A few months with Tiger--Dashboard was a fad but Spotlight has changed the world..

[EricNau]

Also is it just me or have people used spotlight to open up apps, documents and etc. I find it simpler to hit the apple + space bar and doing a quick search, then going through finder and multiple folder and scrolling.

I use spotlight sometimes to open some lesser-used apps, like calculator (I usually use the widget, or my scanning utility).

 

[Heb1228]

Does anyone here use "Smart Folders"? If so, in what manner?

Look here for discussion on smart folders:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/144842/

I use Spotlight, Dashboard, and Automator very frequently. (Actually I don't use Automator itself frequently, but Automator plugins I've made.) I don't use Smart Folders all that often, but when I have a need for them, they are VERY helpful.

I really don't understand the people that don't find Dashboard very helpful... I just counted and I have 8 widgets that I use on a daily basis and 4 or 5 others that are really useful in particular instances.

EDIT: If you need a place to look for more dashboard widgets, try:
http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/

The ones I use daily are:
Weather (Apple)
Stickies (Apple)
Address Book (Apple)
Uptime
System Stat (monitors CPU and memory usage)
QwickAlert (you can set it to speak a message at a certain time)
DashDock (puts a dock on your dashboard to launch less-commonly used apps)
Screenshot

I also use these fairly often:
Google Maps
Wikipedia
Calculator
Accordance Widget (integrates with another app I have installed)
and about 3 that have to do with different things in iTunes... album art, lyrics, etc...

 

[QCassidy352]

Yeah it definitelty searches the text of documents. Download OnyX and reindex Spotlight.

It didn't work!! What gives?

Some documents will come up, but others do not. This is happening on both my ibook and my G5. Is it possible that there's something about the document that's doing it?

edit: worth noting that at least one of the files that isn't coming up is a huge document - 500 pages. Could that matter?

 

[aswitcher]

If Spotlight worked a bit quicker on my Mac mini I would probably use it more - I find it frustrating typing something then seeing the results ever so slowly appear.

Yeah, that really sux. I find it very slow on my 17" 1.5GHz PB. I would prefer that there was an option so that I could type a whole word before it started displaying results. Consequently I find I dont use it as much as I would like.

Dashboard I use probably at least once every ten minutes with it set to a hot corner. Ideal for quickly checking world times, seeing the weather forecast, quickly doing a calculation - and one of my favourites, Sunlit Earth - I quite like seeing the night creep across the world!

Yeah Dashboard gets used often here. I just wish I could have multple Dashboards because I have run out of space.

 

[desenso]

Dashboards are what got me to switch to Apple. Admittedly, I don't use them as much as I used to, but when I need to look some stuff up (weather, mostly), it saves me a lot of time.

Spotlight has changed the way I use computers.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

Features used most frequently in order:

1) Exposé
2) Dashboard
3) Spotlight
4) Automator

Thank god [Jobs] for Exposé. I hate using Windows machines so much more because I don't have it.

Dashboard still sees daily use from me... And Spotlight, while not used as much, is definitely very helpful when called upon.

 

[swindmill]

I use Dashboard frequently throughout the day, but rearely if ever use spotlight. For apps, I use Quicksilver, so the only use Spotlight sees is when I can't find a document

 

[Apple]

My most used feature is expose with spotlight in a close second. With spotlight the navigation of your mac is such a breeze

 

[jbuba]

i'm still fairly new to macs (not counting the mac i had back in 1992 before switching to windows 95). i hardly ever use spotlight. i use spotlight when there's a file i can't find, but not as a replacement for how i use the computer. it works well, but i basically only use it as a search tool. call me lazy, but to me it's much easier to click a couple icons in finder than to have to click on spotlight, then take my hand off the mouse, type in some words, then select the file i want from the list and open it. and maybe it's just something i got used to using windows, but i organize all my files into folders and have to know exactly where everything is. Expose on the other hand is a feature i always use. i have it set as the squeeze on my mighty mouse and am constantly finding myself trying to squeeze the mouse at work, then realizing that i'm using windows.

 

[madmaxmedia]

i'm still fairly new to macs (not counting the mac i had back in 1992 before switching to windows 95). i hardly ever use spotlight. i use spotlight when there's a file i can't find, but not as a replacement for how i use the computer. it works well, but i basically only use it as a search tool. call me lazy, but to me it's much easier to click a couple icons in finder than to have to click on spotlight, then take my hand off the mouse, type in some words, then select the file i want from the list and open it. and maybe it's just something i got used to using windows, but i organize all my files into folders and have to know exactly where everything is.

I largely have everything organized too. Not meticulously into various subfolders, etc. but relatively organized. So the end result is that it's usually faster for me to just find the file myself than use Spotlight.

If Spotlight's search results were actually near-instantaneous as advertised, then that might change. The other thing that makes Spotlight slower for me is that I often have to try different search terms.

