Slashdot Mirror
Third Parties Already Taking Advantage of Tiger
tezbobobo writes "Tiger been out hours and already the Apple download page has been updated to take advantage of the update's new features. These cover areas including Spotlight plugins, Dashboard plugins, and Automator plugins.
These allow a range of actions from searching within omnigraph documents (spotlight), to resizing photoshop documents (automator), and (my fav) a dashboard wireless locator. The best bit -- a cursory glance indicates about half are freeware."
Silly people! Dont' they know Apple is going out of business? They have been for the past decade or so.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Butt Head Reseller
http://www.dashboardlineup.com/
(I should say that I am partly affiliated with it.)
Dashboard Widgets
Is that for warganging? Driving on the open road, searching for unsecured WiFi ports?
Now that would be sweet!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
they don't use "Tiger" in the name. TigerDirect will have to file lawsuites with all them either now or the day before the company releases their product....
Does Photoshop 1 even run under OS X 10.4?
....OmniGiraffe and CandyBar look cool, keep up the freeware and a big thank you to whoever offers it!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There's more focus on it in the Mac world because they don't suck, they work properly and don't come preloaded with spyware.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
In no time at all there are going to be a whole slew of Dashboard-centric sites, Automator-centric sites, Spotlight-centric sites, and so forth. Just like there are a myriad of PHP, Javascript, CSS, etc sties, we're going to see a bunch based solely on this new Mac OS.
You gotta hand it to Apple. They create an entire industry around an iPod (don't you love how Belkin, once a patch cord company, makes loads of money off iPod accessories) and are now already sporting sites all over for an OS just recently (and in some places not even out yet) released.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Perhaps you should actually qualify your rant by stating what you're ranting about.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The all k-new Kdashboard try it k-now!!
Step out of the box and enjoy life
Perhaps I should move to the Gilbert Islands...
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
About a hundred guys over at Microsoft are freaking out; figuring out how to patent this stuff for use in longhorn.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
...burninating the countryside?
I mean, seriously. How much Mac software is the equivalent of "faceplates for your cell phone?"
Yeah I mean how many metadata plug-ins do we need to be able to search the text inside our prototyping, graphics, and organization applications. I mean this must be like the 50th time someone has provided a way for me to instantly search my system for tree diagrams in a proprietary format with particular text in them.
Oh wait, no it isn't.
Anybody gotten their copy of Tiger or even shipping information on it from Amazon yet?
This guy is way out there
The point of automator is that you can assemble drag and drop scripts that work across applications. With a few clicks, you can assemble a script that will have safari download all the images from a site, resize them in photoshop, and send them out using mail.app to all your friends. This creates an integrated script workflow. The scripting abilities of Photoshop are *only* useful for controlling the functions provided by Adobe applications.
my roommate works at @pple store and she says it's open late from 8 to midnight for all u apple geeks to go gawk.
Did anyone else misread the headline and think: "Oh no! They are releasing spyware for OS X!"
*Phew!*
Still, I'm hope they made sure that Automator is secure with Mail.app unlike vbscript and Outlook Express originally was. I'd rather not have my email being Automated to send certain things to everyone on my address book.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I would LOVE to be able to search my mail with spotlight...but I can't yet find a thunderbird plugin....sadness overwhelms me
itself by default where you can see colon?
C: , get it?
I'm here all week; don't confuse the tip jar with the spitoon.
[reads the article] Oh! I thought this was a Dupe of TigerDirect (the third part in question) taking advantage of the release of Mac OS X Tiger to make a claim against Apple for a little free advertising!
Carry on!
P.S.- Just ordered the Mini a few minutes ago.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Bloody zoos!" - Rick on The Young Ones
I guess because people like the new OS and freeware and want to tell the world about it?
PS what is the difference between much and overmuch?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Isn't dashboard just superkaramba?? thats what it looks like, y is everyone making suc ha big deal out of it? It has been running on Linux for sometime
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't
You're complaining about Mac coverage on a web site that heralds every update to Purple Wombat Peppermint Linux Whatsis?
Oh, and get the fuck over yourself.
Maybe it focuses a lot of attention because it isn't worthless? Maybe your wrong? *gasp*
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/imaging_3d/
What's bigger than a Panther, better than a Tiger, and cooler than a Jaguar? A Liger of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
one word:
sweet!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
It looks like the "wireless finder" widget is just a handy way to look up known access points in a database. It's not a Dashboard clone of MacStumbler (which is theoretically doable since Dashboard widgets can load native code through Javascript extensions).
