Normal Search vs. Spotlight?

[ppc_michael]

Hello, my name's Michael, and I'm a n00b to the forums (although a long-time lurker).

I have 10.4 pre-ordered, and am currently on 10.3. I use the built-in search box in the top-right of Finder windows a lot, and it produces results almost instantly. I was wondering what the "big deal" is about Spotlight, then? I've heard that is searches within documents, but this can be done in 10.3 as well.

I'm certainly not "bashing" Spotlight, I'm just wondering what the difference is.

Thanks!

 

[Cooknn]

From Apple's Spotlight page:

Microsoft Word documents, Photoshop images and emails, already contain rich metadata. And because Spotlight indexes content as well, your search results include what appears inside a file or document, not just its title.

It appears as though Spotlight will be much more than we are used to with Finder's search. Should be interesting.

 

[Androit]

Hello, my name's Michael, and I'm a n00b to the forums (although a long-time lurker).

I have 10.4 pre-ordered, and am currently on 10.3. I use the built-in search box in the top-right of Finder windows a lot, and it produces results almost instantly. I was wondering what the "big deal" is about Spotlight, then? I've heard that is searches within documents, but this can be done in 10.3 as well.

I'm certainly not "bashing" Spotlight, I'm just wondering what the difference is.

Thanks!

Have you ever tried to search within the files before? It takes forever to search for a particular word in all the files on your computer. This is different in that its already indexed and keeps all the information in the index up to date all the time. Plus the search feature is available from anywhere without switching to the Finder to search first. Plus it can easily be integrated into applications to quickly search those files associated with that app or to create smart folders to help with orginization. And as you add new files that match the criteria they are already grouped into smart folders without making duplicates. In this way a single file can be in eight (for example) different folders without having to duplicate it. Plus they've made it easy for third party applications to take advantage of the same types of features. Plus if there are strange proprietary file formats plug ins can be created so spotlight knows how to index those files, which was not possible in the old finder search.

So in a nutshell its tons faster, its tons more integrated and its tons more expandable.

 

[ppc_michael]

Ah, that sounds good indeed! Thanks for clearing that up. For a moment there I was worried it was just some marketing thing.

 

[Androit]

Ah, that sounds good indeed! Thanks for clearing that up. For a moment there I was worried it was just some marketing thing.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/

check that page out. If you have a high speed connection watch the video they provide on the right where it says "Watch the quicktime demo"

 

[MacNemesis]

Hello, my name's Michael, and I'm a n00b to the forums (although a long-time lurker).

I have 10.4 pre-ordered, and am currently on 10.3. I use the built-in search box in the top-right of Finder windows a lot, and it produces results almost instantly. I was wondering what the "big deal" is about Spotlight, then? I've heard that is searches within documents, but this can be done in 10.3 as well.

I'm certainly not "bashing" Spotlight, I'm just wondering what the difference is.

Thanks!

Want to see a list of all quicktime movies that are at least 300 pixels by 400 pixels and more than 3:05 long?

Want to find all word documents that are at least 3 pages, but not more than 5 pages long with the word "annual report" in them?

Want to find any image file that was taken with your digital camera with a focal length of greater then 42 mm and didn't use a flash?

Easy schemeezy and very quick. I imagine that some of the data sets you were working with were limited or perhaps simple queries (filename queries are quick(er) because it can simply queue the file tree)

Oh and you can save those results to an auto updating folder so you can always see the most current files that meet that criteria.

And developers can extend the metadata controls to support more media types.

It's beyond cool.

 

[Cooknn]

Want to find any image file that was taken with your digital camera with a focal length of greater then 42 mm and didn't use a flash?

You've gotta be joking That is just too cool!

 

[stcanard]

You've gotta be joking That is just too cool!

Not only that, but it will give you all the results in less time than it takes you to produce that search (okay, not less, but only because it can't finish searching before you finish specifying the search!)

But wait there's more...

Do you have two cameras? Well why don't you create a folder of the photos you took with the Canon, and the one of the photos you took with the Nikon.

Or, the folder of all financial / tax documents for the current year. It doesn't matter that some of the are filed under investments, some under condo income.

Now it's not magic. I've already started thinking about this, and my file naming is going to have to change to be more descriptive. I'll probably have to start using keywords more. But the possibilities are fascinating.

Although those of use with database backgrounds will probably get more out of it than the average person, just because of the nature of it. That, smart mailboxes in mail, and RSS query bookmarks will be to me the kller features (okay, and dashboard and core video/audo/image, but I digress).

 

[reidab]

Spotlight makes me SO HAPPY that I already spent hours tagging my 10k+ digital photos with IPTC metadata (location, people, keywords, etc) WHEEEEEEEEEEE!