Slashdot Mirror
Google Desktop for Mac Released
Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes "Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop. This software, like the PC version, indexes the content of a hard drive and serves it up on familiar Google-style search-result Web pages (or via a its own drop-down results list, if you prefer). But Google Desktop for the Mac is streamlined compared to the busy, gadget-y Windows version, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The focus is squarely on search — including local indexing of an online Gmail account of your choice. It will also index your iDisk."
Does this somehow outperform spotlight without adding vulnerabilities?
MABASPLOOM!
But why do I need a google app to do this when spotlight comes with my mac and does a pretty outstanding job of this already. Am I missing something?
Google is ignoring Linux again. You might argue that OS X has more users than Linux, which I think is debatable. However then you have to think which desktop on Linux do you target? GNOME? KDE? minimal X (and then accept that your app looks like crap on things like SuSe or Ubuntu)? ...and we see why Linux is a great server platform, but a lousy desktop platform because it's not standardized in the same way.
The biggest problem is that "Linux" may be a good platform to target, because the desktop is separated from the OS, you CAN'T target the "Linux Desktop"
I was asking myself the same question every one else is ("why use this instead of spotlight?") and while I'm not 100% convinced to move over to it, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a good case for using it; if you're using Google homepage and Google Mail, it integrates with those (showing search results on the homepage and being able to download and search your Gmail).
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Even though Mac has spotlight, it makes perfect sense for Google to make this app available to the Mac users. I'm sure plenty of Mac users aren't happy with spotlight or are just big Google fans and are rejoicing they can finally use Google Desktop.
WTF?
spotlight does the disk searching for me and it divides my results. If i need to search a google account i can log in and search the account. maybe searching from the desktop might be cool. but i'll still have to load my browser once i find what i'm looking for.
Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop.
The referenced Tuesday was yesterday, not six days from now. It's completely understandable that some stories are posted late, but is it too much to ask that they be edited to remain factual?
It is probably worth a try.. I like Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4, but I'm not overly impressed with the accuracy and relevance of its results. I'm hoping it gets refined in Leopard and beyond. It often returns too many results that are not relevant. It seems like Spotlight needs a couple more controls to tweak the search.
I already get the GMail search effect, since I download a copy of my GMail messages to Apple's Mail application via POP3.
So, the real test comes down to how effective the Google system search is, compared to Spotlight. I'll probably give it a try. But, it will need to be clearly better to justify keeping another piece of software installed & running.
ok Google Desktop Search may be good, may be better than Spotlight, etc but Spotlight is "part" of the OS thus is already running even when we don't want it to so now not only do you have Spotlight caching but now Google's app, so your computer is slower. The ability to search your desktop through a webpage is a joke! Why would I when theres a simple icon in the top-right of my screen or pressing Apple+Space to open it up, alot more simplier then through a browser. To search my gmail, why not just intergrate Spotlight search with the gmail notifier for mac, would be easier and simplier. Honestly I think its a waste of Google's resources, I know they mean well but I don't want them to integrate into they're apps, I want them to integrate to the OS! If not then stick to web services Google!
Quicksilver may not be a "search tool" per se... but it searches just fine. Beats spotlight hands down, and has nifty features like triggers. I'm not sure I will need more google in my life...
Chaos is Divine *
Why should I get a Mac when I can do the exact same thing on Vista?
Thanks, I haven't laughed that hard all week.
Why would anyone want to allow google to index your computer's data and make money
off it?
I own my data and do not even want to give the option to google or anyone
to intentionally or by mistake look at it.
Two search options are better than one.
You must work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm not sure why Google or anyone else is still flogging third-party desktop search tools. Desktop search is already well-integrated into both Mac and Vista. You can make an argument that you don't want Apple or Microsoft "monopolizing" their own platform's search, but as the developers of those operating systems I'm inclined to think they know their own stuff best.
Third-party search toolbars also seem like a major step back in terms of security: you have yet another thing with access to your local filesystem that insists it needs to "dial out" to exchange information with something on the Internet. Not for me, thanks.
[gandalf]Run, you fool![/gandalf]
That's not as big a problem as you'd think.
