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."
Uhh--- the first real mainstream desktop search I started to see people use was...
Google Desktop Search?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Well, then you obviously haven't seen Spotlight in action. This little guy rocks. I as a developer have been testing Tiger since last July, and I have never seen anything more helpful or faster, Windoze, Mac or Google.
I thought that they had pretty much junked what would have been good search. I was looking forward to WinFS, hoping it to be an improvement over NTFS (a modern FS, one with no fragmentation!). And on top of that, cool searching!
But instead, they are going to make a background process that just indexes things like Spotlight.
I hope it is at least as flexible as Spotlight, to allow developers to make plugins for their indexing engine so that new filetypes can expose information to be searched.
I also hope they do a good job at making it transparent. I don't want my computer to be noticeably bogged down while it indexes a 4GB movie file (hopefully it won't index it in the first place!)
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
What, you mean like smart folders, that automatically detect when you add a new file of a certain type, anywhere on your hard drive, and add it to the virtual folder? Oops, Tiger has that.
Smart folders WILL change the way you use your computer. There's no need to hunt through folders for a certain document, as all organization can be done at a smart folder level. Plainly put, it doesn't MATTER where your data is stored in the file structure, smart folders will allow you to organize everything easily and quickly. Just like file systems make it where you don't care where the bits lie on the disk, smart folders will make it where you don't care where the files lie in the directory structure. This is a BIG improvement.
Of course, you didn't actually bother to think about the point you were attempting to make, because you were rushing to get your post near the beginning of the dicsussion so it could be modded up.
that CNET comes up with a shitty article, totally ignoring Google?
My guess is that Joe Average can't remember if he saved Important.doc to C:\, C:\My Documents, C:\Documents and Settings\JAverage\My Documents, N:\, or to the Start Menu/whereever else inexperienced users tend to save things.
"Instead of being a static graphic indicating the type of document a file is, an icon in Longhorn will be a smaller representation of the first page of a document." ... so I'll have to read the filenames carefully if I'm trying to grab all the .pdf's I've made of my Word documents if they're in the same directory! Wheee, thanks!
they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn.
Of course they will. They have 3+ years to respond to Apple's feature.
I mean, thats ridiculous. Thats like saying "Yeah, this new game has good graphics, but this other game coming out in 2008 will look much better!"
Of course it will. You have three years of additional programming and hardware improvements.
BeOS , it had file metadata support years ago and worked well with it . .in an MS vs apple fight since Tiger comes out in 10 days and longhorn comes out god knows when, its pretty one sided and apple wins hands down
not to mention the other companys that have since been making products of this nature
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Two years is roughly what should be expected for 10.5/11... Apple has said they are going to slow down development(they can't hold this break neck speed indefinitely) so 12-16 has been the standard 10.x development time frame, another 6-12 months would be roughly correct.
Yes, but see, that takes your time. It used to be (and still is, like in the system you describe above) that finding something on a computer required an investment of time: either that time was used beforehand, ensuring proper organization, or at the time of the search - wading through poorly organized folders, duplicates, old files, etc...
But now, the promise of these tools - in theory - is that we can eliminate this investment of time. We can drop file wherever we want to, and the searching is instantaneous, by whatever bit of criteria we happen to need, conceive, or have access to, at the time of search.
It's not perfect, though: I know that my sense of organization has devolved since I started using Quicksilver, and that is sometimes a problem, when I am forced to go manually through folders. Heh, who knows - maybe Apple will release some sort of Spotlight -> Automator transition that allows people to use spotlight queries to actually reorganize their data permanently, not smart folder this and query that, but actually reorganize data in the filesystem based on certain things (kind of like how iTunes manages the folders in its library folder.)
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
"However, its implementation(Apples) is not as universal as what Microsoft is proposing."
So what does this really mean? Apple already does this but Microsoft promises to NOT ONLY do exactly the same, but have improved uppon the ideer by their next release.
