Easy Tiger

Checked out Apple’s new Tiger OS over the weekend and as expected found some cool stuff. Spotlight is quick and embedded in the OS, with some nifty functions within the actual results. Desktop search is definitely heating up. We are going to dig into it some more and look at some of the plugins including metadata importers and API support. Safari now has RSS built in and dashboard widgets are great to play with, particularly the liquid interface effect when you drop them on the desktop.

It’s easy to go widget crazy and install a lot of them. Interestingly amongst the 109 new user coded plugins there were no widgets for Google, Yahoo or Microsoft core search (an I’m feeling lucky one doesn’t count) – I did find one written for Ask Jeeves Search, so I was really pleased that Ask Jeeves was first up amongst big search players with a core search widget for Tiger.

Widgets allow you to do something I like to call ‘Really Simple Personalization’ (RSP). For instance, grab a couple of things to help you get stuff done without having to sign up or subscribe to anything. You can experience something similar with MyJeeves, which allows you to save search results without being signed up, for quick tasks, e.g. finding a library.You’re likely to see more and more of this kind of light application building in the future, on the desktop and on the web.

Daniel Read, VP Product Management