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Spotlight Improvements In Leopard
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is set to feature several new enhancements to Spotlight, Apple's desktop search, and ComputerWorld outlines them. The improvements include searching across multiple networked Macs, parental search snooping, server Spotlight indexing, boolean search, better application launching (sorely needed), and quick-look previews.
Beagle has done this for a while.
Also from tfa As powerful as Spotlight is, it actually offers a somewhat limited set of search options. (then detailing the new, 1996 search engine style AND/OR/NOT operators).
Beagle's also ahead here:I guess sometime's Spotlight's ahead on features & at other times Beagle's ahead.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
...it'd be great if they also indexed your offline media too?
The number of times I have to swap out CDs trying to find an image file or an old piece of code - it drives me nuts! Now with DVD it gets worse, HD-DVD, Blu-ray - forget it, that's a needle in a haystack. How difficult could it be to have the drive index offline media too - a bit like some tape library software or the like? Maybe it could index when you burn? The last time I saw something like this was when I got a Zip drive back in 1997 and some nifty free software came with it. Now, it seems that you can only search your local drive - a bad idea when removable media is the norm.
So, at the risk of sounding like a total banana; why doesn't anyone do this, or am I missing some glaringly obvious checkbox somewhere in OS X/XP/Fedora/Vista?
That's because while MS is playing catchup feature-wise (you add a nice caveat right to your question). Everyone else is behind market-wise, but enjoys better features and security. Why add in something like "oh yeah, and there's also a POS from MS which doesn't implement this feature fully"?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I've used File Buddy exclusively since spotlight became the standard OS X search. I've only used spotlight couple times and I hate it.
It's because OSX is the new watermark instead of the other way around. Everyone has admitted Vista is mostly security and has few new features. Both Tiger and Leopard have new features many of which don't exist in the Windows world. It's debateable how many new features will be added in the next Windows release and yet there's little doubt there will be new features in the follow up OSs out of Mac. Windows really isn't trying to compete on features they are largely trying to play security catch up. It's not a troll it's a simple fact. Mac still won't replace Windows but they are starting to get like apples and oranges comparing them. The primary benefit to Windows is software and hardware availibility selection. If you want lots of user oriented features Mac wins hands down.
Yes, this:
Finder sucks ass.
That's pretty much all there is to it to answer your question. Most things on OS X are great, but Finder is a huge, festering piece of crap that doesn't handle network drives worth crap, doesn't handle large folders worth crap, and doesn't have as many features as Finder in OS 9 did. And 5 releases later, Apple still hasn't fixed it.
It's infuriating.
Comment of the year
New version of program contains features and bug fixes not present in previous version of program.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
That's because the media has woken up and taken Microsoft, supposedly the #1 software company in the world, to task for not being able to update its aging Win32 codebase when their most well-known competitor has been cranking out successful updates every 2-3 years and are still years ahead.
Because for Mac users, it's a case of "been there, done that." The majority of Vista is an indisputable clone of OS X features that Mac users have taken for granted for years, from hardware-accelerated desktop compositing to vector-based graphics APIs to non-admin user accounts to shiny two-tone plastic highlights and translucencies. And on and on.
Christ, even the filesystem layout was shamelessly cloned from OS X.
"Sufferin' succotash."
In that case, from now on I demand that every article that talks about Vista's features also talk about my currently-in-planning operating system, Creysoft PsychOSis:
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Currently, I hardly use Spotlight on my iBook G4 800 MHz. The application launcher capability is what I need most, and I find Launchbar to be far faster than Spotlight for this. Launchbar even does a decent job for many of the searches I need, at the same speed as application launching, but Spotlight search for the same can take very long.
Can't Apple employ the technology used in Launchbar or Quicksilver along with their existing technology to make the searches faster? I know Spotlight is lower because it has to index far more data as it searches inside files. However, most searches perhaps don't need the data that is inside files, but merely the same metadata that is indexed by Launchbar/QS. So, why not have a two-step search: first search the data that is not inside the file and give results as quick as Launchbar/QS, then search inside the files to give other search results?
I understand this may be a non-issue for the latest Intel Macs, and so, Apple may not bother.
Although the "remote searching" feature isn't as complete as 10.5's, and it won't be until Longhorn Server is released.)
