“Microsoft’s MSN division on Monday launched its Toolbar and Windows Desktop Search product after five months of beta testing. The new toolbar promises to give a taste what search experience Longhorn is expected to bring. Noticeably missing from the final release, however, was a tabbed browsing feature that appeared in early betas,” Ed Oswald reports for BetaNews.
“Apple recently added a desktop search feature of its own within the latest version of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Called Spotlight, the feature works much like MSN’s, which has caused some consternation internally within Microsoft,” Oswald reports. “Some within have claimed that Apple lifted the idea straight out of early builds of Longhorn. Apple, on the other hand, said publicly that the idea for Spotlight had been in the works for several years — long before any inklings of improved search capabilities within Windows came out of Redmond.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Spotlight works “much like” MSN’s? Not a chance, unless you also believe that Lebron James plays basketball much like your friend Joe down the street. And, by the way, Apple has had an integrated search system that indexed local hard drives, server volumes, and the internet itself since 1998 with Sherlock in Mac OS 8.5. More about Apple’s Sherlock here. More about Apple’s powerful new Spotlight technology here. If you’re not stuck on Windows (with its weak MSN search) and Internet Explorer, open the links in tabs for convenience. Isn’t is amazing how far ahead Apple was with Sherlock and that so few seem to remember that fact?
Apple’s new Spotlight, built-into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger isn’t some bolted on hack like MSN and the other search programs out there for Windows. With Spotlight, when you make a change, such as adding a new file, receiving an email or entering a new contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate. Changes don’t have to wait to be indexed in order to show up in search results correctly.
Microsoft’s losing their collective mind. Perhaps MS should spend less time trying and failing to rewrite history and more time actually trying to rewrite Windows to overcome its many failings?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft holds ‘Thought Thieves’ short film competition focusing on intellectual property theft – May 12, 2005
CBS News: how envious Windows users can attempt to poorly simulate Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight – May 04, 2005
Apple offers free installs of Mac OS X Tiger; IDC analyst Kay thinks Google Desktop equals Spotlight – April 29, 2005
Thurrott: Apple copying Microsoft’s Longhorn search features with Mac OS X ‘Spotlight’ – December 15, 2004
Apple Exec: Mac OS X Tiger’s ‘Spotlight’ system-wide search tech inspired by iTunes – July 02, 2004
Ford copied the automobile from Mercedes.
I know which one I’d rather have.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
WGAS, I have Spotlight.
Should that be, ‘which’ came first?
So, did Apple invent a flux capacitor prior to sticking it in the back of a slightly modified DeLorean DMC-12 which Avie Tevanian then used to commute up and down/round the space-time continuum looking for ‘good’ Microsoft ideas to ‘steal’ ?
Here’s another question: MSFT had it in an early alpha version of Longhorn and yet it is still years away from being ready for market. Either Apple has more development staff than MSFT or the development staff that they have must be considerably more skilled to get someone else’s idea (or screenshot, delete according to your level of cynicism). Or – and here’s a killer – maybe OS X and Objective-C simply make it easier to build evolutionary technologies into the OS.
So, the simple questions that MSFT (or their apologists like NMFY) have to answer are…
1) Are Apple people so smart, that they could invent time travel?
2) Are Apple software engineers better than Allchin’s ill-disciplined, badly managed troupe of code-monkeys?
3) Is OS X and the Macintosh developer environment better than rat’s nest of congealed spaghetti that is Windows XP (otherwise known as Windows NT version 6.00)?
Take your time answering, I’m in no rush…
I recall Stevie saying that the idea of Spotlight came from the search capabilities that were derived originally for iTunes. It must have been during his keynote.
Even if Apple did borrow Spotlight from Microsoft, it’s still says a lot about Microsoft that Apple has shipped there version whilst Microsoft’s is still in some sort of vapour-ware haze.
Admittedly Spotlight is not perfect, the display of results still needs some work imo, but it’s here – and it works.