To be honest, that was my first reaction, too. However: The little plugin thingies are going to be one of the first places where lots of people cut their teeth on programming. Apple is doing a certain amount of hand-holding here and provides some documentation and a great programming enviroment -- it got even better with Tiger. Since this site is for people who at least would like to pretend that they could code if they only had the time (ah, like me), it does make sense.
One word of advice: If you ever have to ask a question that is critical about Apple on Slashdot, post as AC. Things that are considered normal, harmless questions or even humorous in other sections get trolled to death here. The "Cult of Mac", unfortunately, is not a joke.
Wait, is this Mac OSX Tiger or TigerDirect? I'm confused...
But can it play the new Bruce Springstein "Devils and Dust" album, that is only available as a "DualDisc" travesty, on a powerbook?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Third Parties Already Taking Advantage of Tiger
;)
I don't even have to RTFS(ummary) to figure out this is a dupe!
Of course you know that the iPod comes with a color display now. In fact, Apple is moving to make the color iPod (presently called the iPod Photo) the standard model.
So naturally you know that the "no color display" part of your argument is invalid.
Right? You know that, right?
--
M
Don't worry we don't want you in the club. You must have been hit with a lot of dodge balls in grade school to post such a bitter reply. I heard that alt.douche.bags is looking for members, I think you would fit right in.
For anyone who bought panther the day it came out--is it possible? If I go to an apple store do I have any expectation of walking out with tiger? Or should I expect it to be long out of stock?
See, this is why I'm in favour of the two-party system; you just can't trust those third parties. Bunch of savages.
Wait, what are we talking about again?
Anyone knows if there's "official" support for partitioning the disk to support several versions of MacOS X? While I'd love to write code on Tiger (and must make sure my games work on it), I also need to support older versions. I know how to install multiple versions on the same Powerbook, just wondering if there's any known side effects or differences from a 'virgin' mac :P
Cartoon-like miniature golf for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/
I wonder if it's possible to develop an Automator action that would add custom Spotlight tags to files (from a dialog, clipboard, whatever).
The Spotlight UI does not allow adding new metatags to files, but the API supports it.
My sister just got here laptop in december and now they expect her to pay 100+ dollars to upgrade? She just bought her laptop, etc.. but she doesn't want to get too far behind version, what should she do, upgrade every x.0 upgrade?
Tiger have you considering a Mac? Take the poll: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV/Promos/ P116728.asp
One that probably isn't on the page may be the Spotlight plugin to allow for indexing of OpenOffice.org 1.x and NeoOffice formatted files. Unfortunately, I couldn't open source it prior to the Tiger release because the APIs were covered under NDA, but no longer!
The NeoLight metadata importer is licensed under LGPL and illustrates basic parsing of OOo 1.x formatted documents using CoreFoundation XML utilities. It's still in development and could use some developers to lend a hand testing, optimizing, and determining if we're extracting all the relevant content properly.
More information can be found in this trinity article.
ed
It's a new release of a known OS and nothing brand-new, so I don't understand the hype around Tiger.
Quite a few webloggers made a real hype and countdown to the day Tiger release day (at least over here in Germany).
for the record: I'm not a mac user.
Intel user are too common people
For some reason, the phrase "furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation" springs to mind here.
Slashdot you hoarder have you forgotten your roots?
OSX-Tiger while seemingly nothing special because it contains a lot of previously existing technologies is really worth the hype. Why?
Because it takes those techs, adds just enough to them, integrates each one well with the others and provides the technologies in a slick, well managed package. Sure many on slashdot could cobble systems together to do 80-90% of what Tiger does over a weekend. But it would be extremely tuned to their way of thinking, not something they could easily share with friends, co-workers or family. That alone is worth the price of admission.
More importantly (and I say this as a once proud Desqview, Desqview/X, OS/2, Linux, IRIX, FreeBSD, BeOS, XP user) is that OSX restores the "lust for the future" in operating systems. It's like for the most part we had hit a wall of stagnation in the late 90s where each new OS was only allowed to have one or two really great new features. I was a heavy user of NeXT and kept using my hardware long past its prime simply because it was *better*. Now we get a modern OS on relatively decent hardware with a company behind it who isn't afraid to try many new things at once.
