| First, it should be noted that Apple never actually got Sherlock to begin with. Sherlock was done as a knock off of some of the tools from Watson. But Apple only really wanted to have the tools but didn't get the concept of what Watson really was... a web services development platform.
Originally Sherlock was a search tool, but as it had web search abilities with different sites, it was also classified as a web services application. At about the same time that Apple put out Sherlock in Mac OS 8, the Omni Group put out OmniDictionary for Rhapsody and OPENSTEP. OmniDictionary was designed to fill the void left when Apple/NeXT dropped the (bundled) Webster dictionary from OPENSTEP and Rhapsody. Because OmniDictionary accessed the online dict.org for information this application a web service.
The idea behind Watson was that instead of developers building individual apps for web services, they could build tools for Watson. One of the reasons web services as individual applications didn't take off was that if the resource page changed, the application would break. To fix the problem the scrubbing routines would need to be updated. Watson provided an easy (easier than making a stand alone app) way of putting together web services and keeping them updated.
Apple thought the Watson was great (gave it the most innovative application award) and then remade Sherlock in Watson's image... literally.
Apple put together Sherlock with channels that worked very much like Watson's most popular tools. But Apple didn't update them regularly and didn't really add any new ones. Worst of all, Sherlock was much harder to write channels for than making Watson tools.
Had Apple understood what they had, they would have remade Sherlock in Cocoa and made it as easy to write for as Watson (actually they should have just bought Watson) and they should have included a channel building development application with WebObjects (as this type of web services application would have been perfect for using WebObjects in the enterprise).
But Apple never got it. Sun did though... and they bought Watson.
Apple has (to a degree) learn from this. Dashboard is designed to be an easy to develop for web services platform in the Finder (the Dashboard concept itself is a new interface tool Apple has added to their applications like Motion). I still don't think they completely get it, but from the sound of early feedback from Dashboard users/developers, it is a step in the right direction.
Watson is still supported (tools being updated as needed) until some time in October. It is thought that Sun will release their version for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X around then.  |