Spotlight On Apple’s Upcoming Desktop Search Engine
Last week, Steve Jobs, Macintosh CEO, unveiled the upcoming update for Mac's OS X. The update, version number 10.4, is called Tiger. The differences in this update are not so much visual; rather, it's more of a performance enhancing revision.
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Tiger comes with a great many new features. However, the feature that has the search engine world and Mac's competitors sitting up and noticing is the desktop search utility called Spotlight.
Apple's description about Spotlight says it's a "lightning fast way to find anything saved on your personal computer. Email messages, contacts and calendars, along with files and folders, all show up in Spotlight results."
Spotlight resides in Tiger's menu bar and is indicated by a magnifying glass icon. And unlike Internet-based search engines, Spotlight query results begin appearing as soon as the user starts typing, instead of waiting until the Enter key is pressed. Results are also "up-to-the-moment accurate."
The search capability of Spotlight is not restricted to keyword-based searches. Mac's search tool also has the ability to conduct intuitive language queries. Apple gives a clear picture of Spotlight's ability:
"If you know roughly when you may have saved or received something, you can use relative time periods like ‘Last Week' or ‘Yesterday' to find it. If you're not sure of an item's file format, type in a broad category like ‘Movie', ‘Image' or ‘Document'. Spotlight displays a neatly-sorted result list that you can easily browse..."
Spotlight is a metadata search engine. Google defines metadata as, "a description or definition of electronic data, or data about data." With this in mind, Spotlight's engine becomes easier to understand. Spotlight searches the data of the data on your computer. A majority of the time, this data consists of the type of content, who authored it, a file's edit history, format, size, etc...
By having the ability to search this information, Spotlight can locate any file on the hard drive. Each file has metadata content, either written by the programmer (widgets) or written by the Mac itself (altered documents). A list of the supported file types is available at Apple's website.
One example of Spotlight's ability came during the demonstration part of the keyword speech Steve Jobs gave during at the Worldwide Developers Convention. He queried Spotlight to find the phrase "Half Dome". Spotlight returned a PDF file that had the phrase appearing on part of a map that was in the document.
The PDF did not have the phrase in the title, only on the map, and Spotlight found it. This means that Spotlight not only searches through metadata, but it also scans the content as well. A poster named "Chadwick" on Apple's discussion board had this response: "When he found ‘Half Dome' in a PDF, I pee'ed in my pants."
A friend of mine who received a copy of Tiger had this to say about Spotlight:
"In my admittedly short time with Spotlight, I have found it to perform very well and as advertised. It is really the nice blend of natural vs. keyword-based searches, having the ability to effectively handle both, and still provide superior search results." He also believes that "the coming together of searching technologies: metadata, file system objects and file content enables Spotlight to work very well."
Reading these responses, and actually seeing in action leads me to think Apple has taken a big step forward in desktop search. Not only do they have an extremely functional product, they also have a leg up on Microsoft who isn't expected to have their Longhorn update, which features a similar search utility until 2006 or 7. Tiger will be available at the beginning of 2005.
As of now, Spotlight doesn't seem to have the ability to search the web. That is one thing that Longhorn will have on it. Microsoft has stated they want the user to be able to search their computer and the Internet, all from one interface. Although, it is entirely possible that by the time Longhorn hits the streets, Apple will have already incorporated this option in Spotlight.
Looks like an interesting period in desktop search is upon us. Fantastic job, Apple.
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About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.
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