1. Other apps haven't had a problem because of this. Both Mozilla and OpenOffice, for example, insisted on writing their very own framework and widgets, so basically they're _neither_ Gnome nor KDE. Your line of thinking seems to be that that would make them shunned by both KDE and Gnome users, yet that's not really the case. And then there's stuff like XMMS, which doesn't even try to look even remotely like the desktop, and had no problem either.
2. In the meantime both KDE and Gnome can use each other's themes. So you can just write your app with either set of widgets and it won't look out of place on the other desktop.
3. I'd buy your argument if it were some really complex app, with lots of forms and controls. Essentially all you really need there is a freakin' web-page-like page, in a frame. As long as you can draw a white background with a rectangle for the input and a button, you're actually good to go for a simple search app. (The borders and title bar of the frame will be drawn by the window manager anyway, so you don't have to worry about those.)
4. And you don't even have to do that, if your goal is to look like Google. I.e., like a web page. Think about it. You can just serve HTTP on the port of your choice, restrict it to localhost so it's not abusable from outside, your "application" icon just starts a browser on that port. There you go: now the user can use whatever browser they prefer, and have it look like any other page in that browser. They can use Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror if they absolutely have to have a KDE-only environment, or whatever.
Basically, let's lay _that_ tired argument to rest at least in this case. Linux has some problems with mass adoption, yes, but constantly claiming that you can't write apps because there are 2 desktops... is just false, and it's getting repetitive and boring by now.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've seen a few people state being able to index your gmail as an advantage over and above pop. I suppose that's fine if you want to keep your mail soley online, but gmail offers pop and spotlight will index apple mail. I suppose there are advantages if you're using thunderbird, or some other client that spotlight can't access.
I do think it has to be said, though, that if you really want desktop search that includes your e-mail using apple mail seems like less of a sacrifice than sharing all the data with them that google desktop necessitates. I suppose that's a matter of priorities, though.
For me, the killer app with 10.4 was/is VoiceOver. I am hoping to be surprised by Jobs and crew on 10.5, but so far spaces and time machine have not piqued my interests and even the new voice and promised Braille support seem minor.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
All crud like this serves is to bloat out your system with unnecessary resource usage for a perceived need when none exists, like toolbar addins, realplayer, quicktime (to an extent), adobe acrobat reader (it sneakily puts crud in your Startup group) and a slew of other software all load unnecessary drivers in the background. It's no wonder so many people complain their computers are so slow. Software companies shouldn't be allowed to release such software.
Good lord, and that's only if you're adding things to an existing PC! That's almost $1200 right there! Note I'm not talking about pond muck systems, but a system that actually would allow an apples to apples comparison of features with relatively equal quality parts. I think you'll find that these numbers may even be low when compared to a Dell system that will actually be able to run Aero/Glass well.
Then compare that to the prices for a Mini @ $700, a Macbook ~$1400, a Macbook Pro ~$2200, or a slightly above baseline Mac Pro ~$2800 (including the X1900XT).
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I agree with the "Spotlight Already Does That" posts. Keeping that in mind:
http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page
iFaaaaaarrrt in your general direction
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
> Julio ... writes: ..."
> "Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop.
Call me old fashioned, but I am not sure that posting the submissions "unedited" is as good an idea as CmdrTacco seems to think. Any semi-literate person knows that you may have to supply additional information to keep the context of the citation correct. In this case, the missing part would be "Julio *wrote* the day before yesterday". As it is, the citation wrongly refers to next week, although it meant to be this week.
On the other hand this mistake tell us that submissions can be in the queue for over a day. Given the short lifetime of most submission, this explains the slightly stale feeling that slashdot conveys now. Again I am old fashioned enough to say that this was not always the case!
I had no problem replacing spotlight with quicksilver, is this better than quicksilver?
Like anyone can even know that
[1] http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Co nceptual/MDImporters/Concepts/WritingAnImp.html
Mac owners often say how they are glad there isn't the kind of shit that PC computers get that slow it all down etc. But here we see, the first wave of pure tat is hitting the Macs, so there is no escaping the shitty software like Google desktop that floats around the PC world. Then we will get mac with it loaded on already from suppliers like cell (dell) and AESH (MESH) so you need to format and re-install when you buy, then the spy/ad ware will hit...
Good while it lasted I guess.
