“This year… Apple Computer Inc. introduced Spotlight with the release of its Tiger operating system. Spotlight works like Google Desktop Search but is integrated directly into the operating system and works directly with the system’s applications, allowing yet another level of search granularity. Microsoft Corp. will soon follow suit with its Windows Vista release, which will have its own indexing tool imbedded into the operating system,” Geoff Barrall writes for Computerworld.
“Having used Spotlight for several months now, I can honestly say I no longer use the file system to find files. If I need to find anything, I just punch it into Spotlight, and I have the location immediately. It’s much quicker than browsing among folders, and the files can be opened or dragged and dropped from Spotlight. Better yet, I can make rules-based “smart folders” whose contents are created automatically — all Excel documents created in the past 10 days by anybody in finance, for example. With these kinds of technologies, the mechanics of the underlying file system are becoming irrelevant,” Barrall writes.
“Once indexing technologies reach the corporate infrastructure, users will start to demand a simple way to save their work, or, more likely, they will begin saving it in a haphazard manner because it won’t make a difference. Indexing the actual contents of documents adds even more value and to a certain degree makes even the file name irrelevant as a way of identifying documents,” Barrall writes. “Although file systems will most likely be with us for quite a while, it’s quickly becoming evident that we can easily manage our data without actually needing a file system. We are beginning to realize that a better solution lies beyond the current mess of files and directories and once these powerful new tools become normal for everyday users, the file system, as we know it, will be history.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll take awhile, especially as all of us still have most of our files organized in nested folders, but imagine a 5-year-old starting today with Mac OS X and Spotlight without the baggage of years of organizing things into hierarchical folders. Used correctly, there is arguably no longer a need to “organize” your files into folders with Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight and properly utilizing Smart Folders.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mossberg: Apple’s Spotlight search technology ‘speedy,’ no need to periodically index files – June 21, 2005
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
Oh no, not this argument again! Yes, there is a need to organize files. Unless you don’t mind endless clutter, since you can’t remember why you are keeping a particular file around. Or unless you don’t care about keeping the right version of a particular file with the right version of others files, both of which change. Or unless searching through a huge mass of files somehow pleases you better than searching through a much narrower scope of organized files. Or unless…
DistantThunder has a point. It’s really hard to clean off a hard drive when you don’t know what’s on it.
Spotlight is a fabulous search tool, but why consider it a wholesale exchange for an organized file system?
After seeing literally hundreds of people’s hard drives, and seeing how they ‘organize’ them, it seems to me that Spotlight is a good tool for those who have no sense of organization and need a good tool to find something. For the rest of us, we’ll keep using folders and organizing.
It amazes me how something so simple as creating a folder and naming it escapes people’s understanding
I agree… if you’re a video editor, or any type of creative user of the computer, you’ll need to keep files together related to any particular project. Searching is meaningless when you’re working on a project.
Or unless searching through a huge mass of files somehow pleases you better than searching through a much narrower scope of organized files
—-
Huh? Big deal.. Spotlight narrows the “search” to a handful of files.. how is this less convenient than trudging through folders and sub folders…
Many of the posters here seem to have used Spotlight only in a cursory way and seem to lack understanding of the Smart Folder concept. If you use Smart Folders, you don’t have to “search” for anything. But, you have to actually use them first to understand how Spotlight is a massive paradigm shift. Tiger users, print this PDF, read it, and use the info contained within – you’ll be glad you did: http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_Spotlight_TB.pdf
people that say spotlight is going to replace directory hierarchies have never written code for a living.
Even starting from scratch with spotlight I still don’t think it’s quite at the stage where you can do without folders, being able to find any file involves metadata and at the moment the tools aren’t there to add it easily.
For example when creating a new file (ie saving something) there is no way to add spotlight comments, you have to save the file, find it, then add the comments. The same goes for colour labels. These things should be built into the save box in Tiger.
“Once indexing technologies reach the corporate infrastructure, users will start to demand a simple way to save their work, or, more likely, they will begin saving it in a haphazard manner because it won’t make a difference. Indexing the actual contents of documents adds even more value and to a certain degree makes even the file name irrelevant as a way of identifying documents…it’s quickly becoming evident that we can easily manage our data without actually needing a file system”
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That thought scares me. I don’t think Spotlight will work they great when you need to search through a terabyte of information to find your file. And what a nightmare it will be when users start saving documents to any empty place on their harddrive instead of taking an extra second to find the proper network location. And I can’t think of any scenario where a file name will be irrelevant.
I rarely use spotlight, as my system is organized and I tend to work on 3-5 projects at a time, which I can easily manage myself. Especially since I place those projects on my sidebar which is so sweet.
Spotlight has been phenomenal for me. I’m working on my dissertation proposal and have had to search through tons of articles, most as pdfs. Just by searching for a short phrase I know to be in the article, Spotlight brings up all the relevant sources. It’s even found stuff I thought I had lost years ago when I was a Mac newbie switching from OS 9 to OSX. I love this feature and need it– even though I am not one of the “disorhganized” people mentioned by some others in this thread…
I’ve used Spotlight since it shipped. I use Smart Folders. Spotlight and Smart Folders are great.
