“If you’re part of the ‘other 90 percent,’ you might have had a bit of Mac envy if you read my recent review of Apple’s new Tiger operating system. Windows users take heart. All is not lost,” Larry Magid writes for CBS News. “I praised Apple’s new Spotlight feature that allows users to quickly find any file, email message, contact, image or application based on any word or phrase contained in the document.”
“I pointed out that there are a number of Windows programs that perform similar functions but added, ‘because Spotlight is integral to the Mac operating system, it is not only faster than those Windows add-on products; it’s also more elegant and easier to use.’ What I wrote was true, but just because the PC products aren’t quite as good as what is now available for the Mac, doesn’t mean they aren’t worth trying out,” Magid writes.
Magid then covers Google search and Copernic in a sad (if you’re a Windows-only user) article designed to help Windows users attempt to “be like a Mac,” just as Windows itself strives so hard, but fails so miserably, to do. Which might have been Magid’s point all along.
Magid concludes, “while none of these programs is quite as good as Apple’s Spotlight, they’re all pretty good which, considering the price, isn’t so bad. Of course, Microsoft plans to offer a well-integrated desktop search program in the next version of Windows, but don’t search for a copy of that program anytime soon. It’s not scheduled to be released until Christmas 2006.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is the funniest article we’ve read in quite some time. This piece for Windows patchers ought to have been titled “Bondo for Windows!” and subtitled, “How to pretend you have Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight, just not as good (but you’re used to that).”
What about all the rest of Mac OS X Tiger? How can Windows users perform “similar functions,” but with slower, inelegant, and harder-to-use solutions?
We’ve got some real news for Windows users. Contrary to what Magid writes, all actually is lost. Enough already! You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Get a Mac. Don’t you deserve the best? Are you somehow unworthy of having the world’s most advanced operating system? If it makes you feel better, just add a Mac to your computing arsenal – it’ll talk to your Windows PC just fine. You can decide later if you feel like continuing to use the Windows PC anymore. Just stop trying to fake it to save three bucks, it’s pitiful.
For more information about smoothly adding a safe, secure, powerful, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal, please click here. For inexpensive entry to the Mac platform, you might want to take a look at Apple’s new Mac Mini which starts at just US$499 — it just might be the perfect machine for you. And don’t forget to order it with 512MB RAM, you’ll want it.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple unveils new faster iMac G5 line with built-in AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth, 512MB base RAM, more – May 03, 2005
The Independent: Apple’s ‘faster, smarter, simpler’ Mac OS X Tiger ‘a must-have’ – May 04, 2005
Jupiter Research VP: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘runs rings around Microsoft Windows’ – May 04, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger review for a Windows PC audience finds Tiger’s ‘far, far better than Windows XP’ – May 03, 2005
Longhorn mentioned in nearly every Apple Mac OS X Tiger review to assuage Windows masses – May 02, 2005
Boston Herald: Mac OS X Tiger should compel Windows PC users to think about switching to Apple Mac – May 02, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger will likely improve performance of your Macintosh – April 30, 2005
PC World review gives Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger 4.5 stars out of 5 – April 30, 2005
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – April 28, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system around’ – April 28, 2005
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – April 28, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’ – April 28, 2005
InformationWeek columnist: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘a compelling upgrade’ – April 28, 2005
NY Times: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is the most secure, stable and satisfying OS on earth – April 28, 2005
Wired News: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘full of welcome surprises’ – April 27, 2005
Spotlight is the most amazing piece of operating system software yet created… for me to POOP ON!!!
Yeh-hehh-hessss!!!!
“You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”
I don’t have anything to add to that.
Dude, really — you don’t even do me well.
Get back to the coat check.
Being a windows user is the same thing as jumping over a $100 bill to save a penny! Idiots!
Good one, Andrew, hadn’t heard that one before.
I do you pretty good… every night, ball breath.
Yeh-heh-hesss you do Spe, yes you do.
May I poop on you? Glass bottom boat?
“And in next week’s article we will be learning how to build a mobile phone from two empty plastic-cups connected with a string…”
I can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, just ask your girlfriend.
mw: ready…need I say more!
SPeaking of Spotlight, it doesn’t seem to be indexing my entire external hard drive. I’ve forced it to index three times now, and still am not getting all the results I should be. Anyone else having this issue?
So the problem with google desktop search is that it isn’t integrated with the os, “elegant”, or cost anything? LOL it “just works”, after the indexing, which isn’t invasive. So I have to pay $129 for a feature for my mac mini that I get for free on all my wintels.
That makes NO sense.
I expected Spotlight to be good, just not this good. The first search I ran actually found the word typed into a layer in a Photoshop file! That is efficiency!
Get a clue joe. Go run your wintels and I will save my breath.
Joe,
The Magid article doesn’t describe Google Search as equal to Spotlight. It calls it substandard to Spotlight. Therefore it’d be perfect for Windows users who are already used to “substandard as standard” anyway.