Actually, remote searching works quite well on Vista. In both a peer to peer and client to server environment.
Vista computers looking for network content can easily be told to search other computers on the network, and the systems use the localized index cache to return the results.
The same happens in a server environment when Windows Desktop Search is install on the Windows Server, which will be included by default in Longhorn as you note.
This also includes WindowsXP users that have Windows Desktop Search installed.
A person can easily hit their start button and type and get results from not only their computer, their server store, and even shared resources on all computers on the network.
This is just a feature MS hasn't 'trumpted', but it is there and works well.
MS just needs Apple's PR department and spin factory. I think it was Paul Smith's blog that also recently pointed out the insane Mac marketing and touting of features, and then even discounting the same features when other OSes have them.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog (Be sure to scroll down to see the Mac Switch ad, it is funny even if you are a Mac user.)
With all the shameless cloning in Vista, it's just really hard to overlook when comparing it to OS X. Blame Microsoft. Being demoed a year ago doesn't mean much since Apple demoed these things too. Vista only just came out for consumers, and Leopard is due out any month now. No doubt Microsoft will install it on their Macs (ex-devs have admitted they were looking at Macs when designing Vista's interface) and try to find new things to clone in Vienna. It's pretty clear that's how Microsoft operates today under the Steve Ballmer Marketing Regime. Until you guys get rid of him as CEO, you'll continue down this path of lameness. Excuse me, I meant to say "Windows Lameness Home Premium Limited Signed Edition SP2."
"Sufferin' succotash."
example:
/tmp/already.exists /path/to/symlink /tmp/already.exists /tmp/this.is.a.new.name
/tmp/already.exists would work just fine and peachy when the file was renamed (or moved elsewhere on the disk) as above.
prompt% ln -s
prompt% mv
The symlink is now screwed. An alias set up to point at
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I'm supposed to treat my kids like criminals now?
No, the easier option is to make the switch to Vista now.
Then you could search your kids stuff if you wanted, but if you didn't want to treat them like a 'criminal' it is easier to just use the parental controls so you know they aren't into crap an 8 year old shouldn't get into even accidentally.
BTW, Parenting is a bit like treating your children like criminals, it is called caring for them and actually trying to protect them from perverts. (Your real name isn't Bill O'Reilly is it?)
Guess that depends on whether you're paying the mortgage for the basement, or just living in it.
If the elimination of filesystem lag when opening folders is any indication, then Spotlight should be much faster as well.
Yeah and it's *so snappy* when you select "Search just this folder" - ie it still freaking searches the whole computer but just displays results from that folder! (or at least it takes long enough that it might as well have!)
The majority of Vista is an indisputable clone of OS X features that Mac users have taken for granted for years, from hardware-accelerated desktop compositing to vector-based graphics APIs to non-admin user accounts to shiny two-tone plastic highlights and translucencies.
Christ, even the filesystem layout was shamelessly cloned from OS X.
I don't even know where to begin with this, but to say...
Your facts are really, really wrong.
OSX only has a bitmap composer that does nothing more than use the GPU textures for double buffering, it is NOT 3D accelerated, nor even 3D rendered. (Vista is BOTH.)
OSX's vector based graphics API is EQUIVALENT to GDI+ that has been available in Windows since 2001. Go look this up, please. Additionally, the Vectoring API of OSX is NOT EVEN close to the WPF vectoring concepts in Vista, from animation constructs to true 3D rendering and hit checking and is TRULY 3D accelerated.
Non-Admin accounts... Hmmm. Windows NT 3.1 (which is what Windows is based on, has had non-Admin accounts since 1992.) Far before Apple even moved from the 'single' user metaphor of their System software of the 90s. Old school Windows NT users have ALWAYS setup their company and user accounts in non-admin modes, just like *nix people have as well. It was WindowsXP and its use in the Home market where it became 'normal' to run under administration level, even though if anyone had any sense they would NOT let even their family members have Admin accounts on XP either. (This is NOT about MS not having the functionality, it is about end-user education that failed, hence Vista forces it.)
The FS was NOT cloned from OSX. Have you ever used anything but a freaking Mac? The only reference I assume you are referring to is MS changing the name of the "Documents and Settings" folder to "Users" to make it easier and it does borrow the name "Users" from a *nix standard that has been used for a LONG LONG time. However, there is NOTHING in this that comes from OSX.