However…
This arguement sounds exactly like the arguement of several pundits 20 years ago when Windows 1.0 shipped (and Mac System had been shipping for a while). Many claimed that this would be the end of the command line interface. Yet that still exists.
Even in OS X (arguably the best GUI out there) the Terminal comes standard.
You naysayers are exactly what MDN are talking about – you have too many years under your belts where you forced yourselves to be organized because the computer couldn’t interface with you correctly. Now, with Spotlight, the computer is beginning to be able to help you. Old timers will ignore that help – stuck inside their boxes – and continue wasting time.
We younger folk aren’t so locked into set ways of thinking. We’ll adapt. MDN is right, the 5-year-olds starting on Tiger today will not be using hierarchical folders to organize files – the computer will be doing the organization. As it should be.
Old dogs, try to learn the new tricks, or at least shut the hell up and stop advertising your age and outmoded, set ways of thinking.
Mac users are meant to be young (in mind at least), adaptable, and able to Think Different. If not: http://www.dell.com is for you. Enjoy the Vista.
Spotlight works even better when used with an organized file system. Attach keywords to your folders and it is faster and more accurate. For even more, check out DevonThink, DevonAgent and DevonNote. It’s very cool and is even better on Tiger with Spotlight.
looks like I can be a slob after all
to use smart folders more often. I didn’t realize until now how powerful they can be for organization.
Oh yeah, and computer typesetting will replace handwriting and pencils and paper will become history.
“but imagine a 5-year-old starting today with Mac OS X and Spotlight without the baggage of years of organizing things into hierarchical folders. Used correctly, there is arguably no longer a need to “organize” your files into folders with Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight and properly utilizing Smart Folders.”
I am just imagining a fifty years old who is going to make an erase and install after saving all his documents and who will dump everything in the documents folder and use smart folders and perhaps one or two special folders for very special things and Macabinet. Oh, the happy man !
Excuse me, but what a crock!
Doing away with an organized file system, which is what the Spotlight freaks are advocating, would mean that, from now on, thanks to Spotlight, I can save all my files in any old location at all, without putting them in folders with meaningful names… just anywhere at all.
There’s only one problem! What if I don’t remember the name of the file I’m looking for? In the dark ages before Spotlight enlightened the desktop universe, I would have saved that file in a folder whose name I probably DO remember—e.g. Vacation Photos 2005. Having done that, I wouldn’t need to remember the name of the photo, or even its exact location. All I would really need to find that file is one keyword (e.g. “vacation”).
Now enter Spotlight. To find the same file, which could live almost anywhere on my hard drive, I have to remember a keyword from that particular file’s name. Searching for the photo by category keyword (e.g. “vacation”) is now useless to me because I’m no longer saving files in meaningful locations.
What a big improvement!!! Give me a break!
You have no idea how this thing work, have you ?
MDN, circa 2010: “Looking for a way to speed up Spotlight? Needing help sorting all those similar but subtly different versions of documents and data files? Needing help knowing what is safe to throw away? You may not realize it, but your Mac sports a powerful and innovative organizational tool called Finder that leverages decades of information-organizing expertise to help you manage your digital assets….”
mike: “Huh? Big deal.. Spotlight narrows the “search” to a handful of files.. how is this less convenient than trudging through folders and sub folders…”
Huh? Good folder organization eliminates the need to trudge through folders and subfolders.
I’m not against Spotlight. I use it. Organization + Spotlight = Good Computer Practice. (Although personally I find Spotlight too slow, I use LaunchBar for much of its capability.) But there is absolutely no way I could dump all of my files into one pot and use Spotlight as a replacement for organized files, as this article suggests. It may work for game-and-homework computer users, but for those of us who manage all kinds of digital assets (and I don’t mean pics and music merely), it is not sufficient.
“Once indexing technologies reach the corporate infrastructure”
Um… Helloooooo? Who wrote this gumpf? Indexing technology has been around the corporate world for years in the form of document management systems. There are still a plethora of files on hard drives, but guess what, even in document management systems, there are still tight filing structures in place, things aren’t just tossed in with the hope they can be found again using freeform search.
Spotlight is only as good as your ability to remember the words in your document. There’s been numerous occassions where I haven’t been able to find something using Spotlight because I couldn’t find the right words to search on.
Spotlight is for getting to your stuff faster, but you’d be mad not to continue to employ good filing structure practices.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
I’ve used DevonTHINK for two years which has excellent file searching built in, but I’ve still continued to use folder hierarchies.
I find spotlight to be a pain. It throws back too many results. I still use find, name contains, method. Seems to work better. Spotlight requires you to be a little more specific than just typing in ‘Lett’ to find ‘Letter to Mary’ for example. It’ll throw back anything that has an occurance of ‘lett’ in it. Including files buried deep within the system. Html files from the DVD help folder, Pdf files, just files from everywhere. I still have to wade through Spotlights results to find what I’m looking for.