Visit My Blog at http://spaces.msn.com/members/chrisharries
> high end copy of Vista $300+
The copy of Vista that comes with most PCs is good enough for the average user and it's absorbed into the price of the system so you won't even notice paying for it. Hardware prices for Vista capable machines are dropping all the time, but even now a PC with Vista is much cheaper than a Mac. There are many improvements from XP to Vista so forget everything you know about XP. Once you have tried Vista, I doubt you will want to use a Mac again. Don't take my word for it though. You should just try it for yourself.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
everything they do seems to be spyware, so they're banned from my system. i wish some new search engine started up that didn't kill itself to track me in a million different ways, and also didn't have the the first 5 pages of every query list links from crapmongers like bizrate, nextag, and amazon who have absolutely nothing to do with the search criteria
You missed my point entirely. My point was that if you can say 'Why use this product when I already have Spotlight?' and get modded up, why can't use say 'Why use this product when I already have Vista?' There is nothing wrong with Vista.
Is this site just anti-Microsoft, or what?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
No really. I have been using vista since early alpha versions and the searching is useless at best. The first thing I do after installing vista is to install googledesktop on top of it.
Also the sidebar included with googledesktop (>v5) is much better than the build in one and the gadgets available are far more in numbers and superior in features.
I guess you're right. At least Apple's shackles have padding.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The first time I tried the dashboard I could not believe anyone thought this was either useful *or* cool; I haven't touched it since.
I'm an academic writer and I find the F12 call to bring up the calendar and the dictionary + thesaurus a godsend. As with anything, YMMV.
blog
It probably has the same vulnerabilities as the windows version. Does the risk of letting anyone read your documents make indexing gmail worth it?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
> Yes, /. it pretty much anti-MS
;)
I wonder how many people that complain about Vista have actually tried it. It's a vast improvement over XP, and represents five years of work.
> there are some virulent MS fanboi's here.
Mac fanbois are worse in my experience.
> Add in the DRM'd OS, and there's no reason to run it at all.
This is a common misconception. DRM doesn't lock you out of your system. The addition of DRM to Vista *enables* you to play DRM'd media, which you would otherwise be unable to play on XP or Mac.
> the main point in running a Mac isn't to run OSX [...] but rather to run the things that run on it.
More software works on Windows than on a Mac.
> OMG, I just heard a blood vessel pop!
Oh, that sounds nasty. You shouldn't take SlashDot so seriously.
Basically, I'm fed up of people saying how great SpotLight is when they haven't even tried any competing products. Just give Vista a try and tell us what you think.
To be honest, I give up. I can see you aren't willing to try it. That's your choice and I respect that. I can't see how suggesting alternative products from Microsoft is trolling but suggesting alternatives from Apple is not, but I can see I am in the minority here so I will go back to my cave now. Have a nice day.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Look at some of the other comments - this search is relying quite a bit on mdiimport, the process on your mac that is already indexing your HD contents. It's just that it also indexes a few things that cannot (like GMail) which presumably is already indexed by the server, and then throwing a new UI in front of the whole thing to make it easy to use.
When you have a system that is architected well things like this do not have to drag down system performance overmuch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're crazy. You must be trolling because nobody could throw out that line of shit with a straight face. I run Vista on my machine, and it runs fine. It is a year old, and not counting the monitor cost me about $300. I have a Sempron 2600+, semi-cheap mobo, 1GB memory, 256MB video card, and 120GB HDD. Everything Vista does works fine. It's certainly not a top of the line system, but it performs *very* well and compares well to a Mini. You could build a similar system to the Mini for much less than the $600-800 price tag Apple puts on that thing (hint, no 2GB RAM or $300+ video card). That form factor costs you an arm and a leg.
Also, a high end copy of Vista doesn't cost $300 if you're upgrading from XP. And if you're not upgrading from XP then why the hell would you build a system from scratch? You might as well make use of Dell to get a discount.
If you like Apple, then that's fine, but you are lying. Stop making shit up in an attempt to make yourself feel better.
I think I will have to stick with Spotlight due to my overwhelming reliance on importers such as these. Being able to search through flac tags can be really helpful if you archive hundreds and hundreds of GBs of live music, which generally have strange naming conventions (or at least less imformative ones).
I wonder how many people that complain about Vista have actually tried it. It's a vast improvement over XP, and represents five years of work.
