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drspock · Dec 10, 2002, 01:49 PM

I'm a recent switcher, blah blah blah. Sherlock is really great, and I love the benefits it offers over a regular web search, so I started looking at Watson. Before I plunk down 30 bucks for it though, has anybody here used it? How good is it, and more importantly, how much better is it than Sherlock?

Thanks

MacGorilla · Dec 10, 2002, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by drspock:
I'm a recent switcher, blah blah blah. Sherlock is really great, and I love the benefits it offers over a regular web search, so I started looking at Watson. Before I plunk down 30 bucks for it though, has anybody here used it? How good is it, and more importantly, how much better is it than Sherlock?

Thanks

Its faster and has more channels than Sherlock. Worth every penny!

bewebste · Dec 10, 2002, 03:13 PM

A lot of it depends on what channels you use. Personally, my main uses are for the TV, VersionTracker, weather, and movies plugins, only one of which is available for Sherlock. I find Watson to be generally faster and have slightly better interfaces, probably because the plugins are written as native Cocoa bundles instead of the strange Javascript/XQuery thing Sherlock has going on. New plugins for Sherlock have started to pop up recently, but I haven't been impressed with any of them so far and continue to use Watson. Watson has more plugins at this point, although Sherlock may catch up in the future due to its larger installed user base. I can say it was definitely worth the $30 for me, though.

Developer · Dec 10, 2002, 03:27 PM

Originally posted by bewebste:
Personally, my main uses are for the TV, VersionTracker, weather, and movies plugins, only one of which is available for Sherlock.

TV: sherlock://www.thomasdingler.de/sher...xml?action=add

Versiontracker: sherlock://bman.gotdns.com/vt/Versio...xml?action=add

Weather: sherlock://www4.ncsu.edu/~domitten/W...add&new_window

Movies: built in

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 03:38 PM

Sherlock 3 is great now that the SDK is out. We'll start seeing lots of cool channels made by third-party people. This is great news, IMO.

What is cool about OS X 10.2 is that out of the box, you've got a chat client that works on a network of 10.2 users and that works using AOLIM, a mail client, a music player, an address book, a calender program, and a multipurpose internet tool (dictionary, translator etc...) all out of the box.

Sure, this is evil for the devs, like the Watson author, that slave away at these kind of utilities but...

1) the bundling is great for newbies that don't want to be bothered finding apps like Watson on the internet
2) the Watson author was offered a job at Apple, and REFUSED IT! He brought this onto himself. He blew the biggest opportunity ever because of his massive ego.

TheIceMan · Dec 10, 2002, 03:39 PM

Originally posted by bewebste:
A lot of it depends on what channels you use. Personally, my main uses are for the TV, VersionTracker, weather, and movies plugins, only one of which is available for Sherlock. I find Watson to be generally faster and have slightly better interfaces, probably because the plugins are written as native Cocoa bundles instead of the strange Javascript/XQuery thing Sherlock has going on. New plugins for Sherlock have started to pop up recently, but I haven't been impressed with any of them so far and continue to use Watson. Watson has more plugins at this point, although Sherlock may catch up in the future due to its larger installed user base. I can say it was definitely worth the $30 for me, though.

bewebste: My thoughts too. I have been using Watson and find it very useful. Watson's "Reference" channel is alot more comprehensive. Whereas Sherlock only gives you a dictionary & a thesaurus. Watson gives you everything from dictionary, thesaurus, to encyclopedia, to quotations, and even a cookbook. All under the Refence section alone. That's just my humble opinion though. Sherlock has come out with new channels (from plug-ins) but so far I still like Watson.

Chuckit · Dec 10, 2002, 03:46 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
the Watson author was offered a job at Apple, and REFUSED IT! He brought this onto himself. He blew the biggest opportunity ever because of his massive ego.

The opportunity to be a corporate drone for a company that controls less than 10% of its market is the biggest opportunity ever?

Geez. I may as well kill myself now.

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 04:45 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:

The opportunity to be a corporate drone for a company that controls less than 10% of its market is the biggest opportunity ever? Geez. I may as well kill myself now.

Controlling 5% of a market saturated with competitors is actually pretty good.

Most competitors hold less than 1% of the market.

Only big companies like Dell actually hold a huge marketshare. And that's assuming Apple actually competes with those guys. To my understanding, Apple really wants to remain a niche player.

Comparing Mac marketshare vs PC marketshare is rather ridiculous. That's not the way things work and you know it.