Please do your own research, don't even believe me, and certainly stop believing the crap facts you would find in a normal Mac Site Forum.
PS There is so much to Vista that is far beyond OSX, it is really sad that Mac and other closed minded *nix users will NOT GET IT, until MS leverages these technologies to once again ensure their market dominance. Little things, like how the new Video subsystem in Vista can easily scale across multiple GPUS without SLI or Crossfire types of technology, making the new ATI multi-core GPU cards only workable on Vista without 'specific' application coding for the cards. Vista users and games will automatically just get access to the extra GPU power even on their OLD games.
(See Vista already multi-tasks GPU and GPU RAM on single core cards, much like the jump to preemptive multi-tasking CPUs had with OSes in the 90s, which to date is something no other commercial OS can do. As an example, OpenGL as OSX uses exclusively, is just now starting to take advantage of multithreaded OpenGL, which is just starting to take advantage of multiple CPUs, let alone multiple GPUs.)
Dude! Don't use the feature if you don't want to. And what's with the irrational music player comment ? If you don't buy songs from the iTunes Music store, you will never encounter DRMed music on you iPod. The iPod will happily ply your pirated mp3s. Or do what I do, just buy CDs and copy the music onto you iPod. iTunes will do it all for you...just put the pretty CD in the slot.
and I'm not convinced anything mentioned in the article is going to make the different and make me like Spotlight.
The Spotlight UI is what needs the major overhaul - it's freaking ANNOYING and inconsistent with the Finder. If you do a spotlight search from the menu bar, items in the drop down list cannot be dragged and dropped or have their path shown. You have to go 'Show All' if you want to actually USE that image you found.
If you do go to the 'Show All' window (which doesn't appear in CMD-Tab) then you have to click the stupid huge "I" to get the path - unlike in the Finder version where it appears at the bottom of the window.
I hate the Finder search - it is so slow that even if you just want to search that directory, it feels as though it is searching the entire computer and just filtering the results. It also recursively searches without any decent feedback as to where the files it finds actually ARE (and you can't turn it off). And the worst part is - if you trash something IT STAYS IN THE SEARCH RESULTS. That really fucks me off.
It's the small details that make using Spotlight (and spotlight-as-part-of-the-finder) absolute Hell. They have better fix that sort of stuff (and the whole freaking finder....) before stupid network searching!
Of course all parents have the right to do what they feel is right for their children, but in any healthy parent/child relationship the parent needs to be aware that most kids aren't born with a fully fleshed out concept of responsibility and consequence. In my opinion, moderate use of some parental monitoring capabilities is a perfectly legitimate way to help fill in those gaps until these concepts mature in our newly wired world.
How in the hell you got modded insightful is beyond me.
Look, for windows:
1. Search the internet for a program that does what you want.
2. Read some reviews and see if its a legit program, and not some crappy ad-ware/botware.
3. do you want to pay for this program? A decision must by made here.
4. Download the program
5. Run spyware and antivirus software on it
6. Click install.exe
7. accept EULA
8. Choose if you are installing this for all users or your self
8. hope and pray that it doesn't affect other programs or change extensions
9. Use it, and if you dont like it:
9b. uninstall it and hope and pray you dont have to clean up after it.
However with Linux, if you know the package you want you could do a command line apt-get install foo
OR
You can open your package manager (synaptic in my case) and do a search for "search" and read the desriptions of the package, such as beagle, and click on it to install. DONE. Removal is just as easy.
Thats why windows is a pain in the ass, and Linux is just easy.
So dont spread FUD. The average linux user gets used to speeding things up, and learns a few shortcuts, like the command line if they are so inclined.
OS X's vector graphics API? You mean NSBezierPath? That's been around since NeXTStep, which far predates Windows XP.
Almost as long as GDI from freaking windows which is the base vector graphics API. Go look it up, please.
Just because I was talking about GDI+, because it has the anti-aliasing and translucency features added in OSX, does not mean Windows didn't have a freaking vector language prior to that. In fact there is stuff from the original GDI of Windows in the 80s that is STILL not in OSX.
The compositor uses the GPU, which is 3-D acceleration. And QuartzGL, the fully 3-D rendering pipeline, was in Tiger in development form.
