Say for example that I wanted to play a song by that great band from Guelph, Ontario, The Kramdens. With spotlight, unless I can actually name the song, I'm SOL. Typing "kramdens" into spotlight reveals only files and directories with that name.
But with Windows 7 (Vista and XP as well, actually) my search tool has indexed not just the file name, but also all the mp3 tags. So I not only see the folder named Kramdens, but also all the songs on my computer that are written and/or performed by The Kramdens. I also see the names of folders that contain albums of their work. 
I tried the same experiment with the Dock/Spotlight tool that Mac-heads seem to be raving about called QuickSilver. The results were even worse. It doesn't seem to be indexing my portable drive at all and finds only the images I saved in preparing for this post.
check out QuickSilver by Blacktree. It's free and it's awesome. also, do a search on youtube on quicksliver and be prepared to be wowed! the Appleblog also has a good tuturial.
ReplyDeleteWhoops! I meant to say that maybe your your expectations were too high? Spotlight is ok, but it's not everything. To me its the overall Mac experience, not the little things that count. Windows, Linux and the Mac all have their strengths and their weakness. I just don't put to much stock in any of them, otherwise your we are just setting ourselves up for disapointment.
ReplyDeleteWhoops! I meant to say that maybe your your expectations were too high? Spotlight is ok, but it's not everything. To me its the overall Mac experience, not the little things that count. Windows, Linux and the Mac all have their strengths and their weakness. I just don't put to much stock in any of them, otherwise your we are just setting ourselves up for disapointment.
ReplyDeleteSorry but there is no such thing as "expectations were too high" here. From your words, it seems like you have some sentiment against people who complaint on things that you think as "no big deal". What? There is nothing wrong when people pay much attention on specific/detail stuff. Computing is no longer an "overall experience" anymore these days. There are people who deserve the best even from the smallest part from the overall subject.
I agree with halfey. My expectations are informed by Windows 7. How can they be too high? They are only based on my experience with a competing product.
ReplyDeleteWell, sometimes I think it is not only shocking but also funny to see that the so-called 'powerful' Spotlight on Mac OS X can only search based on file/folder names. Meta-tag search support has been around since Windows XP, why didn't Apple learn (copy) something from Microsoft in that term then? For the sake of being different huh? Perhaps they just can't because all this time they keep 'accusing' M$ for copying their features, which means copying from M$ is like they are eating back their words.
ReplyDeleteFrom my personal experience of using a Mac, the only good thing about Spotlight is the search result is well-sorted and I rarely lost in the list.
Spotlight searches on anything the "importer plugin" brings in... If the file contains useful metadata, or text content, that should always be included. (See /Library/Spotlight and /System/Library/Spotlight for plugins)
ReplyDeleteDevelopers can write their own importers for custom formats.
Try running "mdimport -d 4" on a file to see just how much stuff Spotlight ind exes.
As an example, if you type "from:thommango" in the Spotlight Menu, the query will be narrowed to things sent to that address...