Slashdot Mirror
Apple and MS Battle For Desktop Search Supremacy
markmcb writes "As Microsoft and Apple go back and forth about who came up with what idea first, it's been hard to tell who the real innovaters are. Michael Gartenberg and Jim Allchin of Microsoft give some fair opinions on the current desktop search battle. While they do give credit to Apple's iTunes for search inspiration and to Apple being first out of the box in the OS race, they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn."
I'm amazed to not see it in the blurb, considering the love affair with Google. I know it works better than 'find' for me.
My little site.
they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn.
It's pretty easy to make empty promises with a product that won't even be released until next year. The point is, OSX has this feature NOW...
Searching for stuff requires you to have organized it well in the first place.
No it doesn't. The point of searching is to bypass organization or to impose organization on data according to current needs.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
I just keep my hard drive carefully arranged and orderly. Folders are your friend. Nest them with wild abandon. I also print out any interesting info tidbits (stuff I know I'll reference multiple times) I find online, and put them in a couple large notebooks that I maintain.
...I'm sure that Apple won't have been doing anything in the meantime.
Like, oh, working on Mac OS X 10.5.
Which will, quite literally, probably be shipping around the time Longhorn ships.
I'm sure there are those that do care and think everyone else should too, and good for them, but I want to hear from those that don't care for whatever reason.
Speak truth to power.
The best way I found to find files on my computer is to keep them organized. Keeping them organized allows me to find files without having to keep an index of what's on there, or worry about whether a certain program can tell what's actually in the file. In the end it all comes down to proper organization.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"Tiger is nice in that they've put search capability in a lot of places, but there's a lot more (in Longhorn)," Allchin said.
Referring to an OS that is at least 15 months from release in the present tense is plain crazy, especially when comparing its features to those of an OS that will be on store shelves in 10 days. He might as well just say Longhorn will cure cancer and make your breath minty fresh while you use it. No matter what features it has, they're not doing anybody any good at 6PM on April 29th, 2005-- Tiger's will.
This I find interesting too.
While they do give credit to Apple's iTunes for search inspiration and to Apple being first out of the box in the OS race, they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn.
The same thing was being said before the release of Panther. The strengths of longhorn were touted and Panther was conceded as being "admittedly out first, but longhorn will be better". Now 18 months later we have Tiger that is 'admittedly out first, but longhorn will be better".
I bet when Apple announce their next OS (let's call it Ocelot) the commentary in the media will again be...
"Ocelot is admittedly out first, but longhorn will be better".
Of course, the world will suck it up and nod their heads, agreeing that this fabled new version of Windows will be better, sometime in the future, while ignoring the last half decade of "admittedly good" OS X versions which ACTUALLY EXIST AND CAN BE USED!
Vaporware will always be better than a shipping product. Just go back through history looking at every vaporware announcement just in the 20th century alone. "My vaporware product will do everything Joe's shipping software does, plus X and Y and Z! So don't buy the currently shipping product. Wait for my vaporware."
Maybe it is time to change that old IBM joke into a Microsoft joke. You know,the one where Ballmer/Gates/et.all just sit on the edge of the bed telling her how good it is going to be, but they never do anything. Wish I could remember that joke.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Totally 'Microsoft PR', nothing more.
First of all, OS X and Mac OS had a superb search FOR ages which works VERY good. Windows search compare to that is a JOKE. Spotlight is just more branded and search more metadata and gives it in more user friendly form. But as search on my OS X stations I just click on input where i start to type file name which I look for and...whola! there it is.
And second - Longhorn is 3 YEARS still to go! It is like middle ages for history! For christ sakes, Microsoft must be desperate to push such PR stunt like this.
And yeah, as open source advocat, I have to say that Beagle will certanly rock the world too - because it is actively developed and pushed by Novel/Ximian guys. And of coarse, let's not forget king of the hill in search now - Google.
And if it is not paid article - however it looks like - then it is such "we just love Microsoft" style press which I simply can't stand anymore.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
This reminds me of then the Dreamcast came out. Most people didn't buy it because the PS2 "would be better". Thing is that the PS2 came out a year and a half later and it wasn't better, the graphics were slightly poorer (IMHO) than the Dreamcast and it was over a year late.
Why is desktop search such a big deal again? Are people just writing files to random locations on their hard drives? Even when I have to use Windows at work, I put things in logical places so I don't have to search for them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Surely nobody can realistically believe that there's going to be a real battle of numbers in the same way there is for games consoles/competing digital disk formats etc?
I don't know the exact figures, but I do know that Windows gets about the same number of new users each year as Mac OS has in there entire installed base... No matter how good Mac OS is (and I'm sure it's very good) it's not like we don't know with infinity+1:1 odds which OS is going to be the most widely adopted?
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Actually what makes all of this interesting is that Apple and Microsoft are improving the search features so they're usable. Right now, for example, you wouldn't browse your hard drive using the search features of your OS: it's quicker to to to Documents/Essays/CMP101 and open "Data Hierarchies.doc" than it is to open Find File from start, look over the various criteria settings, enter words you know appear in the document, and hit Find.
What Apple and Microsoft are doing is encouraging applications to create indexes that go with every file they create, so searching can just be a matter of going to a ubiquitous Search box and entering whatever it is you want to find. Within seconds, you'll have the files and objects that are relevent. You'll end up using it as your default way of finding documents, rather than navigating your file heirarchy.
Less Exploring, more Finding. Ironic, in some ways.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Normally I would agree with your statement.
But in this case the point isn't the user interface to the search capabilities. It is important, but not the technical issue.
The technical issue is the filesystem / operating system has the necessary hooks to reduce the subjective overhead to zero.
By having the hooks integrated such that indexing occurs when files are updated, moved, or otherwise changed the search capabilities are dynamic. It isn't necessary to scan the file system to detect changes, the changes are already known and the search query itself simply has to refresh. It doesn't scan the filesystem for the relevant files, it simply looks them up in it's index.
I've used BeOS and I am hopeful Apple's Spotlight will match, or exceed BeOS' implementation. In my mind it is imposible for Microsoft to do it better, So I don't understand that part of the issue.
I believe Apple is supplying the necessary tools and information so that a new file, created by an application can have it's filesystem details index, as well as call a custom routine to pull any application specific data from the file and have that indexed.
Lets say you have a new word processor that stores it's data in a compressed format; a routine for the application could process the file and update the index with all the keywords, perhaps all the text, etc automatically.
A third party company would have difficulty putting forth a standard for such a function, and would have to support the major applications themselves.