We have an OS versus a Proposal. How can it be they declare the proposal the winner? By that time chances are OSX will have evolved just a tad bit. It takes less time to develop a feature already implimenten then it does starting from the bottom. Even if you do have somthing to copycat.
About Yahoo! Desktop Search
Yeah, but think about it - with desktop search, if you want to go after a file, just type the name, or some content related to it.
You can do this already with the search tools already built into Windows XP. Just type the name, part of the name, or search by type of file.
I don't see that this new "desktop search" thing is going to do anything other than teach people how to be disorganized. So now you can put any file anywhere you want without even knowing where it physically is on a disk. Big deal. The point is the OS still knows where it is, and what happens when something invariably gets erased either through user error or a system crash? You erase a folder now and you (should) know exactly what's in it. With the system they're talking about, you'd just lose a bunch of random files and you'd be coming across stuff you didn't even know you'd lost years after the fact (you'd only figure it out when you actually searched for those files, and you'd probably wonder why the search function is not coming up with anything).
I think the desktop metaphor not only still works fine, it is also necessary. There is real utility in knowing exactly where your OS thinks a file or folder really is - not just smart-search pseudo-folders that automatically update themselves based on your criteria (a neat idea, but this should be an addition to the desktop metaphor, not a replacement for it).
Tweaks and helpful features are one thing, but there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater like MS is talking about here. I sincerely hope there will be an option to just keep using your system the way we always have.
Remember how Windows XP turned off things like file extensions by default? Remember how the first thing you did when you got Windows XP, along with everybody else in the world, was to turn them back on? I feel like that's the sort of thing MS is trying to foist upon us again.
New search functions are fine. But I don't need to learn a completely new way of doing things on the desktop. My desktop - and my PC - works perfectly well as it is.
Maybe more (nontechnical) user-freindly. But can these search engines use RegEx syntax? Hell No.
:
Maybe not, but you don't need to
mdfind "query" | grep "regex"
best of both worlds.
Also, it should be trivial to write a tool using the Spotlight APIs that can use regex syntax.
I've used the Google search for finding PPT files that I need to study for an exam. I type in the topic of what I want to study and it finds the files. I don't have to remember which file contains which topic.
... util4.ppt and have stuff from different philosophers in them. Now I don't care what the name of the file is, I can just type in the philosopher's name and find what I want.
This helps a lot because for example on the topic of utilitarianism the ppt files are util1.ppt
I personally don't care about things like spotlight, I know where my stuff is. The interesting question is how this sort of thing de-emphasizes actually organizing your stuff in the first place and how a system like this would affect children who grow up with it. Would they have trouble with simple organizational tasks? It seems that peoples personal organization styles mirror the way that they think, I don't think that what we need is less organization or less emphasis on logical thought. Its bad enough that you can take an Intro to Logic class in college and see people who look as they are encountering an entirely new way to think.
Sig is a crazy old German guy.
No, iTunes will keep its own database for the obvious reason: It's cross-platform. We have to ship an iTunes for Windows, which means we have to have an internal database anyway.
iTunes 5 will get the benefits of the souped-up V100 database, though, so searching will be even faster. (This won't affect you unless you have hundreds of thousands of songs in your library.)
WinFS was originally going to be like, the next version of "Organize your Photos Wizard". It grew into something so scope-out-of-control that it had to be cut from LH client (at least, the full WinFS vision). The ship vehicle seems to change daily.
:)
:/
That said, what WinFS is trying to tackle currently is considerably more ambitious than what Spotlight, MSN Desktop, or Google Desktop Search do. The "someday" WinFS is not a background process that indexes text documents. Not even close. What Apple is delivering is a "search thing". That is _one application_ of WinFS, but by no means the point of doing it.
