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Do you think Spotlight will really work?

bubbamac said:
I'm currently using Quicksilver, which I don't think I can do without anymore. I'm assuming that Spotlight is similar. Correct?
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similar but totally different in the same respect

quicksilver is ultimately a "launcher"

it has access to bookmarks, address book info, etc via plugins...

but Spotlight actually maintains a database of this stuff ... not just that kind of information but text within PDF files, text within Word documents, Excel worksheets, powerpoint presentations, keynote presentations, plain text files, metadata from images (exposure settings, date taken), audio metadata (same as in itunes), bookmarks from safari, address book information, quicktime metadata, etc...

it's a SEARCH engine on your computer basically... take google, move it to your desktop and have it index your files.. you type in "pictures from june 20, 2003" and it will find references to all pictures from june 20, 2003.. and so on.. you can just say "june 20, 2003" and it will find all files created on, last edited, contains the text june 20, 2003, birthdates from addressbook information, etc

it literally can find anything in just about any file... best thing is via plugins you can have data from any other application put into spotlight too.. however the developers of said applications have to take advantage of it.. BUT it is totally possible.. spotlight isn't a launcher, it's a data search engine for information on your computer
 
mkrishnan said:
So if you have Office documents on your computer, will it search all the words in them, or just indexed words? How do the words get into the index? Ditto, I guess for pdfs? That is, if I download a PDF from the web that wasn't particularly designed for Spotlight or for desktop search, it will be searched as effectively in Spotlight as a file I create on my computer?

I seem to remember a while ago reading that Office would have to be upgraded to get Spotlight compatibility, but I don't see that on Apple's site anymore.
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I haven't done specific testing on Spotlight, but it seems to find more or less everything, so I'm guessing "Spotlight compatibility" might just mean that Spotlight doesn't have to do a brute force indexing of the contents (i.e., the file's metadata might be sufficient). Of course, to be compatible, the files have to at least be understandable to Spotlight - meaning textual or otherwise known to Spotlight. Office docs can be pretty obscure in raw format, so maybe that's what was meant.

Files you download which are of the same format (like, say, PDF) would be indexed just as well and quickly as ones you create.
 
joshuawaire said:
How long did it take to index?
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Unfortunately, all I can say is "a while". the last time I did a full index, I started it before bed, left my home office shortly thereafter, and didn't get back to my Mac until after work the next day - so, "less than 24 hours" for my files, but I'll pay more attention next time.

Of course, you don't have to sit there and wait for it - it happens in the background.
 
mkrishnan said:
So if you have Office documents on your computer, will it search all the words in them, or just indexed words? How do the words get into the index? Ditto, I guess for pdfs? That is, if I download a PDF from the web that wasn't particularly designed for Spotlight or for desktop search, it will be searched as effectively in Spotlight as a file I create on my computer?

I seem to remember a while ago reading that Office would have to be upgraded to get Spotlight compatibility, but I don't see that on Apple's site anymore.
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see my previous response for a bit more information..

but PDF is a standard in a way... all PDF documents are well.. unless encrypted or DRMed .. any PDF reader should technically be able to pull the text out of the PDF file.. apple provides this.. when a file is "saved" spotlight notices this.. and invokes a plugin for that file type. it says "this is a pdf file, it was saved meaning it could've been changed, or be a totally different file.. let's index it now"... opens the file and then gathers all info from the pdf file.

same goes for Word documents. "this file changed, or this file has been added to the filesystem. i should index it now." it then proceeds to open the correct plugin for spotlight that handles word files, and then indexes all the information in it.

since most apps can "read" word files.. it's actually writing them out most of the time that is the problem.. then you can kinda half-ass a plugin for word documents. however it could be a LOT better if microsoft provided a spotlight plugin for office that actually understood everything about the file format. technically you could tell spotlight to search for "bold instances of the word YELLOW" and have it find that..
 
mkrishnan said:
Thanks, JSW and Logik! Do the current betas of Tiger already Spotlight Office.X or Office/2004 documents?
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If I remember, I'll check for you when I boot into Tiger tomorrow!
 
Spotlight looks fabulous and really revolutionary. Does anyone who has it know if you have to invoke spotlight by pressing the icon in the toplight or is there also a global hotkey. If i'm searching alot, i would hope I wouldnt have to constantly be moving tot he top corner.

Thanks,

iBonzo
 
sigamy said:
Is Spotlight going to be the next File Vault?
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<snip>

No

sigamy said:
I just can't see Apple pulling this off. The technology isn't ready yet.
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Nonsense.

I'm not gonna break my NDA by giving details, but suffice to say that once it has done the initial indexing following installation, Spotlight works REAL well. As a previous poster said, it's lightning fast.
 
killergator said:
I have 500 gigs of hard drive space to index . It took a while for the space to be indexed, but now its quicker than greased owl poot. It works flat out. Dashboard would be my guess as the next file vault unless they get some better apps in it. Right now its a glorified apple menu.
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I think Dashboard will be a Sherlock replacement.
 
