Apple’s Spotlight spells the end of the file system

21 years ago

“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.