Sherlock is a now-defunct file and web search tool created by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

for the "classic" Mac OS, and carried through to early versions of

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. Sherlock was introduced in 1998 with Mac OS 8.5 as an extension of Finder's file searching capabilities. Like its predecessor—System 7.5’s revamped 'Find File' app, adapted by Bill Monk from his 'Find Pro' find program—Sherlock searches for local files and file contents on a Mac, using the same basic indexing code and search logic found in AppleSearch. Sherlock extended the system by enabling the user to search for items on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

through a series of plug-ins, which employed existing

web search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

s. These plug-ins were written as

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

files, so that it was a simple task for a user to write a Sherlock plug-in. Sherlock was replaced by Spotlight and

Dashboard A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel or IP, or fascia) is a control panel (engineering), control panel set within the central console of a vehicle, boat, or cockpit of an aircraft or spacecraft. Usually located directly ahead of the ...

in 2005 with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, although Apple continued to include it with the default installation. Since most of the standard plug-ins for Sherlock provided by Apple itself no longer function, it was officially retired and removed in the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in 2007.

Data

The Sherlock 2 search plug-in was an

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; International Organization for Standardization, ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on t ...

document, and was typically given the ".src" file extension. The Sherlock plug-in was composed of three parts, identified by their element names: , , and tags. These elements allowed Sherlock to (respectively) identify a search engine's

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

and the parts that are relevant to searching, as well as returning the results of the search. There was also a facility for defining how a Sherlock plug-in could update itself. Sherlock search plug-ins could also be used (with minor modifications) in Mozilla's browser suites. These plug-ins were, appropriately enough, known as Mycroft project plug-ins (named after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes' older brother). Among some of the changes made in the Sherlock file format were the separation of the automatic update element (which formed part of the element) and the icon (provided in a separate file in Mozilla and part of the

resource fork A resource fork is a fork of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system that is used to store structured data. It is one of the two forks of a file, along with the data fork, which stores data that the operating system treats as unstruct ...

in Sherlock).

Sherlock 3 channels

The Sherlock 3 search plug-in was a web application, which was downloaded on the fly from a server to ensure the most current version. As information on the internet is subject to change so quickly, this was one way for Apple to guarantee the up-to-date version. A channel consisted of a web directory with an index. This usually pointed to a sub-directory (usually called "Channel") which contained the code

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

, any Script XML, and localized lproj directories (nib file and Localized Text Resources as a plist). The channels included by default were: *

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

*Pictures *Stocks *Movies * eBay *Flights *Dictionary *Translation * AppleCare

Current status

As Sherlock was never released as a Universal binary, it is not compatible with Mac OS X versions after Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and couldn't be launched on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Macs without Rosetta.

Accusations of plagiarism

Advocates of Watson made by Karelia Software, LLC claim that Apple copied their product without permission, compensation, or attribution in producing Sherlock 3. Some disagree with this claim, stating that Sherlock 3 was the natural evolution of Sherlock 2, and that Karelia Software was open that Watson was inspired by Sherlock.

''Sherlocked'' as a term

The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community.

Versions

*Sherlock – introduced in Mac OS 8.5. *Sherlock 2 – shipped with Mac OS 9, new interface, more plug-ins. *Sherlock 3 – shipped with Mac OS X 10.2, runs only in

. *Sherlock was replaced by Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for hard drive searches, and replaced by

for other functionality, but remained as a stand-alone program with its channels. It was completely removed in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

References

External links

Apple: Sherlock 3 Channel Development

- See "What is the relationship between Watson and the new Sherlock 3?".
Karelia: Developing Tools for Watson
- See "How does Watson's plug-in architecture compare to Sherlock 3?".
MyCroft Project
opensearch & sherlock search engine plug-ins. * https://wiki.developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sidebar/Adding_search_engines_from_Web_pages$revision/1525363#Installing_Sherlock_plugins ** https://web.archive.org/web/20090301182153/http://developer.apple.com/macosx/sherlock/ {{Mac OS MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc. Sherlock Holmes