[a4isms]

Calling it ”sherlocked” is recency bias on our part. Apple learned it from Microsoft, who took a thing that happened from time to time and operationalized it into a full-blown business strategy.

One by one, Microsoft took aim at successful DOS and Windows applications, especially business applications, and displaced them. Lotus… WordPerfect… Everyone, really. Unless your app was for a niche too specialized to be worth the hassle, Microsoft wanted to use you for market research and then either buy you, buy your competitor, or clone you.

[kergonath]

> Calling it ”sherlocked” is recency bias on our part.

It has been called “sherlocking” in the Mac sphere ever since the Sherlock 3 incident. Any bias is not on our part, as this was more than 20 years ago. Yes, some of us were there (I was, so maybe I share some responsibility), but the combination of the minuscule Mac market share at the time and its steady growth for the 2 following decades means that the people who were around at the time are a statistically insignificant fraction of us today.

It is not unique and in retrospect we can find many historical examples before that, but it was a particularly high-profile one, it made a lot of noise, and the name stuck. Also, most Mac users at this point avoided Windows (or eve worse, dog forbid, MS-DOS) like the plague so this would not have been in people’s minds.

[zitterbewegung]

If you really want to go back we could say both Apple and Microsoft Sherlocked Xerox PARC… at the same time.

[a4isms]

When accused by Steve Jobs of ripping Apple’s technology and designs off, Bill Gates is said to have cooly replied:

"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

[lowbloodsugar]

So they, er xeroxed Xerox?

[zitterbewegung]

:) That's a better term.