Working for Apple is a huge opportunity. It's ridiculous to turn the opportunity down.

lookmark · Dec 10, 2002, 04:56 PM

Why not give Watson a try? It's free for a demo period.

I find that Watson is faster, and has far more channels, but has a clumsier interface (too many drawers). It's $30.

Sherlock is slower, has far fewer channels (though a whole slew are about to arrive), and a tighter UI. It's free with Jaguar.

The channels are what make this kind of app, though. So it all depends how you use it, and what you want to use it for.

lookmark · 05:10 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:

1) the bundling is great for newbies that don't want to be bothered finding apps like Watson on the internet
2) the Watson author was offered a job at Apple, and REFUSED IT! He brought this onto himself. He blew the biggest opportunity ever because of his massive ego.

I agree it's a very compelling feature to add the OS.

Why Dan Wood chose not to accept a job at Apple hasn't been disclosed. It could have been for personal reasons (didn't want to relocate to CA., family, etc) as easily as ego (or simple independence). And it's not really any of our business.

But it's up to him to take Watson to the next level, or introduce an entirely new app, or whatever. You can't coast on your laurels forever.

ambush · Dec 10, 2002, 05:11 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
Sherlock 3 is great now that the SDK is out. We'll start seeing lots of cool channels made by third-party people. This is great news, IMO.

What is cool about OS X 10.2 is that out of the box, you've got a chat client that works on a network of 10.2 users and that works using AOLIM, a mail client, a music player, an address book, a calender program, and a multipurpose internet tool (dictionary, translator etc...) all out of the box.

Sure, this is evil for the devs, like the Watson author, that slave away at these kind of utilities but...

1) the bundling is great for newbies that don't want to be bothered finding apps like Watson on the internet
2) the Watson author was offered a job at Apple, and REFUSED IT! He brought this onto himself. He blew the biggest opportunity ever because of his massive ego.

Apple almost killed Watson, one of the best app out there, and this is UNACCEPTABLE.
I guess you can't understand because you're no sw dev.

Dan Wood is so dedicated to the cocoa community, it's almost unbelievable.

He made the popular CURLHandle framework ( So useful, I always use it )

He's very active on the cocoa-dev mailing list. He likes to help others.

He made watson, an example of the "almost-perfect" osx app for any sw dev

You don't know anything about Dan Wood ( or the oppurtunities he's had in his life ) so I'd ask you to shut up. This is called disrespect man.

I heard he wanted to port watson to Windows. Good for him and the windows users. It's all Apple's fault. Rats.

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by ambush:

Apple almost killed Watson, one of the best app out there, and this is UNACCEPTABLE.
I guess you can't understand because you're no sw dev.

Dan Wood is so dedicated to the cocoa community, it's almost unbelievable.

He made the popular CURLHandle framework ( So useful, I always use it )

He's very active on the cocoa-dev mailing list. He likes to help others.

He made watson, an example of the "almost-perfect" osx app for any sw dev

You don't know anything about Dan Wood ( or the oppurtunities he's had in his life ) so I'd ask you to shut up. This is called disrespect man.

I heard he wanted to port watson to Windows. Good for him and the windows users. It's all Apple's fault. Rats.

Microsoft almost killed Apple...is that 'UNACCEPTABLE' too?

Dan Wood may be a helpful dev, but he can't hold this grudge because Apple had the same idea he had (but couldn't release it until 10.2).

It's time to move on...either make Watson better or innovate a new product.

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 05:36 PM

Maybe MS should fold its arms because Apple bundled TextEdit with OS X.

ambush · Dec 10, 2002, 05:36 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:

Microsoft almost killed Apple...is that 'UNACCEPTABLE' too?

Dan Wood may be a helpful dev, but he can't hold this grudge because Apple had the same idea he had (but couldn't release it until 10.2).

It's time to move on...either make Watson better or innovate a new product.

I'm sorry, but watson is a *lot* better than Sherlock right now.
Sherlock is so slow because it does not use NSBundles, unlike Watson ( that uses its own NSBundle subclass ).

From a dev's POV, watson is by far better.
From a user's POV, I'd say watson is also better, because it offers a lot of plugin choices.

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 05:36 PM

Originally posted by ambush:

I'm sorry, but watson is a *lot* better than Sherlock right now.
Sherlock is so slow because it does not use NSBundles, unlike Watson ( that uses its own NSBundle subclass ).

From a dev's POV, watson is by far better.
From a user's POV, I'd say watson is also better, because it offers a lot of plugin choices.

Never said Watson wasn't better.

