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What do you all think of sherlock?
- Thread starter Zazaban
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Back in the OS 9 days, I thought Sherlock was the greatest thing ever, when I first used it in my school library about 6 or 7 years ago it gave me a reason to buy my first mac since Quadra 605.
Needless to say, I hate widgets. Bring back Sherlock.
Maybe we should start a petition to bring back Sherlock!
Needless to say, I hate widgets. Bring back Sherlock.
Maybe we should start a petition to bring back Sherlock!
bigrell486 said:
Sherlock never left, just spotlight it and you'll find it.
I'm a new mac user (just switched about 3 months ago), and I discovered Sherlock while I was digging around for new stuff on my iMac. I love it, too! I put it in my dock and use it for movie times and stocks and such - saves on the amount of websites I have to go to.
I really don't use widgets, but to each his own.
Chundles said:
That's why I rarely used it - and it was usually quicker to go straight to the Web than hunt around in the Apps folder for things like the translator.
Part of the problem was the need for people to set up and maintain the channels I think for some of the more interesting things. Dashboard makes it much easier to get localised widgets.
I've always liked it a lot. Unfortunately, it keeps getting less and less useful with different plug-ins dissapearing from time to time. Luckily, though, I usually just use it for translation, and that still works.
Like others, I use it for translation. I don't know what's up with the translation widget, but it never works properly for me.
I used to use the dictionary feature in Sherlock quite a bit before Tiger's built-in dictionary.
I think it's a cool app that is underrated.
I used to use the dictionary feature in Sherlock quite a bit before Tiger's built-in dictionary.
I think it's a cool app that is underrated.
I've been using Macs for about one year now, and I knew Sherlock was in Tiger but I didn't know what it did before this post.
I've never used it.
I've never used it.
Don't hate. Congratulate.Chundles said:
I love Sherlock! I use it everyday to check out movies in my area. It has everything, reviews, previews. I also use Acu Weather and the dictionary. It's almost better than Dashboard. Almost
I think that sherlock is the most underestimated part of OS X, even by Apple! They haven't updated it for a long long time. Many people around here see it as a dinosaur. But all I see is potential in that little program. I think that it is feasible to update it to work on Europe too, and implement more things and more search categories. I use it for translation, too.
Too bad Apple seems to have forgotten its existence...
Too bad Apple seems to have forgotten its existence...
I'll second that!macidiot said:
I still use Watson today.
The biggest problem with Sherlock was that it was Carbon and a pain to develop tools for. On the other hand, Watson was Cocoa and was designed to be easy to create tools for.
The idea behind Watson (that Apple never got with sherlock) was that Watson was supposed to be a development environment for creating web services. Rather than making a stand alone web service app (like OmniDictionary for example), you could make a tool that ran within Watson. Because web services scrub information from web sites, and many web sites change their layout regularly, the stand alone application setup requires more work on both the part of the developer and the end user. With Watson (before Sun bought it) when a tool broke, the developer could fix the tool without the application (Watson) itself having to be replaced.
Had Apple understood the true power of Watson... and either bought Watson out right or really made Sherlock in Watson's image, they would have been pushing something like Watson with WebObjects.
The biggest problem with web (browser) based applications is that it is really easy to leave the page you were working in (basically the same reason some companies were so upset when Microsoft made Internet Explorer part of the OS in Windows 98) to go browse the net. But if you developed an interface for your WebObjects app as a tool in Watson, then it feels like you are using an application on your system rather than via a page in a browser.
Will Apple ever get this?. No.
They've moved on to Dashboard. And while building widgets for Dashboard is easier than both Sherlock and Watson, Dashboard widgets don't provide the same type of professional interface as a real app, nor are they as easy to work with for extended periods as real apps.
There are definitely times when Apple sees a great idea and not only can't improve on it, but shows that they really didn't get the important aspects of the idea.sigamy said:
The whole reason Dashboard isn't as good as Konfabulator is that Apple made it separate from the rest of the user environment... Apparently Apple had never heard of the phrase out of sight, out of mind.
Apple's attempts at matching both Watson and Konfabulator show that the only thing they saw in those two products was the gee-whiz parts and the the parts that made them really special.
... of course we now have Sherlock and Dashboard to compare and contrast with Watson and Konfabulator to show why they really were so special to begin with.
it's a waiste of space if you ask me...
but then again, i'm quite unfamiliar with the older os9 oriented stuff...
but then again, i'm quite unfamiliar with the older os9 oriented stuff...