reilly |
[Reply | View]
First off, I wouldn't totally write off advertising. It's interesting that Google's style of text advertising may become more fashionable in the era of clients like Watson, since that is probably the kind of advertising that would work best in a client with tight space constraints. (And I should point out that it works pretty well on the web as well, as Google demonstrates.) And there are certainly environments in which some advertising can still flourish.
But I do think that there is also an opportunity for various kinds of paid information services. Note however, that I don't know that they will be bought on an individual basis.
I like to compare the next stage of the internet with the development of cable television. If you think about it, there are a lot of parallels. Both started out with the idea that they were "free" and that advertising was the only way to gain revenue. But in fact, the internet became a monthly subscription service much faster than television, which flourished as an advertising-supported medium for decades. Advertising and the subscription internet (in which consumers pay about the same for internet access as they do for basic cable TV) grew up at almost exactly the same moment.
Meanwhile, if you look at what's beyond basic cable, it's less individual channels than packages. The movie package, the sports package. So I keep looking for the development of the premium channels, and their aggregation into packages. (This is part of why we developed Safari as a subscription-based service, and why we're currently exploring integrating it into various software developer programs, so that it can become part of one of those premium packages I expect to see emerge.)
There is one important difference between TV and the internet, though, and that is that the content providers don't necessarily own the billing relationship with the customer, and there hasn't been enough thought applied to the ISP network as if it were a subscriber network to whom additional services could be sold. I really don't see why ISPs (apart from vertically integrated ISPs with a content play, like AOL) aren't exploited more as a distribution channel for content, just like the large cable networks are exploited by a content provider like HBO.
But back to web services -- obviously, the subscription model is a good one, and tools like Watson could be good front-end aggregators for paid services as well as for free ones.
-
Even-t vs. iCal
2002-09-27 15:00:51 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I feel with Dan. I know the author of even-t <http://www.even-u.com> which was released this may and was send in to Apple for the Design Award.
Now there is iCal... :-(
I was truly shocked. I wonder when it hits me.
Wake up, Apple!
A small developer
-
Buy them maybe?
2002-09-27 08:32:49 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Watson is obviously better then sherlock. Why doesn't apple just aquire them for a modest amount? Is apple getting back into the 'not invented here' mode again?
I agree, the api is a key feature. If watson was in every install, I bet that within a year you would see a bazillion cool plug-ins that made the mac even easier to use, and a huge win for apple.
All I can figure is that Dan Wood was holding out for more money than apple was willing to pay, so apple said, "Er... ok. Later."
-
The Plug in API makes all the difference
2002-09-26 17:53:25 Tim O'Reilly |
[Reply | View]
Even if Watson weren't faster, the plug in architecture makes all the difference. Apple made two big mistakes in knocking off Watson:
1. They did the Microsoft embrace and extend thing, which is potentially fatal in Apple's case, because they don't have the market heft to go it alone without small developers.
2. They left out the most important part. Watson is engineered to be a platform, while Sherlock is only an application. And a platform strategy beats an application strategy every time. I don't know if tiny Karelia will beat Apple in this specific battle, but I guarantee that someone else (most likely Microsoft) will emulate the platform aspect of Watson as well as the application, and will end up owning this new and important space.
If I were Apple, I'd run, not walk, to engage Dan in discussions about how they can work with him to take his ideas to the next level. -
The Plug in API makes all the difference -- Absolutely!
2002-09-26 18:43:37 Derrick Story |
[Reply | View]
I think it's the aspect of Watson that people miss at first -- heck, I missed it at first -- and that's this wonderful robust open architecture that Dan and company have built into this Web-service-like platform. When you really look at it, I think it's clear that Dan has vision, and we get to enjoy the manifestation of his vision.
