Paul Thurrott on OS X Leopard

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't OS X base that on UNIX's locate function? Give me a break. Guess what? Almost EVERY OS has a search.

I'm quite sure Spotlight is not based on "locate."

Microsoft copied their new one in Vista straight from Apple's way of doing it, and NO ONE can deny that.

How could you possibly say that with a straight face?

Windows Desktop Search - shipped Q4 2004.

Max OS X "Tiger" - shipped Q2 2005.

Their UI looks exactly like ours except for being in the top-right of the screen.

[Catharsis]

I'm quite sure Spotlight is not based on "locate."

How could you possibly say that with a straight face?

Windows Desktop Search - shipped Q4 2004.

Max OS X "Tiger" - shipped Q2 2005.

Their UI looks exactly like ours except for being in the top-right of the screen.

"Ours?" Do you work for MS?

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the UI. Also, most Windows users don't even KNOW about Desktop Search. (By most, I mean your standard computer user, not users on Neowin who know the in's and out's of computers.) AND Desktop Search isn't yet part of a Windows distro that's for sale, is it? I was talking about the underlying technology.

"Shipped?" Where's my copy? I never got it in the mail, nor do I see it in Windows optional updates. If it's such a great piece of work, why doesn't MS put it in their updates list?

Oh, and I wasn't sure about the "locate" thing. It's just that I asked my friend to try a "locate" search in the terminal in OS X, and sure enough, it found current results, which means the locate database is constantly being kept up to date, just like in Linux and Unix. That's why I thought it may be using locate. Thanks for letting me know, though, I'd like to know what they based it on. Because, as I pointed out from Paul's comments, most OS revisions are improvements on existing technologies (or concepts never implemented).

[Crayon]

he does work for MS

[Brandon Live Veteran]

"Ours?" Do you work for MS?

Yup. I work on WDS =D

"Shipped?" Where's my copy? I never got it in the mail, nor do I see it in Windows optional updates. If it's such a great piece of work, why doesn't MS put it in their updates list?

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think we have more users than Tiger does. WDS is serviced through Windows Update, although it doesn't currently show up unless you have an older version installed. It also comes as an optional component with the MSN / Windows Live Toolbar, and will soon be delivered with Office 2007.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the UI.

So was I...

[Catharsis]

Yup. I work on WDS =D

Oh. Gotcha. Cool.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think we have more users than Tiger does.

Of course you do. You're Windows. That doesn't actually prove anything about technology. I mean, more people have regular tube TVs than they have Plasmas or DLPs, but that doesn't make regular ones better. I'm not trying to tick anyone off...I'm just saying that a quantity of userbase doesn't testify to the quality of a product.

WDS is serviced through Windows Update, although it doesn't currently show up unless you have an older version installed. It also comes as an optional component with the MSN / Windows Live Toolbar, and will soon be delivered with Office 2007.

That's exactly my point. Of course it won't show up if you don't already have it installed. However, I believe it should. That's where most users get their information about new, free apps for Windows -- through MS Updates.

So was I...

I think you misread what I typed. I said I wasn't talking about the UI.

Also, again...if it's so great, how is it that I, a long time Windows user, didn't even KNOW about WDS until after I heard about Google Desktop search? Why is it not more widely talked about by Microsoft when it's actually completely available to the public? It's had very poor marketing. I mean, I've heard more about Windows Defender from Microsoft than I have about WDS.

Edited August 14, 2006 by Catharsis

[Proforma]

That article contains many valid points. (Y)

yeah, if you are a mental midget maybe.

[Fourjays Veteran]

I do have to agree with Paul here. It is a bit much to charge $129 for a new OS that isn't a complete revision of everything. However, from what I've seen so far, OS X is a better operating system, and you get more for what you pay for that you do with Windows, which, by the way, retails at around $200.

I really would like to know where people get this $200 figure from. On an online store I always use, you can get a copy of XP Home OEM for ?59 ($113 USD), and XP Pro OEM for ?94 ($178). This store isn't the cheapest by any means either. If I shopped around, I could probably find a copy for much less than that.

[Post-It Note]

I really would like to know where people get this $200 figure from. On an online store I always use, you can get a copy of XP Home OEM for ?59 ($113 USD), and XP Pro OEM for ?94 ($178). This store isn't the cheapest by any means either. If I shopped around, I could probably find a copy for much less than that.