They are so pathetic and dilusional.
delusional
ms is in collapse.
balmer and gates fiddle while rome burns…
playstation and nintendo also borrowed the video game idea from xbox….
norton antivirus borrowed the idea of making anti-virus software from the upcoming anti-virus software ms is going to offer next year….
BULLSHIT!
“The x in OSX is stolen from the x in Xbox!!!”
Steve Balmer
CHOKE CHOKE!!!!!!!
It’s as stupid as telling the world that Toyota invented the screen whiper !
Everybody knows that quick search and database-like (ala BFS) file system innovation came from Be Inc. long ago. Apple was smart enough to hire ex-Be engineer Dominic Giampaolo who designed the BFS file system for BeOS. And we all know he is the brains (along with his talented team) behind Spotlight and HFS X. If it’s anyone who is copying, it would be Microsoft!
If Bill Gates is micro-soft. That begs the question, who is “longhorn?” Certainly not Ballmer.
As a user of both platforms (and also I prefer OS X), I can safely say that the MSN desktop search is not like Spotlight. It is similar, yes. However, it is nowhere near as good.
Maybe it is because I had installed the beta version of MSN Desktop Search, but it never properly indexed my drives. Also, it uses Internet Explorer to do the searching. I just don’t want to have to open a web browser to search my PC. And I don’t want to open IE anymore either.
Spotlight has blown me away. MS’s desktop search was uninstalled after a few days of trying to get it to work. It may be better now, and I will try it, but I doubt it will be as good as Spotlight.
Micro$oft should take legal action against Apple if they believe one of their technologies was lifted wholesale. It’ll be a nice change of pace for Micro$oft’s IP litigation team to sit on the plaintiff’s side of the courtroom for once…
Even IF the MSFT accusation could be remotely construed as possibly accurate ….
then ..
it seems to me, that Balmer / Gates and Co. would be getting some long awaited payback…. !!
After all … just where did they get the idea for the crappy GUI they use on their WinCrap OS ??
And if Apple did so how come Longhorn still isn’t out?
According to Apple they were in development of spotlight 3 to 4 years before Microsoft even announced Longhorn. I seriously doubt that Apple could have taken the idea away from Microsoft and have a fully functioning released version if Microsoft had thought of it first.
Admit it Apple… your engineers are SO MUCH BETTER than Microsoft’s that you can look at one of their products that has already reached beta, and still design, code, test, package, and release it faster than Microsoft can complete their beta program. We all know it’s true, but it’s funny to see Microsoft assert it.
One word…
BULLSHIT!.
Speaking of Al Gore…
FOR THE LAST TIME, F’ING REPUBLICANS…PAY ATTENTION…
(from snopes.com urban legend page)
Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he “invented” the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The “Al Gore said he ‘invented’ the Internet” put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition” program on 9 March 1999.
Clearly, although Gore’s phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he “invented” the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the “invention” of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word “invent,” and the words “create” and “invent” have distinctly different meanings — the former is used in the sense of “to bring about” or “to bring into existence” while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone’s thinking up or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words “create” and “invent” mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he “invented” the Internet, even though he never used that word, and transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)
If President Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while President, “created” the Interstate Highway System, we would not have seen dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he “invented” the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. Everyone would have understood that Ike meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with his Internet statement.
In May 2005, the organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements honored Al Gore with a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet.
Actually we just got impatient. We WERE going to copy the Longhorn implementation, but after 15 years of talking about WinFS by Microsoft we decided it was time to do it.
And doesn’t it make MS employees sound like whiny little girls to hear them claim that their little snap-on addition to Windows has much of the same functionality as Spotlight? Excuse me? Spotlight goes deep down into the guts of the OS. And I can telll you, even when WinFS hits the street fully formed (and finallym, to complete the alliteration) it still won’t work as well as Spotlight simply because of teh underlying OS it will be running on.
There’s a REASON Longhorn (a.k.a. Longshot) is taking so long to come out. (Hint: The job about the camel being a horse designed by a committe. Tiger has a committee of ONE to please.)
I refuse to eat your excrement, Mr. Gates.