Why has sherlock failed as a tool?

[mi5moav]

I love sherlock, I think it was one of apple's greatest parts of it's operating systems. However, the problem is that it is not very well integrated into the system. If it was part of the file menu structure under the apple menu as a separate submenu like sherlock search... or better yet if we had a little hat icon in the menu bar. Sherlock could really have been something. The problem I see is that most people can't multitask or do it very efficiently and if you are surfing the net you focus on the main screen. Many times I've been running safari and need to search for something with google and do I use the google bar integrated into safari... no, as dumb as a dodo i type in google into the address bar to load the google page. Then again I think sherlock was also created as stop gap measure before safari came around. I remember a few years back that I wanted to check out movie info and I had to load that slow as mud internet explorer than wait 5 minutes. Sherlock was a breath of fresh air it loaded faster than ie and got my info in a fraction of the time. Even today if I wanted to get movie or flight info and I wanted to do it in the most efficient manner I would use sherlock, but heck no I use safari, dumb ass me... oh, well. This probably also goes back to the fact that we use things we are most familiar with and at this point its safari, and we don't like to stray from what we are most comfortable with and what's right in front of our faces. Just like the billions of pc users that will never switch because they are comfortable and familiar with windows 95. So, why does Apple keeps supporting sherlock and why have they not put any new channels in there or released and SDK. Of course you have watson running that show... but sherlock could be reborn.

 

[cfleck]

imho...

its too slow
the content provided by switchboard sucks
oh, and its too slow

 

[jego]

yea, too slow, much too slow.

i sometimes still use it for translation, but thats it.

its just too slow.

 

[RacerX]

Then again I think sherlock was also created as stop gap measure before safari came around. I remember a few years back that I wanted to check out movie info and I had to load that slow as mud internet explorer than wait 5 minutes. Sherlock was a breath of fresh air it loaded faster than ie and got my info in a fraction of the time.

A bit of history on this subject...

Watson came out long before Apple redesigns Sherlock for 10.2. In fact Apple gave Watson the Apple Design Award for Most Innovative Mac OS X Product for 2002... and then basically stoled the idea for Sherlock.

Here is the problem, Watson is Cocoa... Sherlock is Carbon.

This makes Sherlock incredibly slow compared to Watson and exceptionally hard to write for for people out side of Apple. Watson comes with 20 tools and many people have written their own.

When Apple hijacked Watson's idea, many people thought that this was going to either be the end of Watson or that Watson would go over to the Windows side. Fortunately Apple made an inferior product and fumbled on the development.

I use Watson constantly. Both for TV and Movie listings, for weather, for ebay (I haven't search ebay via a browser in over a year), and tracking packages. And I just sold one of my clients with a ton of kids on Watson with the references tool.

It is sad that a third party developer is using Apple's own APIs better than Apple, but it is also nice to see a small developer keep Apple at bay when it tried to crowd in on the action.

And sure, Sherlock is free with Mac OS X... but with Watson you get what you paid for. I bought my license back in 2001 and have been using it happily ever since.

 

[twister]

I like the map features in sherlock & ebay but that's about it. It is slow at times and does seem to be on it's way out. Safari has the google bar, iTunes has movie trailers, and watson is quicker. It's just a matter of time. But i'm GLAD they removed sherlock from the find function in the OS.

 

[mi5moav]

I guess what I'm really trying to get with google coming out with its own search app soon for the desktop and longhorn supposedly having better search capabilities will the masses actually use an alternative search app. If watson never came around and sherlock was faster than watson is now and had even more channels would the masses use that or would they continue to use their browsers? It's as if we had a bike and a car in our garage. 99% of the people would use the car everytime for driving 50 miles to a store or going a block to see a neighbor. This isn't like what is the right tool for the job. The better tool for eating soup is a spoon many use a fork, but the quickest and most effecient is just picking the bowl up a slurping it down. What is more effcient something that gets the job done quicker or cheaper. If I am going to cut down one branch I'm not going to pull out my husq chain saw, I'll grap my 30 year old hacksaw though I know the chainsaw could cut it down in half the time. But if I had 30 limbs to cut i'll probably pull out the saw... and if I had 200 trees to cut I would call up a bunch of lumberjacks. So, I guess is there such thing as the perfect tool. There is no perfect way to kill a man, no perfect way to cut a tree, no perfect way to do anything and that is probably why if someone can make a penny off of a nuculear powered lawn mower then someones going to use it.