The best part about Tiger is the effect it may have on the industry. Hopefully it will allow some companies to risk being innovative again.
In my opinion OSX is the best client OS, by leaps and bounds.
--- I do not moderate.
It looks like even though Tiger has only been out a few hours, Apple is well on its way to building three more "community economies".
I find it so interesting that the iPod (in all its flavors) and Mac mini have oodles of accessories for each.
With Spotlight, Dashboard, and Automator all generating the software equvalent of these accessories, it seems appropriate to explore the "community economies" Apple is creating.
Perhaps there is a better phrase than "community economies" to describe the markets that emerge from supporting a specific product as well as the communities that for from them (take for instance, iPod community websites). Whatever they may be called, it is interesting how Apple seems more capable than other manufacturers, even in other spaces, to develop these "community economies".
But why is this becoming common for Apple products? Apple seems second only to automobile makers in creating accessory markets and communities of owners & supporters. The same doesn't exist for GAP or Sony or even Microsoft, though an argument can be made that the latter has a huge community of PC software vendors.
But more than the vendors, it is the concept of little sub-economies and users so specific to a particular product that is very interesting to me.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Heh. Mod parent up :)
Yes, MacOS X is "known".... but it's also the coolest OS on the planet. Here is a list of new features.
BTW Here is a Tiger demo Steve Jobs did about a year ago (!). I am particularly impressed by the CoreImage realtime image/video filters now built into the OS rendering system (about 4/6 of the way through.)
REAAALY? Tiger is out?
Apple.com/macosx says that it's not released until 6PM
This REALLY kills my store because we close at 4:30 on fridays and the manager isn't willing to stay late for it (because we're the campus bookstore and the computer department is just a small piece)
It makes me want to cry -_-
However --
There is currently no plugin for Spotlight that looks inside the OpenDocument formats -- the free office formats that OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice/J use to replace the closed Microsoft formats, that KOffice is going to adopt, that the European Union has recommended as the stardard formats for the governments of 400+ million people, and that are on their way to being a ISO standard. Since there is no serious free or even affordable office package for the Mac except for NeoOffice/J -- MS Office is too expensive, Pages is not a full office suite, and AppleWorks doesn't cut it -- NeoOffice/J is just about the only way to fly, so this would be a seriously important plugin.
This is one of the frustrating things about Apple, as much as I love my little iBook: They don't believe in supporting free formats unless they really, really have to (like MP3). The Ogg Vorbis problem has become something of a joke here on Slashdot, but in this case it is hard to argue that we're talking about an exotic, little-used format that is not worth their while. I'm disappointed, though not surprised, that Spotlight doesn't support OpenDocument out of the box. Those of us who can't will be very grateful to those who can when the have...
I just wanted to be the first to say that MacOS X is officially the coolest OS on the planet. It kicks the butt of config-file-addicted Linux users. It sylishly out-secures FreeBSD puffers. It slices, it dices, it is fast and it is pretty. It will bring UNIX to Joe User in ways that Torvalds ... I'm sure doesn't care about -- but it's happening!
Those of you who have yet to "Switch(tm)" -- consider yourself warned! You have exactly five minutes to get on the cluetrain, or doom yourselves to be stragglers and catchup-playing wannabees until The Next Big Thing... which, judging by history, will be quite some time!
I, Anonymous Coward III, hereby proclaim that every UNIX geek worth his or her bits is soon to be running OS X at home!
That's about as politically correct as I can put it.
As I said... I think I need more sleep.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I guess it can be split apart, but damn! If that's how big it is, I'm not going to bother.
Now put the info in the size that MenuMetersuses (or slightly bigger), and I'd be far more likely to use it.
I understand that these should be big enough to grab your attention, but not giant and ballooned like a two week corpse.
It seems that most of the 3rd party widgets all need to go on a diet. I've already grabbed some and shrunk them down to a size more befitting of a PB screen - but save me the trouble, already.
MP3 is not a free format. Apple pays a licsence fee to use it.
I could argue the "Cult of Mac" thing. The fact is, every group trolls here. Apple threads get Windows- and Linux-fanatics. BSD threads get "- is dying!" trolls like nobody's business. And SCO threads... well, in that case it's pretty much deserved. But nobody is spared. In a community this large, everybody hates something.