And for those who are going to say "But OEM is supposed to be sold to people with computer builders" etc, let me remind you that the vast majority of people who are buying computers are buying them with the OS installed. That means that anyone who purchased a PC in the past 4 to 5 years have not needed to purchase another copy of XP.

[MacOSXMan]

Apple has been working on the spotlight concept since 94 (Mac OS 8 Copland Project):

During its promotion of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), Apple touted Spotlight as the first truly mature search tool integrated into an operating system. Had Copland been released, it would have been the first OS to provide live searches in the toolbar.

In the patent application for Spotlight, Apple appears to have used diagrams from Copland's interface. The Copland search tool indexed all files on the computer and allowed users to search for a specific string of text. It would display the results and even determine the relevancy according to the number of times the string appeared in the document.

Apple released the first beta version of Copland to developers in November 1995. Although Apple released several betas and some engineers at Apple used it as their primary OS, Gil Amelio decided that it would never be ready for release and canceled the project in late 1996. Instead, Apple decided to buy their next generation operating system rather than create it themselves. This lead to Apple's acquisition of NeXT and the return of Steve Jobs.

Apple had promised that it would have a System 8, so it integrated many of the superficial changes into a new revision of the old operating system called Mac OS 8. It was not until Mac OS X that most of the features promised in Copland would be fully realized.

[Chad]

I'm quite sure Spotlight is not based on "locate."

How could you possibly say that with a straight face?

Windows Desktop Search - shipped Q4 2004.

Max OS X "Tiger" - shipped Q2 2005.

Their UI looks exactly like ours except for being in the top-right of the screen.

Tiger may have shipped in 2005, but they demoed Tiger, as well as Spotlight, at their WWDC conference in June of 2004. I couldn't find much news on WDS prior to it's beta release in December of 2004.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Tiger may have shipped in 2005, but they demoed Tiger, as well as Spotlight, at their WWDC conference in June of 2004. I couldn't find much news on WDS prior to it's beta release in December of 2004.

Well, it was shown in a Channel 9 video that summer, and to Search Champs and others before December.

I'm not going to complain that anybody copied anybody else. But I think their claims that Vista copied Spotlight is ludicrous when we already have this product. The Start menu search in Vista is very clearly based on the WDS Deskbar... not Spotlight.

I think you misread what I typed. I said I wasn't talking about the UI.

Yeah sorry I did misread that. Still confused though... if you weren't talking about the UI, then Microsoft shipped the Indexing Service back on NT4. Clearly it wasn't very useful as a desktop search engine, but it was in fact there (and *was* useful for certain applications. Just not very many).

Also, again...if it's so great, how is it that I, a long time Windows user, didn't even KNOW about WDS until after I heard about Google Desktop search? Why is it not more widely talked about by Microsoft when it's actually completely available to the public? It's had very poor marketing. I mean, I've heard more about Windows Defender from Microsoft than I have about WDS.

I don't know what to tell you there. It was pushed pretty hard by the MSN Toolbar team ages ago, and lately we've been doing big pushes in the Enterprise market and having great success there. For the full-on mainstream market I think both Office 2007 and Windows Vista will be marketed pretty aggressively ;)

[Chadwick]

just because microsoft started developing better searching for their server os's doesn't mean they were "first" before spotlight. Two different markets with different goals. Apple was still the first to integrate it fully into the operating system and bring it to the home user, and as shown above they have been working on doing that for awhile, by releasing WDS microsoft was releasing just an answer to spotlight and google desktop, if they didn't release anything there would be 10 million articles critisizing them.

[Mordkanin]

by releasing WDS microsoft was releasing just an answer to spotlight and google desktop

You obviously ignored the last several pages of posts. WDS came months before Spotlight.

[giga Veteran]

You obviously ignored the last several pages of posts. WDS came months before Spotlight.

It did? Spotlight was demoed in June 2004 at WWDC 2004.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

It did? Spotlight was demoed in June 2004 at WWDC 2004.

Demoed? Search in Longhorn was demoed before that... Both WinFS and System.Search and a bunch of other stuff.

WDS was released in beta form in 2004, and in final form in March/April of 2005.

