“The Graphical User Interface has been a success in the mass market since the Apple Macintosh debuted in 1984, and it has dominated computing since Microsoft Windows went mainstream around 1990. Its visual display of files stored in a nested hierarchy of folders has worked pretty well — until recently,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal.
“But now a wave of new desktop search tools is becoming available, some built right into new operating systems and others available as add-ons. Big names are getting in the game — Apple, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. I’ve been testing the leading candidates and previewing some future contenders,” Mossberg writes.
“Spotlight… is the new universal, speedy search system built into Apple’s latest operating system for the Macintosh, called Tiger. Because it is an integral part of the operating system, which handles all files, Spotlight knows about all the key kinds of information stored on the computer… Because Spotlight is part of the operating system, it avoids one of the big flaws of add-on search systems — the need to periodically ‘index’ new files in batches, a process that spins the hard drive continuously, sometimes for hours.”
“Microsoft plans to emulate Spotlight in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. But it’s way behind Apple. Longhorn won’t reach consumers until the fall of 2006 at the earliest,” Mossberg writes. Of Google’s Desktop Search, Mossberg writes, “familiar Google search results page, which works so well for the web, is very limiting for a desktop search. And the software offers only a crude way to sort the results and no way to preview content.” Of MSN’s desktop search, Mossberg writes, “by default, MSN’s search product searches only your email (which must be run by Microsoft products) and the My Documents folder. You have to tinker with settings to get it to search your whole computer, something all its competitors do by default. The limited search horizon cuts down on MSN’s indexing time and makes it look faster than it really is, but it will likely cause you to get only partial search results.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Newsweek magazine calls Mr. Mossberg “the most powerful arbiter of consumer tastes in the computer world today.” Time magazine calls him “the most influential computer journalist.” And Rolling Stone calls him “the most powerful columnist in technology.” The Washington Post declared Mr. Mossberg “one of the most powerful men in the high-tech world” and “a one-man media empire whose prose can launch a new product.” And the New York Times calls him a “protean critic of the new economy’s tools and toys.” Mr. Mossberg was awarded the 1999 Loeb award for Commentary, the only technology writer to be so honored. For seven years in a row, 1995-2001, he was named as the most influential journalist writing about computers, in the annual ranking published by Technology Marketing magazine.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft VP Jones: Apple’s Mac OS X Spotlight same as Google, Yahoo, MSN Desktop Search – June 20, 2005
Apple Mac OS X Tiger Spotlight spells the end of organizing files in nested folders – June 09, 2005
Undocumented Boolean NOT, OR, AND syntaxes for Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight search – May 27, 2005
Shoebox 1.2 lets you use Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight to search your photos by content – May 26, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight search covered in-depth – May 19, 2005
Manually organize dinosaur Windows PCs while Mac users already have the future with Spotlight – May 18, 2005
CBS News: how envious Windows users can attempt to poorly simulate Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight – May 04, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ to contain powerful ‘Spotlight’ search technology – November 11, 2004
Apple Exec: Mac OS X Tiger’s ‘Spotlight’ system-wide search tech inspired by iTunes – July 02, 2004
I love Spotlight. I have found needed info from emails from so long ago, I couldn’t believe it. I hear for some it needs improvement, but for me it’s been great.
Actually, Mossberg said the MSN desktop search is pretty good, despite the mild criticisms he added (the only comments that MDN included). I am surprised M$’ tool is as good as it (apparently) is. Glad to see market competition forcing M$ to, eventually, deliver better products. What would M$ do without Apple?
Question: “What would M$ do without Apple?”
Answer: Windows 95
“Question: “What would M$ do without Apple?”
Answer: Windows 95″
Not even.
“c:\”
“What would M$ do without Apple?”
“Today, Microsoft introduces the long awaited version of it’s MS-DOS operating system, codenamed ‘Longhorn’.”
-Ficticious News Source
Finally! A good non-biased comparison of Spotlight with the windoze offerings out there. And as expected, Spotlight’s being built into the system had it come out on top.
Yahoo’s search from X1 seemed the best of the rest. Being a technophile I don’t think I would mind the ” the many choices and settings in the user interface” that “may be daunting to mainstream users”. Also the ability to take direct action on some things like emails from within the search sounds like a cool feature that Apple should consider including in future versions of Spotlight.
Bottom line seems to be Spotlight wins on simplicity and the fact that it is built into the OS. Simplicity is a good thing to have (absolutely vital for a Mac User like my Mom) but I hope that in the future Apple will expand the “functions in back” for the power users. And I am sure they will – by the time Longhorn 1 comes out, we will be on Spotlight 2, or maybe even 3.
