Tiger Spotlight Less Then Optimal 126
Anonymous Coward writes "Spotlight turns out to be a major pain for many users because it can't be turned off and insists on indexing volumes each time they are mounted.
Additionally, Spotlight doesn't come with a manual to teach you how to create complex queries. Most simple available queries --style popup menu selection-- are not powerful enough to be really useful.
A tutorial on http://www.scribent.com/ will explain how you can optimize Spotlight's behaviour and get the most of it, but all in all it seems like Apple has been overhyping in the extremes."
Not That Bad (Score:1)
Of course, I wouldn't mind that manual on creating advanced queries...
Re:Not That Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard others say that it cripples their machines, even the new iMacs. I've got a iBook that's just had its first year, and I don't see the problems. I don't get any slowdowns or have to wait ages for results from my 60GB drive (of which around 55GB is used). I've got around 300,000 files at the moment.
Apparently someone chained 23 Firewire drives together, and then complained about the performance of Spotlight. Not the most realistic example (who would need that set-up but wouldn't have invested in either fewer, larger drives or a server?).
How does Spotlight go on OS X Server, running on a real server box? I don't know that one, but I'd be curious to find out.
I've heard about problems in searching for word fragments inside other words.
If I type "ding" (knowing full well I have a Word document titled 'building my PC.doc'), Spotlight fails to find it. If I type "buil" it comes up straight away. Could that be a problem? Well, in this example no - but that's mainly because I'd never search for the second syllable like that.
Does a search for "PC" turn the file up? Yes it does. So... this seems to indicate that I can't search for the middle of words, just the beginning of them. Not really an issue for me, but I can see that someone with filenames like "BuildingPC" might have trouble.
Actually... not at all!
I just made a duplicate of the file "Building My PC.doc" and renamed the copy to "BuildingMyPC.doc". When I went to Spotlight to search for it, my last search for "PC" turned this file up without me having to type anything in at all!
What about the file search box (Command-F in the Finder)? Acts just the same. No lock-ups on my machine, no problems outside of those reported in the Ars Technica review last month.
I see a lot more happiness with Spotlight users than unhappiness. I guess that's what they mean when they say "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."
Re: (Score:2)
ANSWER: (Score:2)
That beige G3 233 MHz is now ready for YellowDog, forwarding mail.
Re:ANSWER: (Score:2)
Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:2)
Get a real Mac.
I have a real Mac (dual 2 Ghz G5 with 2 GB RAM), and Spotlight still is slow!
I used to use the old search in finder and it was much faster (after you indexed your directories).
I'll type in what I'm looking for and it will beach-ball in the middle of my typing and not let me type the whole thing in. And I always get tons of false positives for stuff that should be unique (e.g. man_cims).
Spotligh
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:2)
I've only got an iBook. Your dual 2GHz G5 should wipe the floor with it.
I get results as I type, instantly, and have yet to see the beachball either in the little Spotlight menu bar thingy (command-space) or the search window.
Maybe there's some sort of weird optimisation going on that hurts G5 performance, or maybe there's something unique to your machine. I don't see this from a
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:2)
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:1)
I found that it really speeds things up for my iMac 800mhz - that's not where I store all my "important" info so I can take that risk with that computer. I'm not even sure what the "risks" of turning off disk journaling even are if there are any
Permissions problems? (Score:1)
If you don't know where that is, Boot the install CD, look immediately in the install menu before you click any other buttons. The disk repair menu has two options, you should recognize which repairs permissions if you know that it's there.
Caveat -- the database has been known to get screwed up, l
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:2)
Faster than I type fast.
There's something goofy about your set-up. If Spotlight is running slowly for you, then it ain't that "Spotlight is slow", it's that something is wrong with your system. If you live near an Apple Store, lug it over there and show it to those "Genius Bar" people.
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:1)
Re:Spotlight is SLOOWWW (Score:2)
I have that same setup and I haven't noticed any slow down. It is very responsive and I haven't ever noticed the beach ball.
Do you have a very large amount of data?Let me guess (Score:2)
I bet you have the word "PC" somewhere in the text of that file.
Re:Let me guess (Score:1)
Re:Not That Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Video editors tend to use firewire drives like people used to use floppy or Zip disks -- they've stacks of them and are plugging them in or moving them around to grab stuff. I agree that's a "ghetto" way of doing things, but one of the selling points of the Mac is that it's a cheap video platform, so not everyone's buying big storage RAIDs.
