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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?
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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
"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.
No, actually. Apple "fanboys" don't think that. You must be thinking of one specific Apple fanboy, Artie MacStrawman.