[gorickey]

Basically, nothing has happened on Apple's end with Sherlock in ages...and with the news of "Dashboard" widgets coming that can basically take the place of many Sherlock channels, not to mention Spotlight, is Sherlock dead for good?

I believe many developers stayed away from 3rd-party channel development as it wasn't as easy as Apple was hoping it would be, as well as, it was hard for alot of developers to tie in a Sherlock channel for their specific application; however, with widgets using HTML as a big part of developing (making them easier to develop), I think that will change and we'll see loads of 3rd-party widgets compared to Sherlock channels.

Also, the fact that Sherlock is not really internationally usable killed it right from the beginning (as well as the much better Watson application)...

I'm sure Sherlock plans to be a part of Tiger (if it's still by default in the dock I'll be shocked); however, I know I'll find myself using it less than I do now probably...

[zachs]

Yep, I doubt that much will be added to Sherlock with Dashboard out. I agree that it was too complicated for just anyone to make a channel...you basically had to be a programmer. Dashboard, OTOH, requires a knowledge of HTML and/or JavaScript (CSS if you want), the basics of which can easily be picked up from online tutorials. I predict that we'll see a lot more Dashboard gadgets than Sherlock channels.

Oh, and Sherlock wasn't in the default Dock of my Mac OS X install.

[Millennium]

Apple has a long, ignoble history of underdocumenting things to the point where nobody bothers to develop for them. This is a large part of what killed OpenDoc, QuickDrawGX, PowerTalk, and a host of other technologies. It could well kill Sherlock as well, given the lack of third-party channel developers.

If Sherlock is going to be killed by a product, on the other hand, then I expect it will be Spotlight, not Dashboard, that does the deed.

[TimmyDee51]

I can see them killing Sherlock in terms of development, but I sure hope that it sticks around as the OS progresses. I wouldn't really care if there were never any new channels added, just that it was still compatible with new releases. I love Sherlock for the fact that it offers these web services and can be contained within a standard window. For example, I would hate it if the web services dictionary I had to use disappeared off the screen every time I wanted to manipulate a window or edit some text. In that regard, I like how Sherlock stays visible.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Millennium:
If Sherlock is going to be killed by a product, on the other hand, then I expect it will be Spotlight, not Dashboard, that does the deed.

Why?

People these days use Sherlock not for searching their hard drive or the internet, but for looking up movie times, finding a close thai restaurant, or checking on a flight's status - Spotlight will do none of these things...

[clarkgoble]

I agree. I think the Sherlock was most useful for coallating data. But it never seemed as useful as just using Safari, to be honest. I'm not sure a Dashboard widget would be much better...