I haven't noticed any pa
Re:Not That Bad (Score:1, Interesting)
This whole mess started because somebody didn't understand how Spotlight works. When you add a volume to the Spotlight privacy list, Spotlight creates a property list file in a hidden Spotlight metadata folder on the volume. When you then go back and ERASE the volume, you delete the exclusions file and Spotlight begins indexing the volume again.
The solution is
Re:Not That Bad (Score:2)
Re:Not That Bad (Score:3, Informative)
I can type in a sentence from one of those files and it pops right up. I often find myself knowing part of a quote but not the filename where the rest of the quote is located. I type it in. and there it is.
Indexing took literally minutes on my powerbook, and just a few hundred open Office files.
My biggest compaliant is that it looks like Apple took MSFT fisher price colour scheme for
Re:Not That Bad (Score:1)
searched
and after 5 minutes nothing.
So I opened a finder, and searched there, but also nothing, so I clicked on the red close finder window button and
So I opend a shell and typed find . -name *List* and ~1min later I found the file.
Seriously.
Then I tried it again in the finder window, and su
Re:Not That Bad (Score:2)
That has got to be a joke. I don't really have any strong devotion to Apple but I think that their HW/SW technology is very nice. My experience with Spotlight on all my Power* machines has been great.
I own a couple of dual CPU PowerMacs, a PowerBook, an HP Pavillion 7000 or 8000 series laptop (can't remember), 7 Intel boxes running everything from *BSD to Linux
No Silver Search Bullet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple (and MS for that matter) try to create a system where you don't have to keep any order on your computer and find anything you want instantly. I am sure I am not the only one with a gut-feeling that this is closer to the area of unsolvable problems, right with "Making Software Idiotproof" and "Creating the perfect user-interface everyone can use without any prior computer experience" and "Creating a 100% secure computer on the internet",...
Turn Spotlight off, then (Score:5, Informative)
Silas
Yeah, but it also kills searching inside Mail.app (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, but it also kills searching inside Mail.a (Score:1)
gui app for disabling spotlight (Score:2)
Re:Turn Spotlight off, then (Score:2)
I haven't noticed it on my wife's G3/500 iBook which is pretty close to the bottom of supported machines. I did replace the hard drive at one point (2-year olds...) so perhaps it's an I/O bound operation.
Re:Turn Spotlight off, then (Score:2)
And this succinctly captures the difference between Apple and most other consumer operating system developers.
Would anyone expect Longhorn to be faster than Windows XP? Or the next iteration of [insert your favourite Linux OS here] to be faster than the previous?
I say full kudos to Apple for demonstrating that OS improvements should not automatically require hardware upgrades (and where they do - for example, utilisi
Re:Turn Spotlight off, then (Score:2)
Were previous versions of Windows as poorly performing as previous versions of OS X, yes.
OS X was abominably slow before 10.3. 10.3 made is somewhat usable. 10.4 is approaching snappy. Maybe 10.5 will be as responsive as Windows [anything] is and OS 9 was.
The Only Thing Extremely Overhyped Is The /. Piece (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, it has some issues (report them to apple as bugs when you find them, it is the only way they know about them), but it is fast and it Works For Me(TM).
Now if only someone would create a LaTeX mdimporter...
Re:The Only Thing Extremely Overhyped Is The /. Pi (Score:2)
I can type Truth is a three edge sword
and all my Bablyon 5 quote files are brought up.
Use Spotlight like you use google. The advance searches help, but not always needed.
Re:The Only Thing Extremely Overhyped Is The /. Pi (Score:1)
Just FYI. I wouldn't want you to not be able to find your B5 quote files, after all.
Use TextEdit to create LaTex files (Score:1)
Re:Use TextEdit to create LaTex files (Score:2)
Re:Use TextEdit to create LaTex files (Score:1)
Definitely not great here (Score:2, Insightful)
I've had a lot of problems with Spotlight. When I have a large external hard drive (160GB divided into 3 partitions) attached, I will find at random times that the processes mds and LAServer will start eating all of my CPU. This occurs despite the fact that all of my drives, including the external, have already been completely indexed. I've tried re-indexing (sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/volname), I've tried disabling indexing alltogether ( sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/volname). None of these solutions worked
Re:Definitely not great here (Score:5, Funny)
Granted, a disable feature seems like a no-brainer. I have no idea why Apple is forcing people to use Spotlight. That's kinda shady if you like ze porn and want to show someone something and accidentally end up exposing that you watched "All Anal Babes 4.mpg".
Er, Uh, not like that's ever happened to me.
Re:Definitely not great here (Score:3, Informative)
Under the Spotlight System Preference pane, click on the privacy pane and add your pr0n folder.