I'm curious about how Spotlight actually works. When it indexes all of these files, does it create a sort of "library" somewhere on your drive? If so, how much space would this take up.

Seems like a lot to me... But then again, I'm no engineer.
 
Mavimao said:
I'm curious about how Spotlight actually works. When it indexes all of these files, does it create a sort of "library" somewhere on your drive? If so, how much space would this take up.

Seems like a lot to me... But then again, I'm no engineer.
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yeh, i was just wondering that. how much space does the indexing take up? i hope its not much as my internal drive is already very full (i want a bigger one but it will void my apple care :()

also, not to hijack the thread or anything, is the tiger instillation itself much larger than panther? how many gb's?
 
killergator said:
I have 500 gigs of hard drive space to index . It took a while for the space to be indexed, but now its quicker than greased owl poot. It works flat out. Dashboard would be my guess as the next file vault unless they get some better apps in it. Right now its a glorified apple menu.
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My instinct is dashboard will not be the next file vault.

Apple may provide some pretty generic widgets, which is your opinion. (Personally, I think they will be useful.)

But opinions on the widgets really don't matter. What does matter is Apple has developed a simple development platform for some top-shelf widgets to be created for. We already have three websites dedicated to widgets and Tiger is not out yet, and I am certain we will see pro quality widgets from software developers for a nominal fee.

File Vault sucks because it's implementation is poor. It's a great idea, but Apple needs to give a choice on what to encrypt. Encrypting music and photos is stupid.

But Dashboard looks to be the opposite. A fantastic implementation of a simple, but great idea. I think it'll be the next Exposé--under-appreciated at first, indispensable after a few days of using it.
 
sigamy said:
Is Spotlight going to be the next File Vault? I'm not sure how well it is working now but right after Panther's release there were tons of issues with File Vault. Most of the resoultions boiled down to simply turning it off.

I'm wondering how well Spotlight will work? I've just searched a 2,000 page PDF inside Acrobat on my windows machine. It took over 10 minutes. How in the world is Spotlight going to search my entire hard drive? I guess everything will be indexed when I'm sleeping? But what happens when I change a few documents thru the day--there has to be incremental indexing, right?

I just can't see Apple pulling this off. The technology isn't ready yet.
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You're right. It's a horrible hoax. Smells like another class action suit.
 
iBonzo said:
Spotlight looks fabulous and really revolutionary. Does anyone who has it know if you have to invoke spotlight by pressing the icon in the toplight or is there also a global hotkey. If i'm searching alot, i would hope I wouldnt have to constantly be moving tot he top corner.
Click to expand...

I've been wondering about this too. Can anyone confirm the existence of a global hotkey for Spotlight?
 
i'd imagine that in the finder apple-f would do it, but maybe you would be able to set a function key, like for expose and dashboard.
 
How big of database will be created by spotlight for it's searching purposes? Are we talking 100's of MBs, GB's, or just a few MB's? I haven't had a chance to use a machine with Tiger, but I would be interested to know what size of databases are being created. :)
 
Billicus said:
How big of database will be created by spotlight for it's searching purposes? Are we talking 100's of MBs, GB's, or just a few MB's? I haven't had a chance to use a machine with Tiger, but I would be interested to know what size of databases are being created. :)
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Hmmm ... Wouldn't that depend on the number, size and type of files you have on your system?
 
ya

BigDogg said:
I think spotlight will be very fast. In the demo that Steve uses the spotlight program I do not recall it being slow at all, but of course this was probably on a supped up PM. :rolleyes:
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No Kidding, Steve prolly has the next gen dual 3.0 ghz powermac sitting on his desk at all of these expos as well as superfast 10k+ rpm hds. this is not saying tiger and spotlight arent gonna be fast or work as well as steve says they are, just sayin that steve has the top of the line stuff to show off at the expos.
 
Actually, I think that Steve has a small Xserve cluster along with a few PowerMacs (as backup systems) under his desk at expos. But who knows?

Spotlight is fast. You guys might think it's just because of Steve's equipment, but it really is fast. Granted, I have the original "World's Fastest Personal Computer" with a dev copy of Tiger, but it is fast.

BTW, I think the global hot key for Spotlight is apple+spacebar, but I'll have to check it out when I download the latest build.
-Chase
 
dejo said:
Reminds me of doing a "Find In Files..." on Windows. Using the OS solution it's painfully slow. But when I do it from within TextPad, it's pretty damn fast! Seems like the TextPad coders used some kind of "grep" approach, whereas the Windows OS coders opted for the "anti-grep"...
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Woohoo, another Textpad user! What a great piece of software. It's the only Windows shareware program I've ever used enough to justify paying for, and every penny was well spent.

And to be on topic, umm... Spotlight looks awesome.
 
mkrishnan said:
Thanks, JSW and Logik! Do the current betas of Tiger already Spotlight Office.X or Office/2004 documents?
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It does Office X docs. Don't have Office2K4, so can't verify that.
 
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