There is a difference between using 3D textures for window composition and actually using functions of the 3D library for accelerating the drawing inside an application and the desktop.
Vista also has a Vector composer to further speed up Vista and WPF applications, this is why you can remote desktop 4000 miles away to a Vista machine and STILL have 3D accelerated drawing on the remote screen. A Mac doesn't even have 3D accelerated drawing on screen in front of you if you are sitting at the freaking computer itself unless it is an OpenGL application.
Understand the difference?
Speaking of the middle mouse button, is there any (easy) way in Linux, particularly either under KDE or XFE, to make the middle mouse button work like (ohgodIcantbelieveImsayingthis) Windows'? As in, acting like a scroll-with-pointer button? For the unfamiliar, at least on my work machine, if you press the middle button, the cursor changes into this two-arrows-inside-a-circle icon, which causes the window to scroll if you then move it up or down. It scrolls faster if you move it further, as you would expect, and stops scrolling instantly on release of the buttom.
I've gotten a bit addicted to this feature, and frankly I think it's the handiest thing I've used since the addition of the scroll wheel to the mouse a few years back. It's absolutely terrific for zipping through lengthy documents, and it's a lot better than PageDNing (even on 5-button mice where you can do that without moving to the keyboard).
I've never used a system that had middle click paste (or, if I have, I haven't used it), but the middle-click-scroll feature is pretty handy. I doubt it will appear in Mac OS X anytime soon -- it was hard enough to get Apple to make mice with two buttons, I'm not holding my breath on three, and I'm definitely not holding my breath on a feature that might make people think that they were admitting that their Mighty Mouse Balls weren't the hottest idea in the world -- but it'd be nice to get the option on Linux.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Sure!
PathFinder is an amazing peice of software, that for many people could well replace the Finder wholesale (they even have unsupported directions for doing so...)
This chunk of bits does everything the Finder used to do, tries to do, and should do, plus quite a few things I'm not so sure it should do -- pdfs, text editing, web browsing, shell command entry, search, word doc display...
These are just off the top of my head, I don't actually USE PathFinder because I'd rather keep the memory free and do most of my file manipulation in Terminal or with Spotlight anyway. BUT, go give it a try, you may well find yourself ponying up the reg fee once the demo period ends!
--
"OSX's vector based graphics API is EQUIVALENT to GDI+ that has been available in Windows since 2001. Go look this up, please."
.NET developer sites have thus been suggesting ways to avoid using it, including going through the DirectX 9 layer, which offers many of the same features without the performance penalty, but isn't as easy to use.
.NET Windows Forms used GDI+, and MS received many, many complaints about their slow drawing compared with (for example) VB6 forms. Despite several years of promises that this would be fixed, they eventually simply deprecated Windows Forms, thus leaving all the people who they initially told to "keep using Windows forms because the performance issues will be resolved by an update in the near future" with a slow mess that will probably need converting to their very different XAML-based system at some point.
And I suggest you go and look up the 110,000 pages Google gave me when I entered "GDI+ slow", because developers have been complaining about this since it was introduced (Microsoft admit that the most commonly asked question about GDI+ is "Why is it so slow?)". Yes, it has lots of nice features that aren't in standard GDI such as anti-aliased drawing and alpha blending, but the drivers don't use a graphics card's accelerator features, and although Microsoft promised that this would change, nearly six years later we're still waiting (it also has a nasty memory leak which still AFAIK hasn't been fixed yet).
NB:
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Actually, GP is correct, QuartzGL, which uses the GPU to render the desktop (not just composite) was in 10.4. It even renders font glyphs on the GPU. Not enabled by default, but I guess it should be in 10.5.
I was actually refering to Quartz Extreme, as prior it is OSX did double buffering in freaking System RAM.
However, what you and the GP seem to be missing, is that EVEN WITH Quartz Extreme it is NOT using 3D acceleration to speed up the 2D vector drawing engine. It is ONLY USING 3D TEXTURES from the GPU Via OpenGL to COMPOSE the Screen, so that the Window Textures are mapped to a Polygon and rendered with the Video Card directly via OpenGL.
This is STILL Just a BITMAP Composer, using OpenGL to store and render Textures on a simple Polygon surface for each Window.