As I said above, arguing the specific dates between Google Desktop, Spotlight, and WDS is stupid because they were all being developed and released at the same time. None was an "answer" to another one. The team that built WDS heard rumors and rumblings that Google was working on something similar, but had no idea any of the details nor the timeline. The original MSN DS / WDS developers came from a group that had spent years building search-based UI on top of the earliest WinFS and Longhorn releases. But they left that group to go build something good and ship it. Didn't have the slightest thing to do with Google or Apple, at least not til it got close to ship time and they had entered the market.

[Michael_C]

I hate to repeat it again, but it's not about someone copying someone else. That's not news. What this is about is Apple copying stuff, but then saying that everyone else copies them, and they're the only innovators out there. It gets to the point where it's annoying. That's all there is to it. No one is saying MS doesn't copy, but primarily, MS doesn't say MS doesn't copy.

Win. :)

During its promotion of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), Apple touted Spotlight as the first truly mature search tool integrated into an operating system.

BeOS already had it before them.

[spenser.d]

This thread is still alive?

Come on guys, obviously nobody is going to change their opinions, so I'd suggest letting this die off. That might be a bit too rational, though :rolleyes:

-Spenser

[QuarterSwede]

Yeah, I have to agree that indexed and live searching has been around before WDS. Heck, I remember using Avafind to index my hard drive and search it. Guess what, it sucked and so did/does WDS. If it isn't integrated its slow and eats up my hard drive at the worst times (I don't mean slow as in live searching. I mean the whole package).

The first good implementation was Spotlight in my opinion. In fact, its the sole reason I gave Windows the boot. Well, maybe not (that was because of how much I used to curse at it). Its the way software is implemented that makes the difference to me. Not who came out with it first.

For example, take Spaces. Sure virtual desktops have been done to death. But guess what, no one makes it easier to use than Apple (well, maybe XGL). Hit a button and boom, you can see all of your desktops. Drag from one to the other. XGL is nice but you only have 6 max (I think) and if you want to drag from one side to another you have to drag through a desktop you don't want to use; a big waste of time.

Another, Dashboard. Sure Konfab had a great idea. But guess what? Apple made it non intrusive which is the sole reason I use it. I tried to like Konfab but it just got to me that they (widgets) had to be on the desktop. It wasn't until Apple released Dashboard (Tiger) that it was really useable for me. And soon after that Konfab came out with the same added functionality. Sorry Arlo but you had already lost me.

Again, its the implementation that matters, and for me Apple just does it better.

Edited August 15, 2006 by QuarterSwede

[MrA]

BeOS already had it before them.

Yes, someone finally said it. All these attempts at metadata-rich filesystems, searching, etc is just a way to catch up to BeOS (1996).

As for Time Machine vs. VSC, I don't know what VSC is, but here's my take on Time machine. Automated backup + fancy interface (well, a bit more complicated than that). You can't claim they ripped this from MS since automated backups have been around for 20+ years.

[MacOSXMan]

Yes, someone finally said it. All these attempts at metadata-rich filesystems, searching, etc is just a way to catch up to BeOS (1996).

As for Time Machine vs. VSC, I don't know what VSC is, but here's my take on Time machine. Automated backup + fancy interface (well, a bit more complicated than that). You can't claim they ripped this from MS since automated backups have been around for 20+ years.

Apple had working versions of their search system before 96 it just wasn't released to the general public, just developers and the people working at Apple got their hands on it. Lets not forget that the guy who started BeOS Jean-Louis Gass?e was an executive at Apple Computer from 1981 to 1990, and brought alot of Apple's ideas and ease of use concepts over to BeOS...

[dagamer34]

E-penis wars!

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Yeah, I have to agree that indexed and live searching has been around before WDS. Heck, I remember using Avafind to index my hard drive and search it.

I never said WDS was the first or anything like that. Copernic was around far longer, and so was the Indexing Service in Windows, the BeOS offering, and I'm sure several others.

Guess what, it sucked and so did/does WDS. If it isn't integrated its slow and eats up my hard drive at the worst times (I don't mean slow as in live searching. I mean the whole package).