I find the length of time Vista has been worked on to be irrelevant and unimpressive, especially considering they changed directions in the middle of that timeframe.
The real question in my mind is - how much have YOU tried OSX? Plenty of us have tried Vista and use Windows every day for work. But how many Vista proponents such as yourself to really see what the differences are? Sure Vista search works WAY better than XP search (which did not work at all). But what makes you sure it is in fact better than what we have today in OS X? Spotlight has a number of nice features including really easy search plugins and a good API for adding it to applications, making it more of a whole-system experience that really works well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I find it "not right" to have two indexes maintained for the same files on the same computer.
:-)
Unless Google Desktop uses the Spotlight APIs and thus the same indices, I think that I will pass.
That said, I always considered Google Desktop as a must have Windows utility so I might change my mind
I'm glad it works fine with you. Go join the sheeple.
The facts are that Vista has some serious underlying problems for those of us that actually use it. And, if you'll note, I mentioned Aero/Glass specifically. Your system won't handle that well. Also, all Macs are currently C2D except for the CD minis. Even the CD blows a Sempron out of the water.
Vista Ultimate upgrade costs $260. I don't recall exactly which one allows you to run Glass, so you may be right and able to save 50 or 100 on the OS upgrade. It's so confusing, which should tell you something. Tell me, what version do I need to display the nifty (wasteful) 3D window view they display prominently in their ads? Can you?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My Mac is the most secure machine of all my systems and now you want me to punch a HUGE hole in my security/privacy by allowing google full, unfettered access to my hard drive and to upload that onto the internet? WTF are people thinking when they do stupid shit like this?
And people wonder why hundreds of millions of instances of identity theft happen ever year.
I've been a victim of it myself and I don't take it lightly.
Just last week my daughter was again a victim of identity theft, a girl she knows has been going around using my daughters identity (who now lives in London), she even stole her social security number. The girl was arrested several times for impersonating my daughter and ended up on probation. Then last week she was arrested again for public intoxication, she gave the cops my daughters info then even signed a bail bond with my daughters name. As she was bonding out the cops ran a more thorough check and found some flags against my daughters name (because of this girl) so the re-arrested her for identity theft right there. Now she's up on felony charges, repeat offender and violation of probation. She hopefully will get 2 to 5 years in state prison. I hope..
But forever more, my daughter has her name flagged in police databases and if she ever gets pulled over for any reason she's going to have a tough time proving that she really is the real her and not the imposter.
People that use google desktop are STUPID.. You go ahead and let google store your hard drive indexes and god knows what else on some server that's out of your physical control. And when your identity gets stolen and your life turns to shit in a skillet, don't bitch because you won't have a leg to stand on.
I would rather sand paper a bobcat's ass in a phone booth than use google in any way for any thing.
Meet the new kid on the block --> http://clusty.org/
I wasn't defending Vista. I was just saying your estimates were ridiculously off. My PC, which again cost only $300 over a year ago, runs Vista well (yes, even Aero). The only thing that is worse on my PC than on a Mini is the processor. Everything else is significantly better than the low level Mini. You can easily get a PC that runs Vista well for much less than your wildly overestimated $1200.
You don't have to lie and exaggerate to make your point. If you think Vista sucks, then say Vista sucks. I'm not gonna argue with that, it's not really that cool. Don't just make shit up, though. There are enough legitimate marks against it, you don't have to resort to that.
To answer your (obviously patronizing) question, the home premium edition of Vista has everything but full backup/restore, fax/scan, remote desktop, and drive encryption. It costs $160 to upgrade. I don't know why anyone would buy Vista Ultimate as it doesn't really make much sense, especially for a home user.
PS, don't say sheeple. It's a ridiculous term and makes you look like a condescending asshole. God forbid if someone has a different opinion than you.
I didn't say that Mozilla _had_ to write its own widgets. Au contraire, I consider it to be the prime example of why a team needs leadership: they went in dada land for _years_ writing cool frameworks and widget sets, when Netscape really needed a working browser.
At any rate, I didn't say they _had_ to. There are plenty of existing widget sets. They could have used any of those if they didn't want to write cool frameworks.