It's just plain old garden-variety groupthink, where a lot of people receive a stimulus and respond similarly. It's not a cult, but it's just two or three steps removed.
Now, as for the success of Apple on Slashdot... you need to go back a ways, but it wasn't always the way. Practically any thread mentioning Apple would attract its share of detractors, anonymous and virtiolic. Then something unforseen happened: Steve Jobs returned.
I'm not really fan of Steve Jobs either, but I will admit that a (mostly) benevolent dictator is the best thing Apple could have gotten at the time. He challenged -- and changed -- computer culture, to the point that those silly looking triangular bubble-shaped iMacs that every "expert" at the time pooh-poohed still pop up in some clip-art collections.
Over time, Apple apparently started doing some things right. Not everything, but enough to continue their survival. "Apple is dying!" went from troll's battle cry to last bastion of the hold-outs, and now where it's used, it's sarcastic. Even you admit in your post that they're doing some things correctly.
In this case, the customizeability isn't quite programming, nor should it be. The fading of Hypercard from the public eye was enough warning that most people don't want to deal with programming. There's enough control under the hood on OS X that those people who want to can play with perl, python, ruby, c, c++, obj-c, java, emacs, vi, pico, php, etc. For the rest of them, there's this neat thing that does what they tell it -- programming in essence, but not in name. And that might make it easier for people to swallow.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
http://www.dashboardlineup.com/
http://www.iheartwidgets.com/
http://www.thedashboarder.com/ (go easy on these guys, they're already being beaten to death.)
In fact, several of these have been up for a couple of weeks. Has anyone else noticed that /. auto-links things now? Here's a test : http://dupedupedupe.net/
Sweet! There goes what little HTML skillz I had!
Tool
I released the NeoLight plugin yesterday which can index OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice/J formatted documents.
I had already posted this in an earlier comment in this article.
ed
A major OS vendor dropped a new release, and this release is significant even among its peers (probably one of the more important updates to date).
If Longhorn came out tomorrow, there'd be a front page article about it and what MS was doing to promote it. If RedHat released a big new linux distro tomorrow, we'd have a front page article about it.
It's just the buzz combined with an otherwise slow news day.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Read this comment.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Yes, it's tooting my own horn a bit, in that I wrote the articles, but it's really interesting what some developers are looking to do with Core Data (see here) and Automator (see here) could potentiall knock all our socks off. Those are some smart and talented people.
Spyware application vendors and anti-virus application vendors come to mind.
Wow. Thanks for this and all the other great work you guys are doing -- without NeoOffice/J, I'd be dual booting all the time.
what?? Apple is not responsible for making all the fucking filters in Spotlight.. it s easy to add a filter, and the app developers or (for OSS) an interested party can simply make a filter and have it dropped in the spotlight plug-in folder.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You must be a n00b.
The proper syntax is alt.bags.douche
People are rushing to buy them before the company goes under!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I, for one, appreciate your enthusiasm on this, but let's set some things straight.
First, Spotlight has only officially been released today. It's a brand new feature of the OS with it's own developer documentation. I'm sure the OOo folks will get to it eventually should there be a demand or an interest in doing so. It sure isn't in Apple's vested interest to make support for OD formats built in because they're invested in a relationship with Microsoft.
Second, mpeg 1 and 2 audio compression is not a free format. It most certainly isn't an open format or an open standard, and most certainly isn't free software. Thompson Consumer Electronics has invested some effort in claiming licensing fees for the distribution of mp3 encoders and decoders -- see here for some details. Apple hasn't invested in mp3 because they were forced to, but because that's where the market is. They haven't invested in Ogg Vorbis because there's a statistically insignificant demand for it.
The files can even (probably) be zero lentgh sincve the metadata filter would really be lookign at the master file to index the "individual" files.
I think at some point they will address this shortcoming in a non-hacky way, since Entourage has the same issue and I'm sure Microsoft would like to get it to work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you know of any giveaways they are doing tonight?
---> Kendall
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Get it here http://users.757.org/~mr804/goatse/
There are at least two markets that Apple matches 100%
1) The clueless Windows user that call the tower the hard drive.
2) UNIX geeks that are tired of messing with Linux
Windows gamers do not match. Windows gamers match 100% using an XBox or PS2 for gaming. They would save a bundle in hardware upgrades as well...