CheesePuff · 06:18 PM

WF

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 06:42 PM

I liek milk

CheesePuff · Dec 10, 2002, 07:20 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I liek milk

oh so old.

macmike42 · Dec 10, 2002, 07:23 PM

I wasn't going to reply to this, but since it seems to keep going on and on:

Guy, seriously, shut up.

You are making so many ill-informed assumptions about Dan Wood it isn't even funny. A couple of thoughts:

1. Some people don't like to work in cubes under flourescent lights with dry, processed air and bad coffee.

2. Some people like it where they live, and don't want to move.

3. Some people do not hold money/success above all other priorities.

4. Disregarding 3, some people make plenty of money programming software for companies other than Apple.

5. Some people don't lie down and die when a giant corporation rips them off, they make their product better.

6. Some people, when offered a job by a company that ripped them off, turn it down for other reasons than the fact that they are bitter and spite-ridden.

7. Some people, when they are wrong, simply admit it instead of getting snippier and snippier, finally resorting to posting links to played-out-last-year's-joke-websites.

mrtew · Dec 10, 2002, 07:24 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I liek milk

Is that site some kind of joke? It looks like it's for real! Freaky.

Anyway, I leik Watson better than Sherlock. In fact I don't think I have opened Sherlock once on my new computer, and only a couple of times on my last one. Although I have to admit that the main think I use it for is TV and Movies, and I find TVGuide.com to be faster and more convenient than even Watson.

Spirit_VW · Dec 10, 2002, 07:28 PM

Originally posted by ambush:

Apple almost killed Watson, one of the best app out there, and this is UNACCEPTABLE.
I guess you can't understand because you're no sw dev.

It's called the marketplace. Watson has competition now. It's up to the developer to improve his offering to try to get people to use it over Sherlock. The marketplace will decide. If he doesn't succeed, then sorry, but that's the nature of the beast.

The marketplace will decide, and that's the way it should be.

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 08:18 PM

Originally posted by macmike42:

Guy, seriously, shut up.

No yuo!

ambush · Dec 10, 2002, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:

No yuo!

He must think he's funny or something..
Why don't you reply decently or admit that you were wrong? wtf is this BS??

sad.

Toyin · Dec 10, 2002, 08:40 PM

I bought Watson way before Sherlock v3 came out and I'm very happy with it. The way I see it is right now Watson is significantly better than Sherlock. It's faster and has better channels. However with new channels for Sherlock coming out pretty frequently, Sherlock may soon have more and better offerings than Watson. All that said and done I use them both about equally with the edge to Watson now. Try them both out and see if Watson's worth the extra $$$.

Guy Incognito · 08:58 PM

Originally posted by ambush:

He must think he's funny or something..
Why don't you reply decently or admit that you were wrong? wtf is this BS??

sad.

I'm wrong.

What macmike mentionned is exactly what the Watson author should do...keep improving his product. What else can he do?

Competition is good.

I never said Watson was bad...I use Watson. But I also use Sherlock. Survival of the fittest is the game that is being played out right now. If you don't like it, too bad.

I never said anything 'wrong' so how can I admit I'm wrong? Point to me where I've said something 'wrong'...please.

Get real.

cpac · Dec 10, 2002, 08:45 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
TV: sherlock://www.thomasdingler.de/sher...xml?action=add

any way to get US channels in this?

Developer · Dec 10, 2002, 09:14 PM

Originally posted by cpac:

any way to get US channels in this?

No, but I'm sure someone will develop something equivalent for other countries eventually.

Developer · Dec 10, 2002, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:

I never said anything 'wrong' so how can I admit I'm wrong? Point to me where I've said something 'wrong'...please.

If you think you said nothing wrong, you should read more Marx!

macmike42 · Dec 10, 2002, 10:05 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
If you think you said nothing wrong, you should read more Marx!

Oh man. I almost took the bait, but nothing I would have said could top 'read more Marx'. Cheers Developer!

Guy Incognito · Dec 10, 2002, 10:12 PM

How is this 'read more Marx' thread derailment supposed to help the Watson author or Apple improve their apps.

Frankly, I'm disgusted with people's anti-competitiveness. Especially macmike's.

clarkgoble · Dec 11, 2002, 11:27 PM

The first generation of user supplied Sherlock channels are, admittedly, pretty weak. For instance the Google one doesn't list all the hits properly in the list pane but in the display pane. The Version Tracker channel opens up a couple of browser windows when you click download. The weather channel is admittedly nice.

Still, glancing over the documentation I'd half think about writing one myself for a few of my favorite sites. (Not that I have time right now)