Vista on the other hand does 3D acceleration even in the 2D GDI/GDI+ drawing by utilizing the GPU of the 3D card, and additionally for Vista and WPF fully accelerates ALL THE 2D and 3D application drawing. This means Vista is using 3D acceleration to draw Fonts faster, anti-aliasing using GPU features, etc before the application EVEN CREATES the Bitmap or Vector drawing it passes to the Composer.
This is why in Vista, even if you have an OLD video card that ONLY supports DirectX7, applications will get a performance boost even if your card is not PS 2.0 compliant and supports Vista Glass because of its need for the PS 2.0 blurring.
Even on WindowsXP WPF(Vista technology) applications are accelerated by any 3D GPU in the computer if it supports DirectX7 or newer. So Vista is using 3D to accelerate even basic GDI/GDI+ and WPF drawing operations on older 3D Video cards even when Vista does not even use the Desktop Composer(Glass/Aero) on these older cards.
Anyone that doesn't get this, load Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw with a complex drawing on Vista and time how fast the screen renders(Zoom in Out, Pan, etc), then do the same on XP and then on OSX. Vista will at the minimum be 10-20x faster in displaying the image because it uses 3D GPU features to accelerate even LEGACY applications that have NO CONCEPT of Vista.
And sadly Vista will STILL be this much faster than OSX even with 10.5 because Quartz Extreme does NO vector acceleration in hardware unless the application is already OpenGL.
Here is the best way to lay this out so people understand from both MS documentation and the current notes on Quartz Extreme in OSX 10.5 that are available.
OSX No Quartz Extreme
Quartz2D-QuickDraw/Software Rendering/Buffer/Software Rendering/Quartz Compositor/Software Rendering/Frame Buffer
OpenGL/Hardware Rendering/Buffer/Software Rendering/Quartz Compositor/Software Rendering/Frame Buffer
OSX With Quartz Extreme
Quartz2D-QuickDraw/Software Rendering/GPU Store/Hardware Rendering/Frame Buffer
OpenGL/Hardware Rendering/Surface/Hardware Rendering/Frame Buffer
Vista without DirectX 9.0 Card
GDI/GDI+/Software Rendering(Some 2D GPU)/Frame Buffer
WPF/Hardware Rendering(3D GPU)/Frame Buffer (Same on XP)
Vista with DirectX 9.0 Card (Aero/Glass/WDDM)
GDI/GDI+/Hardware Rendering(3D & 2D GPU)/Vector&Bitmap Buffer/Hardware Rendering/Composer/Frame Buffer
WPF&Vista Apps/Hardware Rendering(3D GPU)/Vector&Bitmap Buffer/Hardware Rendering/Composer/Frame Buffer
Notice that Vista has Hardware Acceleration from the 3D GPU to help the application drawing, not just at the end like OSX.
Vista also doesn't double buffer like OSX does, this is because the composer can do the application buffering and since it is essential a 3D manager then it directly writes these textures on two triangular polygons to the screen for each Window. This also increases the video performance. As long as OSX has to double buffer to acheive the same tear-free results, they will not be competitive when it comes to Composer managed Gaming or 3D application performanc
NeXTSTEP was pretty far beyond the contemporaneous X11 offerings and NT probably through at least NT 4, and numerous reviews from the period state as much. (They also remark on the very steep price, but it's arguable that Jobs wasn't a really good businessman until he returned to Apple.) Your point about Cutler, and most of the points you're trying to make, was lost in your own hyperbole and overeagerness to fight Slashdot's institutional bias against Windows.
The only reason we're talking about NeXTSTEP is because you wanted to argue architectures and APIs in the first place. Like it or not, OS X IS directly descended from NeXT's codebase, and it's a testament to that codebase that the core APIs remain similar even if a substantial portion of the code behind the scenes has changed. By your own admission, Microsoft has changed Windows more often and more drastically than Apple has OS X, and all it's bought them is a couple months of clear technical superiority. DirectX 10 may be a strong technical advantage, but it's one that matters to a vanishing portion of the desktop market. All the other new bells and whistles in Vista are superficially different from the alternatives that are available or will soon be available, and your arguments have done little to convince me otherwise.
No, actually. Apple "fanboys" don't think that. You must be thinking of one specific Apple fanboy, Artie MacStrawman.