Your Average Joe
I fully agree with your observation regarding the "community economies." One of the strongest examples of this in a product release was the original iMac. Apple (Steve Jobs) had the guts to release that computer with no floppy drive, but more radical, no serial port. It was USB only. This meant no compatibility with legacy printers or scanner products. At the time, there weren't even any USB inkjet printers on the market. People fumed. But then the peripheral vendors saw the huge sales of the iMac, and the vacuum for peripherals, and big players like HP rushed their USB inkjets into the market.
Some other industry player, I forget who, once credited Steve Jobs to the success of the USB interface. Without this move, the PC mobo makers never had an incentive to add the additional interface while there was little demand from consumers. Likewise, the peripheral vendors never saw a need to add USB support in their drivers and hardware without a critical mass of compatible PC motherboards.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It looks like even though Tiger [apple.com] has only been out a few hours, Apple is well on its way to building three more "community economies".
To be sure, the "spotlight downloads" will probably be obsolete as soon as developers start including their own spotlight plugins with the software itself. That should be a matter of months. While it's certainly possible for someone to develop spotlight plugins for another's software, I think this is unlikely to happen very often.
Similarly, automator plugins depend heavily on the individual applications they hook into. You'll be seeing those coming directly from the developers as well.
Dashboard widgets are another matter; they're more like applications by themselves, and are less popular when they hook into purchased software than into internet sites. Chat widgets, search widgets, webmail widgets, new-products-for-sale widgets, RSS widgets, what have you. This is where you'll see a lot of nifty downloadables from (and communities for) random third-party developers, both professional and amateur.
It would be nice if more than just the featured listings had screenshots visible on the list screen. Of course, my own dashboard site (see .sig) doesn't have any screenshots yet, despite the ability for developers to add them. Come on guys, add some screenshots! Post some widgets! :)
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
So what is that a gui for grep .... ;).
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
DomWhat Now ???
Yup. Apple actually just made a damn good API. The rest is up to you.
:)
Developers, start your engines.
I know I'll be doing stuff with this in the very near future.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
You are so right. As a programmer, Dashboard is one of the biggest things drawing me toward a Mac. As an interface paradigm (sorry), it has great potential for an endless stream of tiny, functional apps.
The way I see it, my computer time is 80% 'big', meaning 'productivity' apps, surfing, coding etc, and 20% 'little', things like doing a calculation, CLI stuff, changing the music, checking buddy list, etc. Having the little things in a conceptually separate UI makes sense to me.
Anyone know what words UI designer types use to describe this?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
You can't have multiple System folders on the same partition anymore (not since Mac OS X 10.0). That's one advantage the old Mac OS had over the new one. On the other hand, multiple OS versions on different partitions works fine.
--Mark
Am I missing something? Why is this rated insightful?
I hope I get the m2 for this one...
Maybe they figure since Apple's advertising blitz has "wiped out" their brand, the only customers who won't be confused by their ads are slashdotters.
Talk about opportunist.
Joke's on them though, no one reads the articles.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
Parent is not a troll.
English is easier said than done.
The best bit -- a cursory glance indicates about half are freeware.
Don't jump to conclusions. Some of those "freeware" widgets are simply companions to shareware applications that require paid registration in order to work. Like this one, for instance.
of Apple's Tiger, and they were doing it a day before release!
>>"The best bit -- a cursory glance indicates about half are freeware."
Of course. Or how else you pay for them having already paid $$$ for a Mac?
...the story had mentioned what "Tiger" actually was...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Those developers sure are fast if they can release all those new things mere hours after a product's been released.
Perish the thought that perhaps they've had almost a year to work on them, oh no!
http://pixelcort.com/
Yes, I know - that second party is superfluous. It will take a few years, but soon we will have the glory of a one-party system, where we won't even have the confusion of having to choose between two.
... and then they built the supercollider.
hmmm. it makes me laugh that apple has a big to-do over an operating system 3 or 4% of computer users in the world use, and you get shit-talking from both A) supporters from another operating system with about the same percentage of users(or slightly higher, depending on how saucy the linux user is feeling that you pose the question to at the time) or B) the other 90% of computer users
i think the mac community is growing quite nicely and is a heterogeneous mix of unix geeks, old skool mac geeks, and creative weirdos. this unique mix of users will drive the mac in a different direction than the 1 dimensional linux and windows crowd are heading. that's why they will all talk shit i guess.
i for one hope the macintosh never rises above 10% market share. you worry about your viri, malware and flaky web browser. i'll accept the fact my third-party software arrives a few months late or not at all. i am stoked to see apple implement new ideas and features in their os when ms is still talking about them in the constantly moving future tense.
have fun with softpear, mr. patience.