Re:Definitely not great here (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, if you're not putting your pr0n on encrypted disk images, you're not trying hard enough.
Re:Definitely not great here (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, now everyone on
Stuart
Re:Definitely not great here (Score:2)
Uh, so I'm told, anyway.
I really haven't used it yet ... (Score:2, Interesting)
That being said, I'm not saying *someone* will find it useful, but really, it just looks like an attempt to move Firefox's "Find in page" functionality to the OS level.
I haven't noted any major performance hits either, and my current use of Tiger has been limited to a 1GHz Powerbooks, which usually gets a LaCie FireWire drive hooked up to it.
In fact, the only problem I've had with Tiger is that the UT2004 demo doesn't run
New Usage Pattern for Directories (Score:1)
It doesn't replace directories, it just makes things easier to find in them. Once pe
Sounds like an opportunity... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like an opportunity... (Score:1)
You mean a new "HID Spotlight"? Or, perhaps, "Xenon Spotlight"?
Re:Sounds like an opportunity... (Score:3, Funny)
Links please? (Score:4, Insightful)
(By the way, here's a direct link to the article [scribent.com] in question.)
Anyway, call me oldfashioned but an Anonymous Coward writing "Spotlight turns out to be a major pain for many users" is hardly the end of the world. Innovative interfaces may be "major pain" for an AC on Slashdot but meanwhile a lot of people in the Real World find it very useful (pun not intended), all the "overhyping in the extremes" (or even overhyping to the max) notwithstanding. Don't like it? Don't use it! Simple as that. Fortunately, as always with Apple, there's more than one way to do it. Do you think that Microsoft's SQL filesystem works better? Use Longhorn then.
Re:Links please? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I was about to reply to this saying it's bullshit, that spotlight is much slower than that. And of course I wanted some actual numbers to back me up. So I did a search. And I have to admit it really did find things as quickly as I could type it.
This is a big change from when I first installed 10.4. I don't know if the indexing wasn't complete, or if they made a big improvement in 10.4.1, but now it's really, really useful. I tried several more searches and each was as fast.
Re:Links please? (Score:2)
What is this "actual numbers to back me up" that you speak of?
Perhaps it's your low-numbered UID -- I do not comprehend your ways. You have earned my fearful awe and respect, O reality-based one.
Re:Links please? (Score:1, Insightful)
Can't turn it off? (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly 'turning it off' but it does stop it indexing and therefore chewing system performance.
can't if you don't have write permission (Score:2)
Re:can't if you don't have write permission (Score:2)
Then -it- shouldn't let you.
Overhyping? I agree (Score:2)
Then after a few more hours, it sometimes didn't immediately started re-indexing, so results apeared. But they took 30 seconds to appear
Re:Overhyping? I agree (Score:2)
I have Tiger successfully running on 800Mhz and 900Mhz G3 iBooks, as well as a dual 1.8Ghz powermac. While Spotlight (and Tiger) fly on the powermac, they are pretty snappy on the iBooks too. My wife even commented on how much faster her iBook was with Tiger.
Re:Overhyping? I agree (Score:2)
Spotlight works beautifully. I had to swap a few icons(the old system preference panel kept coming up) but no real problems.
Re:Overhyping? I agree (Score:2)
Re:Overhyping? I agree (Score:2, Interesting)
Then after a few more hours, it sometimes didn't immediately started re-indexing, so results apeared. [snip]
I have seen the same behaviour, but only immediately after I installed Tiger. The problem is, indexing harddisks takes LOTS of time. Twelve hours of work for a 60 GB disk is perfectly reasonable, a
...updated to Tiger... (Score:2)
Re:...updated to Tiger... (Score:2)
I don't think updating vs. clean install has any bearing. I did a clean install (I never use the upgrade option with major Mac OS updates, re-format and clean install every time!) and had the same problem he had, more or less. It indexed for about 6 hours, and then said it was done. I tried to use it, it searched for a second and went back into indexing mode and threw out my search. It did this for most of two days until it finally settled down, and it's been okay since.
I think it's a case of the indexing
Re:Overhyping? I agree (Score:2)
exceptions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:exceptions (Score:1)
I use psync to backup a nd solved this by creating a root "Backup" directory on the external drive and backing up to that directory. This way the hidden Spotlight file remains intact and Tiger keeps the external drive
I'm sure the folks over at O'Reilly will help out (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used Spotlight to help me organize my GROWING documents folder. Each and every document I've created since owning my first Macintosh SE in 1989 is in there. It's a mess. I started pulling the low-hanging fruit out first: Invoices and Taxes. Spotlight has been a GREAT help.
