Remember when Mac OS 8.5 first came out, and Apple was touting it as "a brand new Mac for $99"? Evidently Apple's marketing department felt that an improved search utility was all it takes to transform an aging Power Mac 7200 into a sparkly new G3, since the biggest visible addition in Mac OS 8.5 was Sherlock. Sherlock added several new features to the previous "Find File" application, such as the ability to search the contents of indexed files and to save search criteria to run again later. The biggest new feature, though, was arguably Sherlock's ability to search the Internet. You could just enter what you were looking for, and Sherlock would return results from multiple Internet search engines. Kinda neat.

However, "neat" is all it would have been if Apple hadn't made it really easy for people to write their own Sherlock plug-ins. What elevated Sherlock from "neat" to "nifty" was the way that you could add your favorite sites to Sherlock's list, no matter how obscure or bizarre. Want to add tinymarsupials.com to Sherlock? Go for it. And there was actual incentive for webmasters to build their own Sherlock plug-ins, because Apple was smart enough to make sure that banner ads from a Sherlock-searched site could be displayed right in the search results window. Ad-dependent sites (like the one you're tuned in to right now) could post a Sherlock plug-in without worrying about losing any money.

Suddenly, though, we've got Mac OS 9, and all that's changed. Sherlock 2 may include some nice new e-commerce features like the ability to comparison-shop across multiple sites, but according to MacWEEK, one feature quietly disappeared: banner ads. Or, more accurately, banner ads from the searched site are still shown-- but only if the Sherlock 2 plug-in is an Apple-sanctioned one. Third-party plug-ins now show an Apple ad instead of one from the site that was searched. Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do! Unsurprisingly, this has a few webmasters mildly peeved-- and less willing to support Sherlock with a plug-in, now that doing so could represent a revenue loss.

For the record, we're putting the finishing touches on a searchable Reruns tape library, which will let legions of AtAT junkies dig through over two years of past episodes. Yes, we'll probably release a Sherlock plug-in, since we figure that when it comes to entertainment, we could never stand in the way of instant gratification. Still, it'd be nice if Apple re-enables third-party ads in Sherlock 2.01 so others have more incentive to support this funky technology.