I think they'd either use the term "freaking cool" or "bloated interface cruft."
... and then they built the supercollider.
It makes me laugh when people like you turn Apple and Microsoft into religions. It makes me laugh even harder when you think the kind of computer you use makes you somehow 'better' than everyone else.
Tell me, do you find yourself wanting to show off that flashy PowerBook of yours at the local Starbucks -- not to actually do any work on it, but just to use it so other people see you using it? Do you wear your blinding white iPod headphones everywhere you go just so other people know you have an iPod? If you do, you're no better than the Windows and Linux 'peasants' you belittle. In fact, you're something far worse: you're a religiously obedient brand whore.
So yeah, stare blankly at your PowerBook's screen and listen to some no-name indie band on your iPod while you sip on your mocha at Starbucks. Do whatever it takes to make you forget how hollow you are on the inside. The rest of us will use whatever we can afford and whatever suits us, while you and others like you wither away.
As many of you probably already know, Giampaolo currently works for Apple. Giampaolo's book on file system design is available for free online for any of you who are interested in what the future could hold for Apple's filesystems.
I love it how people are sooo quick to say that Windows gamers should just use a console system for all their gaming needs. Plus, there are Windows gamers like me that already have several current console systems and do play console games.
I could go on about why you are wrong, but since you love making generalizations and assumptions, and this has been discussed on games.slashdot and countless websites/forums/usenet groups/etc, I won't even bother.
Since this "PC gaming is dying, a console is all you should need" is just as old as the "BSD is dying" trolls, and it has been proclaimed to be dead for years, lets just say you are still wrong and end it at that.
I think Onyx has a pretty good argument to get an injunction to put a stop to any "Spotlight" feature of Mac OS X.
What's really odd is that Onyx' Spotlight is one of the best Mac OS developer tools around. It's like Boundschecker or Purify, but for the Mac: it validates memory accesses and finds leaks, among a lot of other things.
I bought my license back in 2000. Best investment I ever made in a development tool: I am able to find bugs I never would have found otherwise, and quickly too!
Maybe Apple figured they could steal the trademark because Spotlight only works on OS 9, because it works by editing the binaries of Code Fragment Manager executables.
If I were Onyx Technology, I'd start looking for an intellectual property attorney willing to take work on spec. If nothing else, they could win a big enough settlement to fund development of an OS X version.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
OS-Level scripting is absolutely NOT to be ignored. Amigas did it years ago with ARexx, and it was an incredibly powerful feature. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it's the GUI equivalent of Unix's small-but-pipeable-commands philosophy.
I'm quite surprised that it's not universally supported on Unix machines now. Luckily, KDE at least does support it via DCOP and scripting APIs along with command line apps to access DCOP calls.
To give a few quick examples:
I recently discovered started using KDE's automatic wallpaper cycling for a given directory full of wallpapers. However, some wallpapers wouldn't suit my mood at a certain moment, and some wouldn't look as good on screen as they did when I downloaded them. So I figured I'd add some buttons to the panel: A red X for "Delete Wallpaper", and a forward arrow to switch to the next wallpaper. Implementing that took LESS than a MINUTE, since I just had to open a console, run "dcop", and see that kde exposes two helpful calls:
kdesktop KBackgroundIface changeWallpaper
and kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper
The first command was added directly to the next wallpaper button, and the second was added to a short script that uses it to get the wallpaper name, changes to the next wallpaper, then deletes the old one.
As another example, I have a quick little script that finds my currently playing song in whatever KDE music player I happen to be using via dcop, without the need for specially made command line tools that access the players API, such as xmms provides.
The real power comes when you want to do things like connecting a 3D rendering app to a photo manipulation app, followed by lipsync tool and a final movie encoder.
ARexx was doing things like this years ago, and it's perfectly possible (and implemented!) on Linux today. It's just a shame more people aren't aware of and using it. We're ignoring potential power, as if we all used DOS and continued to claim that Unix command line functionality was pointless and unnecessary. Maybe when we use Unix the way it CAN be used, we'll finally have a killer app that puts the secrecy of windows' proprietary apps to shame.