The comparison of Spotlight to WinFS indicates (understandable) misconceptinos about what WinFS does. That's reasonable since the WinFS story isn't universally clear within MS, much less outside it
Oh - about NTFS fragmentation. I've been trying to fight this good fight internally for a couple weeks (it was bugging me). The NTFS people claim that defragmentation on NTFS isn't strictly necessary, but it can make certain disks MUCH better and makes most disks "somewhat" better. There are some people on the NTFS team that would be happy to tell customers not to bother with defragmenters but old habits die hard. In any case, i presented the case for ffs cylinder groups and made sure the NTFS developers i talked to understood it. It's not news to them, and they dont feel there is a significant difference in the observed fragmentation levels in normal NTFS volumes and normal ffs volumes.
Personally, i never run a defragger on my NTFS volumes so in that sense, its no different than ffs derivatives (i dont worry about fragmentation)
In any case, there is no current WinFS plan in which NTFS goes away - WinFS's filesystem component attacks a different problem space than NTFS, and WinFS (currently, and, afaik) needs NTFS under it anyhow.
Re: Indexing a 4GB Movie - you might be surprised what WinFS does when it finally gets all the way cooked. Whenever that is
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Some people really believe that Windows is pretty up to par with OSX and will go after this point. Check out these comments from ComputerWorld (poor magazine IMO). For record, I don't like the magazine or agree with any of this:
"Mac OS X may be a nice-looking overlay to Unix, but it still leaves much to be desired. For example, networking in an environment where multiple servers are used is decidedly flaky, permissions must be changed to do simple things like adding fonts or nonstandard printers, and administrative access is difficult."
"...the view from the trenches is that Windows will be the way to go until an OS that is as user- and admin-friendly comes around."
And another:
"A couple of years after the release of Win 95, I attended an Apple event celebrating the new features in Mac OS 8.0. As I sat watching this operating system version that offered full-screen wallpaper (a feature of Win 3.1), Internet options (catching up with Win 95), systemwide sound effects (another Win 3.1 feature) and more, I said to the longtime Mac user sitting beside me that this was Apple's attempt to maintain parity with Windows 95."
Web "integration" was there out of the box and was the Big Deal with Sherlock. It was such a Big Deal that it was integrated as a tab into the System-level "Find" command to augment it. Sherlock didn't search your hard drive, it searched the internets.
Oh, and it had banner ads.
This was nicely unobtrusive until OS 9, at which point Apple made Sherlock the Find command and replaced the simple, clean interface with the bloated "brushed metal" that we see to this day. Same functionality as previous incarnations with a more OMG TEH INTERNETS!!!! emphasis.
Oh, and it had banner ads. AND it was big and ugly. So I hauled in my "sherlock" from 8.6 and used that with my powerbook until I switched over to OS X.
And I didn't do that until they peeled Sherlock back into a separate app (that I've never launched on this machine) and left a useable Find in its place. Which we didn't have at all in between 8.6 and 10.2.
FWIW, I've had four different Windows machines on my home network at various points, and none of them has ever reliably been able to access each other's SMB shares. Linux and OSX, using Samba, both work perfectly on the first try. So OSX works better better for me at accessing Windows shares than Windows itself does (this is XP, 2000, and 2003).
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Shiping the wrong thing is worse than not shipping anything.
;) and we'd be adding support baggage. And for what?
:)
.NET is we can start to leave Win32 behind. Surely you dont want us to release CreateFile only to later come up with CreateFileEx a while later.. or Foo() followed by Foo2() and Foo3()...this is the kind of crap that happened with Win32 as it evolved.
:)
Everything we ship has to live for at least n years, where n changes depending on what it is. We have to patch it, we have to run regressions against it _forever_. When we come up with something else better, we have to convince developers why this is bad and why they should switch. We never, ever get to remove it without upsetting everyone.
Just throwing out something that kind of solves a few Photos/PIM scenarios means we're introducing new concepts and APIs that we cant unload.. even though we want it to do more and to do it better.
My team for instance is way far out from shipping its product. We've been letting key customers work with our unreleased internal milestone bits. Parts of it are utterly broken. It doesn't do anywhere near what it needs to do. We're just getting feedback to make sure we're on the right track and to get people thinking about what's coming and how it may help what they're trying to acheive.