 

[MacMuppet]

I too go to a Google page and search there rather than use the Google window in the Safari title bar - but this is because I instist in google.co.uk rather than google.com.
I think its a matter of necessity as to whats stood the test of time.
Sherlock I found quite useful in OS 9 for searching one's own computer, but with the increased performance of OS X I find Apple+F perfectly fine for searching my machine now.
However with all the new plug-ins for Sherlock (actualy I don't know quite how new some of them are) I'm finding sherlock quite a useful tool for the web for very specific tasks - mainly when shopping online. If I'm looking for a website Sherlock would never occur to me (to the point that I don't even know if you can do this) but even Google is deeply frustrating when you are tyrying to find a specific product online.
For instance my Plug-ins include: UK Video, UK Books, UK Music, UK Games, UK Computers and iCalShare. Now to be honest I've only really used the Books, Games and iCalShare with any regularity, but they are truly brilliant.
If I was searching for say a game on Google, I'd get pages and pages of obscure game selling websites, based all over the world (even if I'd specified 'search within the UK') and those infuriating 'Kelkoo' and 'Dealtime' results which are never any use or really that related to yoyr search.
The UK Games plug-in will give me everyone who is currently selling it online, its availability - and, crucially, a complete listing of everyone prices for easy comparison - for instance it would never have occurred to me to go to Tesco Online to buy a DVD, but their prices are often really good.
I've been waiting some time for a particular book to come out in Paperback - Sherlock gives me all of the above and the format (hardback or otherwise) - information I'd have trouble getting from a web-browser without some pretty exhaustive searching.
The flights function is very impressive, but other than for shopping its the only thing I'll conceivably ever use Sherlock for. As mentioned by others, the speed of it in general means google all the way for general web searches....

 

[RacerX]

I guess what I'm really trying to get with google coming out with its own search app soon for the desktop and longhorn supposedly having better search capabilities will the masses actually use an alternative search app.

Search app? I wouldn't call Watson a search app. If I need to do a search I have a ton of them set up right in my OmniWeb address field right now. If I type "g" and them the search terms I get a google search, "gn" and I get a google news search, "y" and I get a yahoo search and so on.

What is sad is that because you have not seen what Watson is able to do you are under estimating what Sherlock could have been. Sherlock isn't a failure because people don't need another search tool... it is a failure because people only think of it as a search tool.

Watson is designed to present information in a way that makes it easier to work with than it would be in a browser. Presentation is the key, not the ability to search.

No Google search app is going to be like Watson. Maybe like the Google search tool in Watson, but not like Watson.

If watson never came around and sherlock was faster than watson is now and had even more channels would the masses use that or would they continue to use their browsers?

That is an odd question... If Watson had never come around, Sherlock would look the same as it did in Mac OS X 10.0/10.1.

And Watson is not a browser replacement. It was designed to do what a browser couldn't, apply a GUI to information beyond what HTML and CSS could do. It is a platform for turning services on the web into an application on your system. Not all web content needs or should have that done to it, but some desperately needs it.

I would highly suggest getting past the mind set that Apple came up with this first. You should learn about Watson and why people use it. Because in this area Sherlock is to Watson what Windows is to Macintosh... a poor substitute.

Keep in mind, Sherlock 1 and 2 were search helpers, Watson and the new Sherlock to a point are web services applications. There is a major difference. If you are only using them as search tools... you haven't begin to use them yet.