At the very least, I would ask people not to insult OS X for finally implementing this important feature. They seem to have done it in an innovative GUI-based way, too.
I wouldn't hold your breath on Onyx doing an OS X version anytime soon.
I was the original author of Spotlight, and they haven't developed the IP much from the original version I sold them (I'd sold it because I was busy creating CrossBasic at the time, which was eventually renamed to RealBasic).
In fact they went so far as to threaten me with legal action a couple of years ago, when I started to develop a Mac OS X equivalent, even though the non-compete provision had expired.
To be honest, that was my first reaction, too. However: The little plugin thingies are going to be one of the first places where lots of people cut their teeth on programming.
The original summary mentioned sites providing three types of third-party software to take advantage of tiger. Both automator scripts and dashboard widgets are great for quick and fast small tasks that can be easily distributed and used. They are great for really really quick or small operations and will be great for adding customized functionality for many people.
That said, I don't think either is very important compared to the third item, spotlight plug-ins. This is new and real filesystem level functionality being extended by third parties. If this happened in Windows, Linux, Solaris, or NachOS it would be on the front page of Slashdot, and rightly so. A single day after the OS was released, thanks to dozens software developers, a user of tiger can instantaneously search their entire system based upon the contents of all sorts of file types. Apple allowing this for fifty or so very common data types is great, but the fact that people have already provided plug-ins to let my searches extend to OpenOffice files, Omnigraffle diagrams, Realbasic projects, Corel Painter Files, VOIP logs, and many more proprietary file types really makes me think that this technology will be used and extended to the point that it will really, really change the way I use my computer on a fundamental level. This is, as far as I know, the first time this sort of thing was possible on any system although I have no doubt that it will be embraced by every consumer OS within a few years time.
This is definitely "News for Nerds."
My biggest concerns voiced in my tiger review were in reference to the new extensible architectures provided in tiger. In summary, if developers don't develop with extensions like Automator in mind, then Automator, for example, becomes more or less useless outside of the iLife suite. I installed Tiger last night and went to the website to check out the third party plugins. The dashboard section seemed fine, but I was alarmed by the disorganization of the Automator Plugins. For instance, while looking for plugins for photoshop, I found numerous. But some were individuals and others were suites of plugins; no doubt that some of these overlap. I think that Automator plugins should be packaged with software and made by the developers. This is the ultimate level of acceptance. If the developers themselves don't provide them, then it is likely to stay in a disorganized state.
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
GP: sometimes a spade needs to just be called a spade, and a shit OS needs to be called a shit OS.
You: Yeah, but why would that get you modded up? How many times does that need to be said?
I marked myself as "unwilling to moderate" because I don't want to be part of the groupthink- and the system sucks.
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Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Yes, Slashdot's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Not only Spotlight, but about 10 years ago I was heavily involved in a company that developed a Mac application which included a major feature called "Automator". The product has been steadily updated and runs on OS X and is still for sale. I'm not sure if it was ever actually tradmarked, but since its job is to graphically link together actions into a flowchart-like diagram, then execute them, and it runs on Mac, you would have thought they would have known it existed!
Search Kit can index multiple things within a single file.
:
:
Can Spotlight?
If not, why not?
Frankly I think your hostility to the Mac BU (and by extension anyone who questions this 'feature') is misplaced. Why should every mail application (or other application) have to change their storage format to a single file per object?
If this is the case, this is a gap in the Spotlight API, and a step backwards from Search Kit - it would not be backwards compatible. If it is backwards compatible you can indeed index several things in one file (I know because I'm doing it presently with search kit).
You can add arbitrary URLS (ie an url scheme of your devising) with
SKDocumentCreateWithURL
Then add text to be indexed with
SKIndexAddDocumentWithText
I haven't looked at the Spotlight API so I couldn't tell you if this is the case with Spotlight, but everyone seems to be saying that you need to feed it a file URL for each object searched. Perhaps because of the tie in with the operating system to see when files have changed.
BTW, your posts are very interesting, and I'm glad you post here, but you do sometimes give the impression of talking as 'the voice of Apple' on all subjects. Is this intentional? You can't possibly know about everything Apple does.
Longevity didn't factor into any of them. So that's your answer. The PC is the closest, and you can see that with all the PC-centric sites on the internet.