Once O'Reily [oreilly.com] comes out with Spotlight:The Definitive Guide, Spotlight:The Missing Manual, or Spotlight in a Nutshell I will make more effective use of it.
--Mike
Shouldn't the "then" in the title be replaced with "than?"
Re:I'm sure the folks over at O'Reilly will help o (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm sure the folks over at O'Reilly will help o (Score:2)
But, like you, I'm on a dual G5. Am running a striped RAID array and an external USB drive.
Beats Find.
Re:I'm sure the folks over at O'Reilly will help o (Score:2)
I don't know what's up with these guys... maybe they have a million little files on their computer.
Expectations? (Score:5, Interesting)
I started off my Tiger use by messing around with Spotlight. "Wow, all the emails I ever sent to [name]!" "Cool, any word document that has [project] in title!" etc.
Then I thought about some of the complex and hard to maintain folder hierarchies I have. The folder system made it generally easy to find my files, but only if I was using them in a manner that I had expected when I started the organization. Spotlight could be the answer, I thought.
So I took a non-critical directory nest and used my existing folder system and Automator to quickly add spotlight comments to the files. (Select all files in [proj_A directory], add [proj_A] comment to files.)
Now I could hit command-space and type in a key phrase or two and get all the files in a nice menu. Clicking on "show all" brings up a nice, and constantly updated finder window for the search. Ah, now we're getting somewhere.
So I created some smart folders based on current criteria (and a few theoretical cases). Woo! Now I have a dynamic directory structure! Add a few custom Automator plug-ins (so I can right click files and do expected actions like "Move file to [dir] and add comment [helpful metadata]".)
Smart folders (driven by Spotlight) in email is pretty handy also. A couple weeks ago my wife and I were having our yard landscaped. This, naturally, involved a lot of emails back and forth with the landscapers over plant choice, guidelines, schedules, etc. So rather than setup a rule and folder for something temporary; I right clicked on the landscaper's email address and clicked "Create a smart folder". Ta da! Now I don't even have to care where the email goes, any email from the landscapers is all grouped together. When the work was finished, I deleted the smart mailbox and the clutter was gone. I still have their emails in my general sub-inbox should I have to refer to something. All emails and advice are still just a quick spotlight search away. For example: "water magnolia" to find the watering advice for our new tree.
And then there's iPhoto. With the help of the excellent iPhoto Keyword Assistant [mac.com] I have been diligently adding metadata to all of my digital photos. While KA fixes one of iPhoto's big shortcomings (an awful interface to the keywords, especially if you have a lot); using the keywords was still clunky. You have to start iPhoto, open up a special sub-window and then click on the keywords you want. This interface is barely acceptable when you only have a dozen keywords; when you have five dozen it is quickly painful.
Spotlight fixes this. It includes searching by iPhoto keyword!* So I can start up a spotlight seach, type "obx sunset" to see all the sunset pictures I've taken at the Outer Banks. Or "munich" for all the pictures of Munich, or "munich cathedrals"
* There have been reports of problems with this working for some people, and I was one of them. It seems that when spotlight finishes it major index, it still has some indexing tasks left in the background and iPhoto keywords are one of those. I noticed that a spotlight keyword search only worked partially at first. Any photos I had recently worked on or added were in, and sporadic other photos as well. So I created a keyword called "temp" and added it to every photo, then deleted it. After that all of my photos were indexed.
Spotlight has even changed how I launch applications. I used to have a dock chock full of any applications I might launch.
Re:Expectations? (Score:1)
Below is an excerpt of a long blog post I recently wrot
Could your expectations be more arbitrary? (Score:2)
Really, I want to know, because I know Apple didn't give you this impression. I know that I didn't (and I wrote a ton of rants about how cool Spotlight would be), and I've never seen such an amazingly aggressive outlook on it. So where?
Re:Expectations? (Score:2)
I just did the same thing. I highly recommend you checkout micro-irrigation. I just set it up in our backyard. It's easy to install, it's fairly cheap, and it's convenient.
Re:Expectations? and iPhoto (Score:2)
Re:Expectations? and iPhoto (Score:2)
more info (Score:4, Informative)
It's covertly versatile (Score:2, Informative)
Indexing takes a long time at first of course, but once it has done all files once, further indexing is incremental. When a file is created, written, moved or deleted, it is indexed at that time. So that happens only one or two files at a time and has little impact. When a volume is mounted though, it has to do some looking to see what changed, and it might have to index a lot of files if there have been a lot of changes.
