I don't know Ceroc - I have never played with any pre releases of Tiger, but if the functionality comes back and it works, well I will be happy. UI or not, what has happened with Sherlock, at least in the yellow pages, is it simply no longer functions. The data is all loused up and you most often get garbage on a search.
Okay, from what I see at
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html, this is not a direct replacement for Sherlock - datebook, stock ticker and other common tools (address, calculator). Spotlight seems limited to searching on the computer, so Sherlock's features for searching yellow pages, images, movies, phone book ebay, flights, dictionary and translation are just not there. That is unless Sherlock is also part of Tiger, but Spotlight is using its little magnifying icon (minus the hat), so I'm guessing Sherlock is dead.
If it is, why can't Apple just say they are punting on it? I am so sick of marketing department driven BS (like simply not mentioning something that is being sunset/dropped) - just tell us up front. We won't run away or laugh. I mean come on, not everything works out or can be supported while you are trying to build new computers and OS's.