Non-biased? Much as I like Apple and her products, Walt Mossberg has become nothing more than a stooge for Apple. I swear this guy never has a bad word to say about Apple. As a result, no one takes him terribly seriously anymore. Might as well be MDN writing for the Wall Street Journal.
Question: “What would M$ do without Apple?”
Answer: MS-DOS
I can’t agree more, heloniousMac.
So if a reporter reports the truth about operating systems and it becomes apparent that one is clearly better than the other, does that make the reporter a stooge? Thelonias, you are full of it. Show me one report that Walt Mossberg has “spun” something in favor of Apple when in fact MS is clearly better. What do you want poor ol’ Walt do do – throw some pity points Microsofts way? Would that make him a better reporter? By the way, do you think Walt was always in favor of the Mac? Was he talking about how OS 9 was soooo much better than Win 95? I don’t think so.
thank you g spank….
if mossberg has nothing bad to say about apple, so what? as long as he’s not stretching anything or doing unbiased reporting, what is wrong if you never report something bad about a certain company?? some companies are that good.
the fact that we always have to read whatever walt has to say about the mac just to make us feel better to have a mac is just sad?
i ask.. why mdn posts this as ‘news’. AS IF WE HAD TO HAVE SOME OLD GUY TELL US SPOTLIGHT IS BETTER.
microsoft both sucks and blows (so does .NET).
©
If Mossberg was your only news source, then, yes, that would be sad. And if reading Mossberg is what makes you feel good about using a Mac, then, yes, that’s sad.
He’s just one voice among many. Take it in stride. He’s just doing a job.
Besides, with all the Apple brow beaters out there, there’s no harm in having a cheer leader or two to even things out.
The important distinction that Spotlight holds over every other desktop search tool is that it indexes new files as they are added to the file system, via a low-priority background task. The other search tools rely on indexing your hard drive before newly added files will show up in a search.
For example, create a new file and save it to the hard drive. Now use a search tool to find it – only Spotlight will find it right away. Copy a batch of hundreds of files into your Mac, and Spotlight will have them all indexed in a few seconds. With any of the Windows tools, you will need to wait until your next hard drive indexing, and that indexing will take a while to complete (10 minutes to an hour).
The final problem with any non-Spotlight search tool is that the regular indexing of the hard drive eats up lots of power as it hits the CPU and hard drive for a half hour or so. This does not work for laptop users at all, and is a pain for desktop users.
Actually Mossberg is not at all loath to criticize Apple when he finds something wanting and has done so many times in the past.
I wonder if you fathom the irony in your comment, Tommy Boy. It is, however, a good explanation why there are PC users that don’t feel all too friendly towards Apple.
Mossberg was awarded the 1999 Loeb award for Commentary, the only technology writer to be so honored
——
An award for commentary.. lmfao.. now I’ve heard everything
Mossberg did have something bad to say about Apple last fall. He said the Airport Express was very good at wifi and bringing songs to a stereo but said it fell way short because it did not have a remote to control the selection of songs. He did not recommend it.
He reports it as he sees and tests it from the consumer’s point of view, not some technogeek view. And if the Mac is better, he says it. And since the Mac is better in so many ways, he winds up saying it often.
and I thought Airport Express was a kick arse product…
Question: “What would M$ do without Apple?”
Answer: Windows 95
C:>
Actually, Tommy Boy’s statement is perfectly valid … “M$ Windows” in any form didn’t exist before the Mac interface and was more than a bit derivative … (I’m being more than a bit understated here!). Just look at the history … check Wikipedia if you like!
Beverly Martin’s comment makes no sense … Windows 95 just sucked a little (or relatively speaking a lot) less than Windows 3.1 (the first release that might be considered a complete interface).
I’ve had the unalloyed joy of using Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 98, SGI Unix and the Mac OS (OS 7-OS 9) in an identical Mathematical Methods course over a period of some 5 years (1995-2000) and generally found the Unix and Mac OS operating system to be the easiest to deploy and maintain. Windows was just painful (often just little things such as accessing/saving/moving files).
MW is usually as in Windows usually sucks … (still it is useable … but often just a pain!)
I dunno, I have three Macs anc also a Windows Media Center 2005 PC for the TV’s in the house. It’s actually a really cool product. Scheduling content to record remotely from the office works great and the box has been up 24/7 for the last few months. Of course it sits behind a hardware firewall. : ) No problems using the best of both worlds…
Longhorn’s GUI looks HOT. Almost downright sexy. Sure, it’s probably going to have tons of security problems even before it’s released, but hey, it’s one hot-looking OS.
Note that I do not imply that OS X Tiger is not hot; in fact it could very well be more hot. I haven’t made up my mind.