I still like having it though, because there will of course be times when you can find a file yourself...

 

[kjr39]

I rarely use dashboard and spotlight...just seems that I don't have a need for it.

Me either. I don't know that I've used either of them in the past month.

 

[bankshot]

Underwhelming

I have to say, Tiger's been a bit underwhelming for me. Before it was out, I bought into all the hype about how useful the new features were going to be. I believed it would change how I use my computer, for the better. I was excited. But it just hasn't been so.

Dashboard is nice, when I remember to use it. That's not very often. About all I do is check the weather report in the morning, but most days I forget to do even that.

I've used Spotlight a grand total of one time. It didn't find what I wanted. Turns out the file I was looking for was already backed up to CD and no longer online. Which is exactly why I said from the first moment Spotlight details became public that it must optionally maintain a database for offline media. You could have a preference to automatically index CDs and DVDs when you insert them (or have a little popup come up to ask if you want to). Then when you search in Spotlight, if it finds something relevant on a backup disc, it tells you the name of that disc.

Spotlight also doesn't even attempt to index network shares. I tried everything possible to get it to do this, but even when it pretended to index network drives, nothing ever came up in search results. I gave up. I realize that it can't provide realtime updates, but advanced users ought to be able to schedule weekly indexing of network drives for Spotlight searching. These two features would have made it insanely useful to me, as my data is spread out among several computers and on dozens of backup discs. The stuff on my Mac is fairly well organized, so I haven't needed it to find anything locally.

I've found that the Tiger features I appreciate most are what I'd marginally call bug fixes from Panther. Stuff that probably doesn't affect the vast majority (99.99%) of users. Like in Fast User Switching under Panther, if my screen saver was locked and I switched back into my account, I then had to enter my password a second time to unlock the screensaver. Tiger fixes this, realizing that I just typed it in as part of FUS. Yay.

Honestly I can't think of anything else that's a visible improvement to me, other than general speed increases. So underwhelming at this point that we haven't bothered to order Tiger for the iBook. Panther is still great on it.

 

[Moria]

I hardly ever use Dashboard, never have. It takes so long to load up (512 ram). The only reason I ever use it is to use the imageshack.us widget. I kept on pressing F12 by mistake and had to wait 15s or so for it to load up, I've changed the button to F8 now so I don't press it all the time when I'm trying to press delete.

I use Spotlight all the time though. I use it to find almost everything, launch apps and just about anything else I can think of. Considering 'Tiger' was on the first Mac I've had I wouldn't be able to live without it now.

 

[hyperpasta]

Disagree

Spotlight - Absolutely essential 1% of the time. Otherwise, never use it. Wouldn't want it taken away, though.

Dashboard - Completly non-essential, but it breathes a bit of life into my Mac and makes my day more fun. Love it.

Automator - Actually used only once. Similar to Spotlight, but use it even less. Seriously needs to start faster.

iChat AV - If my friends had iSights, I'd love it.

 

[slooksterPSV]

I hardly ever use Dashboard, never have. It takes so long to load up (512 ram). The only reason I ever use it is to use the imageshack.us widget. I kept on pressing F12 by mistake and had to wait 15s or so for it to load up, I've changed the button to F8 now so I don't press it all the time when I'm trying to press delete.

I use Spotlight all the time though. I use it to find almost everything, launch apps and just about anything else I can think of. Considering 'Tiger' was on the first Mac I've had I wouldn't be able to live without it now.

What kind of a Mac do you have?

 

[Dm84]

Does anyone here use "Smart Folders"? If so, in what manner?

I use Smart Folders. I'm editor-in-chief of my campus newspaper and have tons of newspaper-related files spread all over my PB. As soon a newspaper-related file comes in, I immediately attach a Spotlight comment to it (I created a Finder plug-in in Automator to do batch processing).

I have a Smart Folder set up to find all the files with this comment in it, so I can immediately sort through my relavent pictures, articles, Quark files, and PDFs. Without the Smart Folder, I would never be able to find everything, as I literally have hundreds of files spread out through my PB and hundreds more on a Firewire drive.

I'm also involved in a school related website design project, so I use the same method to attach spotlight comments to those files and have a Smart Folder set-up for that project as well.

I also have a Smart Folder that contains all school related information like class schedules and important forms in it.

It took me a while to figure out important Spotlight and Smart Folders were, but now that I understand it and use it, I could never go back to Panther.

 

[QCassidy352]

The ones I use daily are:
Weather (Apple)
Stickies (Apple)
Address Book (Apple)
Uptime
System Stat (monitors CPU and memory usage)
QwickAlert (you can set it to speak a message at a certain time)
DashDock (puts a dock on your dashboard to launch less-commonly used apps)
Screenshot

Hey, thanks for pointing out System Stat and Dashdock - both very nice little widgets! Now if only the TV tracker folks would get that working again...