Apple finds elementary bugs in Sherlock

Apple has admitted it has teething problems with its operating system, Mac OS 8.5, including loss of data from the hard drive and bugs in the Sherlock search software.

The Mac vendor has confirmed reports that there are problems in its highly touted Sherlock search feature, which is manufactured to scan hard drive files and several different internet search engines - including Excite and Hotbot - at the same time.

Users have reported problems using Sherlock through a Web proxy server.

Although the request contains the right host name, Sherlock is incorrectly putting the host name of the proxy server into the host field, instead of the name of the origin server.

Apple eventually posted information on its support site offering ways to reconfigure Sherlock.

However, Mark Kriegsman, president of Clearway Technologies, claimed: 'The bug persists even after the recommended alterations are made.'

He added: 'Unfortunately, the only options for these users are to wait for Apple to update Sherlock, or to see if there's a patch available for their proxy server that makes it more tolerant of the software's bad request format.'

The OS 8.5 has also been hit by the loss of data from the hard drive which occurs when users have previously formatted their hard drives with third-party tools or different operating systems.

A representative for Apple insisted: 'We take these reports extremely seriously and we will communicate to customers any information we find on reports of problems.'