“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
Q: What do Republican supporters on this site have in common with
George W. Bush?
A: Just read ron and Fred Mertz’s posts and work it out for yourself.
fsck Demoncats and fsck Repugnicans
Just like computer users are going Mac, so are people saying “fsck you” to the two-party system.
Something Microsoft is sweeping under the rug is that for their search to be anything like Spotlight, Longhorn needs to utilize a whole new file system, WinFS. They have already announced that WinFS will NOT be on Longhorn, and was one of the missing major features that made their beloved Longhorn go from being “revolutionary” to “evolutionary”.
To make it worse, even when WinFS comes out, the older files will remain non-WinFS files and they will not be able to be indexed with the same detail. This means that even WHEN WinFS is added to Longhorn and IF they have a Spotlight-quality search function, all of the older files could remain partially hidden from the new WInFS search.
With Microsoft at it’s unimaginable best, it is still a very poor copy of Apple.
It makes no difference who thought of it first. I can draw a picture of a flying car that a 10 year old could operate, but it is totally useless if I can’t create the plans to build one. Having an idea is far different than being able to make it come true. Apple not only does it, they do it right!
So instead you gussle down Steve Jobs Baby Badder huh??
All of you are Knob Goblin’, Spunk eaters.
Get a life.
(MW) Closed, as in, who gives a fsck? Except, ofcourse, all of you.
Re: politics…
We ain’t no republic and we ain’t no democracy. There is absolutely no doubt that the US has evolved into a oligarchy of the wealthy, individuals and large corporations. The people merely vote for which person seems to be the best liar that can best convincingly tell them what they want to hear. The two “parties” are merely political groups, both controlled by the wealthy, that cater to two slightly different types of corporations. That’s it!!
If you don’t believe me, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy , and tell me that it doesn’t describe the current political condition of the US!!
Not so long ago I read comments from someone at MS admitting that their search technology was partially inspired by iTunes. MS is trying to rewrite history again.
I wish Apple had copied Microsoft. Would have given MS a taste of their own medicine. fortunately for us, Apple does just fine on its own.
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It’s so satisfying to sense the fear coming out of Goliath.
Mike,
Great link. I like Wikipedia.
Didn’t Apple register some patents regarding Spotlight?
If Longhorn has been in development this long WHAT HAVE THESE PEOPLE BEEN DOING. They must be getting payed by the hour
Drunk New Orleans Guy.
OOOOwwww!!! Toucy, Touchy. Algore will love you when you’re sober. Line-up for your check. Or do they mail them now?
I had desktop indexed search in System 7 with a wonderful program called Thunder. Also used a time and contacts manager called Datebook/Touchbase Pro. Someone needs to copy both.
I was more productive in 1991 than I am now! Example: If I wanted to address a letter, I looked up the name in Touchbase, and selected a menu item that placed a properly formatted name/address on the clipboard, which I could then paste into the letter. Total time taken: about the time it took to type in the name and grab the mouse. You can’t do that in Address Book, at least that I have found. Sigh.
Now, I know that we don’t write as many letters as we used to, but WTF?
Did anyone listen to what Steve said in the Keynote. To paraphrase, he said that they realized they had already solved the speed of searching with iTunes.
Has any build of Longhorn been out longer than iTunes??
Duh!…I don’t think so!! Buncho dweebs at M$.
Besides, it don’t really exist until it’s out the door…if you can’t use it,
then what does it matter who was first.
M$in should be happy because they now have something to copy to get theirs right…but will they get it right?? I won’t be holding my breath.
Where does the “Algore” stuff come from? Is that a Rush Limbaugh creation?
Ron, et al, you have your heads up your asses.
I am so tired of reading moronic political namecalling on these boards. It’s even more annoying than all the lame nicknames for Microsoft and Longhorn.
Please, people, can’t we act like adults?
And now a short comment on Longhorn.
…
Thank you.
The story just claims that the concern is “internally within Microsoft.” Not the same as Microsoft making the claim.
BTW – isn’t internally within redundant? Must have read it out of context.
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D New Orleans G.
Al Gore DID say that! He was just not in the USA when he said it!
Stillborn well.
>Please, people, can’t we act like adults?>
>you have your heads up your asses>
You mean your kind of adolt?
On Location was a very fast archive search engine for the Mac back in the early 90’s. Spotlight reminds me of that except that SL does more.
well,
call me lazy…
5 minutes of googling will produce results like.
http://macobserver.com/article/2005/01/27.10.shtml
or to be precize:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1=apple.ASNM.&OS=an/apple&RS=AN/apple?JkoMt
obi
For the MS/Bush hegemony (former wouldn’t exist without the compliance and assistance of the latter), lies are the planks of their platform. So they will invent everything, fight for freedom while trying to kill it, steal while claiming to hate theft, cry for compassion while hurting people, and generally act in a way inconsistent with the truth.
Spotlight is an evolution of an Apple search technology called V-Twin developed in the 90’s. You can look at one of the first public mention of it in archive.org pages that date from 1997: http://web.archive.org/web/19970708094220/http://www.atg.apple.com/research/tech/V-Twin/ (Note that there is tons of other cool stuff on these pages, like a 3d Finder)
Guess what was planned for Copland using V-Twin? Smart folders and system wide find by content searches adapted to different file formats (modular descriptions of content format for easy indexing), and also integrated in applications like email… Rings a bell?
Spotlight is almost exactly what Apple planned in 1997 and probably even before. V-Twin was also used in subsequent Mac OS versions but in a very reduced form. They had been distracted by the failure of Copland… It was the dark days of Apple and then they had to transition to OS X, but now OS X is mature enough so that Tiger enables them to at last realize V-Twin’s potential.
These Microsoft employees are blatantly spreading FUD since Longhorn is looking more and more like their own Copland…
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?
Good call.. i was gonna say, “Losing their mind? Since when is lying odd behaviour?”
But you’re right.. lying lying lying..
Hey wait a minute.. iTunes was ripped off from longhorn too..cuz that’s where the fast search idea originated..
“Comment: From: Occasional Poster May 16, 05 – 01:49 pm
D New Orleans G.
Al Gore DID say that! He was just not in the USA when he said it!”
No, he really didn’t. The “journalist” responsible for starting that rumor was Declan McCullagh, who has somehow since landed himself a position at c|net. I went to school with the guy at CMU, and liked him at one point, but you don’t have to look much further than the student newspapers at the time (and the incident blotter) to know why I would take his assertions with a grain of salt.
Al Gore really was a visionary in the area of funding the Internet and promoting its cabailities within the government. The project that started the WWW was partially funded by a program he pushed through Congress. He co-sponsored the bill that moved the Internet from academia to commercial use. All the way back in 1986 he was giving speeches to Congress talking about how people would shop, bank, communicate, and such over the Internet… this was at the time of the ‘286, Windows 1.0, and 300 baud modems.
It’s a pity that the ridicule is diminishing his actual contributions to the Internet, because we probably wouldn’t be having this debate in this forum if not for some of his work in the government.
http://www.sethf.com/gore/
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/
Here’s a TinyURL of the link that Obimk1 posted:
http://tinyurl.com/7kccl
No URL needs to break over two lines…