To not
come on now... (Score:2, Insightful)
Desktop search is dead (Score:1)
I recommend File Buddy (Score:1)
I have always found Mac's searching capabilities a little weak. I'm very sloppy about tracking my time to bill appropriately as a graphic artist. So when monthly report time rolls around, I simply do a time-based search for every Visible Document Not in System Folder or Library, Whose filename Includes neither Cache nor Prefs, which was Modified this(or last) Month.
An earlier version of Sherlock worked for me for that for awhil
Hyped-out (Score:2)
We live in a world that is advertised much differently than it really is. We're all familiar with Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field," but I think he's just a player in a bigger game.
Everything in our culture tends to be on maximum "hype" drive. It's gotten to the point where we are suffering from a cynical consumer ennui.
Why?
I think it's because we've been over-loaded with hype and we're not buying the b
Re:Hyped-out (Score:2)
How I use Spotlight (Score:3, Interesting)
I find Spotlight useful as a sort of primitive command line. Use Cmd-Space, then enter the name of an application (e.g. "Firefox"), and the app is right there in the menu for you to click on. This is nice, since the traditional methods for launching apps suck (digging through the Applications folder is slow; putting everything in the dock adds clutter).
Unfortunately, it seems that the search path is limited, and I haven't figured out a way to change it. For example, typing "Kerberos" in the search box fails to locate the ticket manager, which is in /Library/CoreServices. You would think that with all this fancy technology, Spotlight would be able to do everything that the Unix "locate" command can handle, but apparently that is not the case. So, if anyone from Apple is watching this thread, I'd like to offer that as a request for enhancement!
Re:How I use Spotlight (Score:2)
Most users neither know, nor care what's in their System or Library folders, hence it's not indexed by Spotlight. Personally, I think we should have an option for power users to be able to index it, instead of it being hard wired as out of bounds, but them's the brakes, as the kids say.
Also, as the other poster said, the best app launcher is quicksilver.
Re:How I use Spotlight (Score:2)
It's good to protect the newbies, but not when it unnecessarily cripples the product.
The problem with your argument is that the novice users would usually not be searching for the technical terms that would turn up results in the System of Library folders anyway. So most of the time it's a non-issue -- there's no need to protect them from anything. But on the rare occasion that they need to look for something on their system, it's not doing them a favor by hiding results that could be helpful and releva
Re:How I use Spotlight (Score:2)
See here [arstechnica.com].
My G3 400MHz won't support Tiger, but... (Score:1)
Butler: [key combo of your choice] + [first few letters of the app you're after] = app launches.
I find it hard to believe that anybody would be running OS X and -not- have Butler installed. It's even free (although anyone who doesn't donate $18 deserves a week locked in a church with nothing but mormons for company).
http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&sp rache=english&kopf=labor [petermaurer.de]
What's *wrong* with you people?...
More pseudo-journalism we don't need on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
Spotlight turns out to be a major pain for many users because it can't be turned off and insists on indexing volumes each time they are mounted.
Just how did this AC arrive that the "many users" thing? Was there a poll among all Tiger users? How about "some" or "a couple" or "a few" or "one or two guys I just happened to know" instead? Sort of changes the whole story, right? This sort of thing is one of the reasons why people are turning away from the tradition media: They are sick and tired of everything being hyped. Please, just the facts, OK?
For the record: I use Spotlight on my aging iBook G4 800 MHz and don't see any speed problems. If anything, Tiger is a lot faster than Panther was (and my hardware doesn't even support those nifty Core whatever features). If you are that much into speed tuning, I suggest looking into Gentoo [gentoo.org].
Re:More pseudo-journalism we don't need on /. (Score:2)
A cursory glance at the Apple Discussions Spotlight forum [apple.com] will show you that there are quite a few grip
Spelling (Score:1)
dunno if it's spotlight or what... (Score:2)
DEVONThink is what you want (Score:1)
Never mind that DT also shows you related items - love that AI - surfs the web, clips, composes, views images, does the dishes and turns out the lights.
Are you thinking Mac OS X uber-app? I am. I run my computer and my l
Firefox Conflict (Score:1)
Re:The word is "than" not "then" (Score:1)
And last time I checked, /. didn't come up with Apple's slogan.
Re:The word is "than" not "then" (Score:1)
Perscriptive grammar is for panzies.
There is no error with apples slogan. It is instructing you in what to think about their product. As in, "Think that our product IS different." Not think differently about our product, but that our product is different from the rest of computers.
On a side note though, then and than are completely different words and are misused only due to their phoenetic similarities. Like "you're" and "your." This is not necessarily a good thing. Although, if you can dist