Even so, the overwhelming feeedback is "just give it to us now". I suppose we could, but it'd be unfinished crap (even more so than some other things we _did_ release
As someone on a team who has no idea when their work will see the light of day - i am at least as frustrated as you are about MS stuff not shipping.
But ultimately, it comes down to shipping the right thing even if it takes longer. The risk you take is that you miss your opportunity - it's obviously a tradeoff. I cannot make those sorts of "soft" decisions, and especially not about the WinFS project as a whole. Guys down in the trenches (even very smart NT kernel guys) don't always see the picture the same way the people at the top do.. or even as their trenchmates do. I don't have (or need to have) undying faith in the abilities of the management above me, but the arguments i've heard for doing things the way they're being done are generally not objectinable. Again - the course of action is not obvious, so you dont have unilateral approval
Incidentally, developers dont like 1 billion APIs per year. They dont like it when we "get something out there" and then abandon it.
We've done that in the past and we'll probably do it in the future, but it really sucks and lots of people hate doing it, up and down the chain.
As an aside, one appealing thing about
Normally I'd figure we'd get a warmer response for trying to do the right thing in the first version
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
No. There is no chance that we'll release any software for Linux. There are several reasons why. Let me explain them in no particular order.
First, Linux is our closest competitor. It's not a very good competitor, for reasons that should be obvious, but it's our closest. We have no desire to advance that. That's purely a business decision. (I'm not a business guy. I don't have an opinion about this. But it's how things are.)
Second, Linux is utterly impossible to support. An operating system where every nine-year-old can run his own kernel is not an operating system that we have any interest in working with. The whole overriding philosophy behind Apple is that working with your computer should be a good experience. It shouldn't be frustrating or unpleasant. You should never have a point where you don't like your computer. If we shipped our internal Linux ports, they would fail to work properly on two out of three computers out there. We'd be generating bad experiences for our customers. That's not how we do business.
Third, the reason we ported iTunes to Windows was to sell iPods and music. Linux users don't buy iPods or music. This isn't just anecdotal; the market research is overwhelmingly convincing. So there's no motivation to port.
Fourth, the Mac mini is $500, and its targeted specifically toward people who already own one computer cobbled together from parts. It's designed to be a drop-in replacement for an old-fashioned home computer with detached display, the kind all Linux users have. They should buy Mac minis instead. And, in fact, they are. We can't keep 'em on the shelves of our stores. Post-sales polling says that something like one in three Mac mini buyers self-describe as being primarily users of Linux.
Fifth and finally, in every single environment where Linux and Mac are viable alternatives, we're taking down business hand over fist. This is most obvious in post production. Discreet and Avid used to own post. Then Discreet started shipping their products in a Linux version last year. Suddenly customers were faced with a choice of a Linux product or an Apple product. Lots of them, on the strength of the marketing buzz, chose Linux. They're all going back. Bunim-Murray bought fifty seats of Smoke on Linux two years ago. Every one of them has been replaced with Final Cut Pro on G5s now. Our solutions work better.
Bottom line: Linux has the raw potential to compete with us. Windows doesn't, nor vice versa. Windows is so insular that a Mac can't really do the job of a Windows computer. Likewise, it's so insular that a Windows computer can't integrate into an open network like a Mac can. We're changing that a little at a time, but it's really how things are right now.
Linux, on the other hand, has the raw, untapped potential to compete with us. They're ten years behind us; we started working on Mac OS X technologies in the mid-1990s back when there was still a NeXT. Linux basically hasn't changed since. Evolution, yes, but no revolutionary changes. No Quartz, no Open Directory, no Cocoa, hell, not even anything that can compare with the Finder. So we're not worried, not by a long shot, but we recognize that if somebody were to take Linux and dump that stupid license mess and really invest time, money and energy in making it a modern operating system, it could potentially compete with us. So we're not interested in calling attention to it.
So no. No Linux ports.