What about all the rest of Tiger’s features, as MDN asks? How are you going to poorly simulate them on the backwards, woefully behind, Windows XP platform?
MDN says it best, “Enough already! You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Get a Mac.”
better “simulation” spend 499 on a mini!
“I have to pay $129 for a feature for my mac mini that I get for free on all my wintels.
That makes NO sense.”
If that were true it wouldn’t, personally I use copernic on my PC, and although pretty good, it just doesn’t come close to Spotlight, they aren’t even in the same league.
Try this in google joe;
Download a PDF say a Map of your city then type your street name see what results you get from the search.
Now type that with Spotlight…..
Amazing
Not to grant anything to Windows, but guess what’s on display in one of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museums?
MDN MW “known”. As in someone should have known about Ripley’s sow’s ear silk purse, before uttering the old cliche.
Joe, Google indexing is like all passive indexing. They get out of date.
Spotlight doesn’t.
Google indexing is nothing more what Mac OS had since OS 8, ie, index your HD and provide you search result based on the static index. After a while it is useless.
That is, Windows finally got a Mac OS version after years time.
You have to wait many more years to get something like Spotlight. Google just gives you Mac OS 8 indexing feature.
Enjoy pre-history.
And before someone says “Google indexes often so not to be THAT out of date” the reply is YAHWNN, so did indexing of OS 8. Nothing new.
Spotlight goes through the kernel, the thing is real time. Set a spotlight search for “Bubbalukkkabooo” to fill a smart folder, get a new file in textedit, type Bubbalukkkabooo and save it. BAM it gets in the smart folder.
With Google Desktop you have to wait for the next indexing process, just like Mac OS 8 did. Welcome to pre-history Joe. Was about time.
Windows users will drive 5 miles to save a penny on a gallon of gas.
From the article: “Indexing is a relatively intense process so if an index is in progress, your PC could be pretty sluggish. To get around that, the programs suspend the indexing if you do anything at your PC, such as moving the mouse or typing at the keyboard. “
As IT_guy says, we had this with Mac OS 8 already. Boy, it took all those years for Windows to catch up with … OS 8.
ROFLMAO
HUHAHAOHOHHOHOHUHOAHAHAHAHHAUHAOHUHEUAHAHEOUHH
Brought tears to my eyes
UHIHUEHOHOHAHUHHOEIHUOEEHUIOEHU
AND, as it was pointed out, Spotlight can give you a PDF map as a result of “New York” and that map happens to cover that area.
Google desktop (and Mac OS 8) could not find that for you.
Citing again: “My other favorite free desktop search program is from Copernic. Like Yahoo, it places an optional search bar in the lower right corner of the screen where you can quickly type in a word or phrase you’re seeking. With Copernic, you have to specify whether you’re looking for a word in an email, file, contact, music, picture or video while Yahoo displays all the information automatically. “
Oh my, this is again Mac OS 8 indexing. So you have to type a word contained in the file, whatever you are looking for.
Know what? Spotlight goes beyond that. You are not limited to a ‘word’ physically contained into a file. Again, welcome to Mac OS 8 (for that feature that is) Windozers.
“So, while none of these programs is quite as good as Apple’s Spotlight, they’re all pretty good which, considering the price, isn’t so bad. Of course, Microsoft plans to offer a well-integrated desktop search program in the next version of Windows, but don’t search for a copy of that program anytime soon. It’s not scheduled to be released until Christmas 2006. “
Oh my, oh my. So sad. Those program as probably as good as indexing in Mac OS 8. Sooooo old.
This is grand: “The Google Desktop full text indexes:
Text files, Microsoft Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations living on your hard drive
Email handled through Outlook or Outlook Express
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) conversations
Web pages browsed in Internet Explorer
Additionally, any other files you have lying about–photographs, MP3s, movies–are indexed by their filename. So while the Google Desktop can’t tell a portrait of Uncle Alfred (uncle_alfred.jpg) from a song by “Uncle Cracker” (uncle_cracker__double_wide__who_s_your_uncle.mp3), it’ll file both under “uncle.”
LOL, not as good as Spotlight? Not as good as Mac OS 8 indexing: it would have told the difference and find you Uncle Alfred.
Sorry Windozers, not even on par with Mac OS 8. Try again.
Joe,
While I like your politics, your concern about the price of Spotlight is a bit myopic. The $129 (actually, you can get it for $79 in several places online) is to buy THE WHOLE OS not just Spotlight. It might actually be the FREE part of the OS. RSS, iChatAV, Mail, Dashboard, QT, Automator, etc. are what you are paying the $79 for.
I remember once what an Apple rep told me after hearing one of my clients complain about the one button mouse, “Feel free to go out and pick up any mouse you like, Apple throws the one button into the box for free.”
For Joe and the other intellectually honest PC users out there I can only say this. Now is the time to really make the switch. Panther was very good. Tiger is amazing. It is the OS that all of us have been looking for since the early days of the groundbreaking Amiga OS. We finally get a mature, adult GUI OS for the first time ever on any platform. XP is so last decade. Time to moveon.
-B