That’s more like it!
Thanks to Ryan’s link that explains how to turn off Spotlight in OS X Tiger, my Mac is now running like it used to.
Apple made Spotlight a part of the operating system with the release of Tiger. It allows you to “find anything, anywhere, fast”. And it does. The tradeoff is that Spotlight sucks away valuable processor speed while it constantly indexes all of your files and information on your computer. Find things fast, work slower is what they should have used for a Spotlight tagline.
I don’t know about you but I hardly do a lot of “searching” on my Mac and when I do, I prefer to use the old Command-F for “find” in the operating system. It has always worked great. I don’t understand this move to Spotlight and why we have to have it rammed down our throats because Apple thinks it is good for us. I think they missed the boat on this one.
Stumble It!Posted in OS X Software at 10:08 PM
Comments
Spotlight is the first salvo in a new battle to get rid of heirarchical file management systems. i.e. folders and sub folders. Longhorn was supposed to have a feature like this too called WinFS where an OS level database based on SQL Server would index all files, provide permissions, etc. The goal is to have one giant repository for all files, kind of the way people who are clueless about computers save everything to the c:\ root folder. In some software engineers mind this is a good idea.
WinFS was dropped from Longhorn (along with everything else) but Apple pulled off a hybrid system. The method has some theoretical benefits but the trade offs are too high on everyday hardware, as we have seen.
I’m not sure what Apple was thinking, they like to push the envelope but maybe they are just grasping at features to justify an OS upgrade. Of all the touted features of Tiger I could do without Spotlight, Dashboard and Automator. They only truly worthwhile upgrade was Xcode 2.0 (and also Ruby is installed by default now).
Posted by: Ryan on June 15, 2005 10:56 PM
I’d have to agree that Apple added useless features to Tiger to justify an upgrade. I don’t use Spotlight, Dashboard or Automator. I thought I would use Automator more but it just hasn’t happened.
Apple knows how to dazzle us with beautiful graphics, cool animations and an intuitive user interface. I love this about the company but how important is all of this. For me, the most important thing in future upgrades of OS X are speed and stability.
I think I would have been happier if Tiger were faster and not bogged down in useless features. It’s like a lot of new software out there. I just upgraded to PhotoShop CS2 from PhotoShop 7. There are improvements to the program but it is getting more difficult to define them explicitly.
I think a lot of software suffers from this today. How do you make Microsoft Word a better app? Adding more features? I don’t think so. This is exactly what every software app seems to do. Sometimes the new features are incredible and completely change the way we work. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen very often.
Posted by: Jay on June 16, 2005 10:37 AM