For those of you who have forgotten what Sherlock looked like before... here it is in Mac OS X DP4.

 

[Jasoco]

Whoa.. I completely forgot about Sherlock..

Oh well, let it die. I prefer the integrated Finder's "Find" function for file finding and something called the "Internet Browser" for finding stuff online. Don't need Sherlock.

The next step would be to integrate Sherlock into Safari.. But not until they fix Safari's damn memory leak!

 

[mi5moav]

but if apple never came out with sherlock 1.0 I don't think that watson would have come about. It's like the linux minix issue. Do you really think that linus T. could have come out with linux without the inspiration of minix, unix or some other derivation? I think that sherlock pushed the enveloped and then evolved. I remember sherlock way back in 8. And the 2000 or 1999 release of sherlock did have channels and I believe even Karelia did mention way back in 2001 that watson was inspired by sherlock.

But unless watson/sherlock is implemented within the os it's only going to be an app. And when google launches their desktop search app... many mac users will see a stunning resemblance.

Now, watson has come out with site search which uses sherlock 2 plugins. Sherlock could do this 3 years ago. Now you can't unless you get 3rd party channels. I don't know how many channels watson has but I'm sure they don't have 40 channels like sherlock. Though most of the non apple are pretty lame. But Apple keeps adding more and more channels but doesn't even tell anyone how to get them. I think most viewers probably don't even know how to get all the extra channels in sherlock.

 

[RacerX]

but if apple never came out with sherlock 1.0 I don't think that watson would have come about.

Yes, I do. The idea of web services applications that didn't use a browser has been around for quite some time and predate Sherlock. In the NeXT development community there were apps that started doing this and were sharing these abilities via the services menu with other apps.

Watson has provided a frame work which makes it easier to make these (which Sherlock doesn't seem to be able to do).

and I believe even Karelia did mention way back in 2001 that watson was inspired by sherlock.

As I recall the name Watson was inspired by Sherlock, web services were already around by that point... OmniDictionary is a good example.

But unless watson/sherlock is implemented within the os it's only going to be an app. And when google launches their desktop search app... many mac users will see a stunning resemblance.

Wait a minute... why in the name of all that is good about the Mac OS would you trash a system by mixing in something like this when there is no rime or reason for it? Apple mixing Sherlock and Find was one of the biggest mistakes in the Mac OS in years! we had to wait for 10.2 to fix that. The type of integration you are talking about has made Windows the worst OS on the planet and provided NO improvement to the users and only served to remove competition.

That is dangerous stuff you are throwing around there!

I would suggest that you learn about Services in Mac OS X. Services removes any need to under mine the OS in order to share features and abilities. I use mainly Cocoa apps because they all share features with one another. Carbon apps don't.

Why does AppleWorks need it's own spell checker, or Word, or even the recently ported AbiWord? because they are Carbon and don't take advantage of the features the OS provides via Services.

In most platforms an app is an island... in Mac OS X (Cocoa), an app is part of a community.

Watson is only going to be an app be cause that is what it is. And that is all it should be. But it is also a development frame work (based on Cocoa) for bringing web services tools to users faster.

I can tell you right now that Google doesn't understand web services. And no Google app is going to do what Watson does. The Google app is designed to secure Google's place as search engine supreme. That is all.

How is that like Watson?

Now, watson has come out with site search which uses sherlock 2 plugins. Sherlock could do this 3 years ago. Now you can't unless you get 3rd party channels. I don't know how many channels watson has but I'm sure they don't have 40 channels like sherlock. Though most of the non apple are pretty lame. But Apple keeps adding more and more channels but doesn't even tell anyone how to get them. I think most viewers probably don't even know how to get all the extra channels in sherlock.

But Sherlock can't do it today... which is why it was added to Watson. Dan said he thought Apple made a mistake by abandoning people who had made there own Sherlock 2 Plug-ins (I had made a few for some people at one point).