Also, the "haven't had a problem" meant: the users don't really have a huge problem with it. I didn't say whether or not it's a pain for the developpers. (Though even there I like to think they must have had fun with it, because sure as heck noone asked them to. Again, what Netscape wanted was a working browser, not to spend years building cool widget frameworks while IE nails Netscape's coffin.) I only said that most users couldn't care less whether an app has KDE's buttons or Gnome's buttons or something else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The biggest difference between Spotlight and Google Desktop is that Spotlight is a desktop application, whereas Google Desktop is a web application that runs on your Mac and listens to port 4664. You access the search interface using your web browser.
Now, in theory, nobody else should be able to access the web application, because it is only supposed to listen to local requests. But maybe you've heard of this thing called Javascript, which also runs in your web browser, and can sometimes be used to access arbitrary sites.
Yes, it's hard, and it requires the existence of other vulnerabilities. See Google Desktop Vulnerable to Anti-DNS Pinning for instance.
So yeah, there is a difference. Spotlight doesn't potentially expose all the files on your computer to some script kiddie on the other side of the world.
Hmm, 512MB RAM minimum, about $60-70. CPU around $60 IIRC. Motherboard about $60 if you're going cheap (includes video, audio, ethernet). 60GB drive $50. Case and power supply, yeah, I can see about $300. So add $160 for the Vista upgrade (and don't forget your other license cost in there, that should have been a minimum $60-80) comes in for a total of $460 ($520) minimum. (A 256MB vid card back then was a minimum $120)
Will it run Vista with what I consider adequate and comparable performance? It won't for me. Heck, install Vista on an $10K 8 CPU Mac Pro, and it probably would still be subpar. Why? Because there are certain normal OS operations I do rather routinely that are documented known issues with the Vista release.
As for Aero/Glass, perhaps I was misinformed. The only people I know that have experienced it and said it was cool are those with Vista Ultimate installed.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
So you throw out the specs for a pretty nice PC, and come out to $1200, then try to compare it to a Mac Mini? Try the Mac Pro at $2000+. Not that I would run Vista anyway, Windows XP + third party software is better than Vista and it's integrated applications.
Besides, Vista will run on much less than that, if you want it.
Windows Vista Home Premium
See $620 system above. It's faster, uses real desktop parts, and is more expandable. An Aero-capable HP Pavlion dv2000t or Dell Inspiron can be had for a lot less. a Macbook Pro ~$2200, Dell Latitude, Lenovo Thinkpad, or a slightly above baseline Mac Pro ~$2800 (including the X1900XT). Dell Precision, many others. Why are you even mentioning these Apple models? Their prices aren't anything special compared to the much wider selection of Vista PCs.AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (dual-core - 2.2GHz)
160GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
1GB DDR2-533MHz SDRAM (2x512)
LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
Front ports: 15-in-1 memory card reader, USB, headphone port
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
HP keyboard and HP scroller mouse
Microsoft Works 8.0
This is par for Google. The road to riches for Google was paved with Linux. Tens of thousands of servers hum along, stuffing cash into the Google coffers and what do we get? Summer of Code? Geek Please. It's nothing short of a slap to the face of Linux Users. We wrote about this in 2005. http://blog.lobby4linux.com/archives/44-Google-Wha t-Have-You-Done-For-Us-Lately.html Looks like audacity is more than a sound file tool...
keywords: ungrateful, jerks, oblivious to what side thier bread is buttered...
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
Spotlight on the Mac already does this, and, from my experience, very, very nicely. It is lightening quick, too, and I index not only my own stuff (files, email,...), but the entire developers support library too. Of course, it doesn't auto-index everything on Google or MSN or wherever unless you go there.
Just to think, I was once a Windows guy because Apple was "unresponsive" in the 80's and early 90's. In fact, had Apple had their plan and pricing together, IMHO the PC would never have been popular. However, a lot of good has come out of Apple's flub, and I LOVE my Mac Book Pro!
Linux desktop should have gone here, but there was no "one person with vision to lead them" as there is with MS and Apple. If you're a geek type, try Cocoa/Xcode programming. Objective-C is easy -- though the delegates can be a bit tricky to find/work with at first. Once you get use to it, about 2 hours in my case, you'll be flying along with a really great environment with a great doc set. Plus you can still use C, C++ and the Java 1.5.x stuff! All this plus a boot time -- to your actual desktop -- in about 15 to 20 seconds!