Not sure what you're talking about there. WDS integrates with the Windows Shell. In Vista it's included right out of the box. It has back-off logic so that it doesn't interfere with your normal use of the computer. On a more modern machine it's so passive that you can disable the back-off logic so that your index is always 100% up-to-date and still never notice it's running. On 3.0 / Vista it even scales based on the performance of your machine. And query performance is much better than Spotlight in every comparison I've seen.

The first good implementation was Spotlight in my opinion. In fact, its the sole reason I gave Windows the boot. Well, maybe not (that was because of how much I used to curse at it). Its the way software is implemented that makes the difference to me. Not who came out with it first.

Spotlight is a pretty good implementation, but it also leaves a lot to be desired. Lacking advanced queries (and even simple boolean operations) is pretty lame. And it's slow. Hopefully in Leopard they've improved perf, since it doesn't sound like they're adding any really interesting features.

Edited August 15, 2006 by Brandon Live

[Gee.B]

That article sucks, i'm switching to Mac OSX and gonna get a MacBookPro, it has become more and more evident that Microsoft's attempt to innovate have faded away a long time ago...

Seriously, Aero...they really think we're dumb and blind ... I'd rather get the original

Zune... Four years after eveyone put their player on the market Microsoft enter the game....4 f***** years after!!! Once again I'll get the original...

[QuarterSwede]

I never said WDS was the first or anything like that. Copernic was around far longer, and so was the Indexing Service in Windows, the BeOS offering, and I'm sure several others.

Not sure what you're talking about there. WDS integrates with the Windows Shell. In Vista it's included right out of the box. It has back-off logic so that it doesn't interfere with your normal use of the computer. On a more modern machine it's so passive that you can disable the back-off logic so that your index is always 100% up-to-date and still never notice it's running. On 3.0 / Vista it even scales based on the performance of your machine. And query performance is much better than Spotlight in every comparison I've seen.

Spotlight is a pretty good implementation, but it also leaves a lot to be desired. Lacking advanced queries (and even simple boolean operations) is pretty lame. And it's slow. Hopefully in Leopard they've improved perf, since it doesn't sound like they're adding any really interesting features.

I was talking about the add-on WDS implementation in XP which did suck at first (at least for me). Now, I'm sure/hope it is better.

I do agree that Apple needs to add boolean operations to Spotlight (and iTunes for that matter). Its too bad they simply think its too advanced for users (ha!). I'm not too sure why they don't allow more advanced meta-data to files.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Some facts for you (as you're devoid of them apparently) - WinFX not longer exists - it's now called .NET 3.0. Avalon is actually the "Windows Presentation Foundation" (WPF) which is fundementally part of Vista and far from optional - and, scarily enough, exposes a whole bunch of accelerated drawing functions to developers - obviously radically different from what Apple were wittering on about. Spend some time with Expression, delve into XAML - the whole things fabulous for developers and designers alike.

(i'll skip over what could be called the insult)

I hadn't heard of the name change from WinFX to .NET 3.0, i'm glad it's still alive because it really is a cool set of API's (What, you guys thought i didn't like them?)

And the optional statement, the last i heard it had been made a component during install, which was not checked by default, if it's now shipping (installed by default) with every copy of Vista i'll be happy (Guess what, i write .NET stuff).

"obviously radically different from what Apple were wittering on about." People need to get over this whole ownership idea, nobody owns the idea of a drawing API (same as versioned file backups, and searching)

Wow, see this is why I come here. So many misinformed people.

They cut back WinFS (which is WinFileStorage and it uses a SQL database to manage and query results using XML for the file and directory metadata). This became optional and now they are pushing it back.

This does NOT exist in any Operating System available today.

WinFX (Avalon) has become part of the .NET 3.0 Framework and has not been cut back at all.

WinFS was the only big feature that was dropped by the way.

<snipped rant>

I'm misinformed huh?

WinFS meant Windows Future Storage, and has been split up and rolled into other products (like SQL Server), and according to the WinFS blog on MSDN, "we are no longer are planning to release a separate WinFS delivery vehicle.", If you would like to argue with them about something you made up, or such, your are welcome to.

And Avalon is not WinFX, it is one part of it (like Indigo, and WinFS was).

Not responding to the main discussion (I think Paul can write some good things sometimes, but this article is not one of them, he misses the whole point of WWDC), just responding to some people who decided to respond to me, i'm nice like that.