As for your "channels", all old Sherlock channels are searches... again, not what web services are about.

And even if Apple is adding channels.. which I haven't seen, people are adding tools to Watson themselves because it is easier to write to. How many "channels" does Sherlock come with? How many tools does Watson come with? How easy is it to work with Watson tools. How often are Watson tools updated to reflect the changing web? The Sherlock channels development site (Sherlockers) has already gone under... and less we forget, you were the first to talk about Sherlock as a failed tool.

Again, Sherlock is a poor substitute (and it abandon Sherlock 2 plug-ins). I think you are really missing out on this area with Sherlock.

Some reading for you....
Dan on Sherlock 3
Watson Development

 

[mi5moav]

After researching sherlock and finding almost every sherlock 3 channel developer murdered, this could be at apples doing. Heck apple could take sherlock 4 an put it into ilife as a new app. There are have been nearly 60 sherlock 3 channels released. I have only 22 that I use on occassion. But if apple were to regroup rebundle this as an ilife app I think it would do a lot better and get a lot more press.

 

[macgeek]

Well, I only skimmed, but I don't think anyone mentioned that one problem with Sherlock is that it tries to be a few different apps in one, a paradigm Apple is trying to shift away from. Web searches happen in your web browser. Why would you bring up a separate search tool before opening your web browser? And no one really uses the other functionality much anyway. I just think it was a bad idea in the first place and now Apple has finally realized it.

 

[jonparadise]

Biggest problem for me is half the channels don't have any use outside the US.

 

[mi5moav]

so what are the big differences between OpenDoc and sherlock/watson.

 

[RacerX]

There are have been nearly 60 sherlock 3 channels released. I have only 22 that I use on occassion.

Where? Any that aren't just searches? I can setup site searches in OmniWeb and don't need "channels" for that.

Web searches happen in your web browser. Why would you bring up a separate search tool before opening your web browser?

That is exactly why web searches shouldn't be confused with web services.

I rarely bring up Watson to find information that takes me directly back to a web browser. It is usually a stand alone app.

 

[twister]

I use watson for the weather radar the most. Faster and less cluttered than going to a wether site.

 

[hank]

What's really promising is Google's possible local indexing (for PCs, that is, claiming ground that Microsoft is supposedly going to claim for their next Windows release).

Meanwhile, Apple has had "Content Indexing" and "Find By Content" -- albeit not working -- for years now.

Maybe they'll get it to work. The plethora of ways to try to find things, none of which work very reliably, is only going to get worse, I suppose -- I remember someone who once worked at Apple in this area (when the Mac SE was new) telling me that search and indexing were in theory impossible to do well, according to the academic work at the time, but Apple was going to try anyhow, or words to that effect.

 

[kcmac]

Replace "Sherlock" with "Watson" and I think the responses are the same.

I bought Watson when it came out as it was superior to Sherlock which at that time was used mainly to search your files. After using it for awhile, the novelty just wears off.

I would just rather use a browser when I am on the internet. About the only thing I really used Watson for after awhile was to check on movie schedules.

What is funny to me is all the crap people dealt Apple for "copying" Watson with Sherlock 2. Now neither app is used much at all by any of us.

 

[RacerX]

Now neither app is used much at all by any of us.

Odd statement considering the thread as it stands so far. I'm sure you would like to consider yourself the quintessential Mac user, but it is in constant use in my home by my wife and I. And I've gotten phone calls and e-mails from clients thanking me for showing them Watson months after installing it on their systems.

If you bought it for the novelty, fine... you most likely never really knew what it was for to begin with. But there are many people who do understand what it is for.

It is not a browser replacement... it is a replacement for some web sites which would have been better as web service applications. It is also an easier way to use web services (bundled into one app) and develop web services (rather than making a full stand alone app for every tool).

But, to each their own. If you don't use it, fine. But please don't try to lump any of us in with you.