does anyone USE spotlight?

A

andehlu

this modern love
Hey all,

I just want to take a consensus. Do any of you use spotlight at all? I understand why and how its cool....but for me I set up my mac so that I dont need spotlight using aliases etc.... I did try to put it into my routine today launching photoshop from it .... but it took 3 characters to bring up photoshop and about 6 - 7 seconds when i could just launched it from the dock in half a second..... I know some ppl really like the idea of it..... but i just dont see it affecting my productivity.
 
So you never search for a document or two? Never search for a mail in Mail.app?
 
I find it less of a hassle to search for something *everywhere* via spotlight. If I use the Finder, it automatically limits the search to your Home folder, or the folder you were last in in that Finder window. It's just easier to press Apple + Space, type in something that may be on my iPod or so, and it finds it. Doesn't limit it. On Panther, the Finder used to search everywhere first, now it just searches a specific location as default, well, for me it does, anyway.
 
I use it routinely to find some of my most burried files, or really old photos that I want to restore again. I also use it for application-switching when I'm too lazy to use the dock. (It doesn't take nearly as long for me as for you, maybe you have a bad index)
 
I get almost everything with quicksilver. I have no need to search for mail, and all my documents are one click away in finder. I'm not so lazy. Click-click is easier than opening spotlight and typing in the document name.

Aliases, I have no clue what they do.
 
I use Quicksilver for much of my quick app launching and folder finding. But yes, when it comes to hunting down data, hard-core-style, I use Spotlight.
 
I use it all the time. Emails and docs in particular. I have emails in a zillion folders over the past 10 years and lord knows I often am looking for a message or thread when I can't remember the person's name. It is GREAT for this type of thing (I don't know who it was, but we emailed about "XYZ" so I search on "XYZ" and bam, there he is). Docs too - I am experimenting with dumping almost all my new docs in one disorganized folder and it is working out, though the anal retentive part of me has a real hard time with this - it is agony knowing those files are unfiled!!! Sorry, I have to go wash my hands now, it has been over 20 minutes. :)

Scottfab, with all respect to you, it isn't really about laziness, it is about efficiency for *certain* tasks. There is a method of measuring the efficiency of a UI to perform different tasks called GOMS. In a GOMS analysis each step or action is given a time value (keystroke, click, move cursor, select menu item, drag...). Comparing different approaches to some task can reveal which is more efficient. In fact, a famous GOMS analysis pitted the one button Mac mouse + Mac GUI (OS 7 or 8 or so) against the two button Windows approach and the Mac won out in most tasks. Any way, if I did a GOMS on my "can't remember the name of the guy in an email 4 years ago" scenario, Spotlight wins hands down over the finder or Mail even though I think I have a pretty good filing system for my mail files. Even so, I'm sure we do different things and are different people with different preferences. You may know where all your stuff is, but maybe at a high cost of time and effort in filing. Heck, you may be a natural librarian! Even so, its your computer and it should let you do anything you want to and give us all options.

By the way, of course I still do use the finder to get things where I know or am pretty sure of where they are, though I use XMenu to make it even more efficient, but even without XMenu the finder would still be a better choice for those types of tasks than Spotlight. I'd never use Spotlight to launch an app! :)

What's great about Spotlight is it now gives the Mac nearly equally powerful options for searching or browsing and the option to choose whichever fits the task at hand. P.S. Default keyboard shortcut for Spotlight is Command-Space - very easy.
 
Same as other people...QS for launching Apps, Spotlight for finding files. It's really that simple. I can't remember the last time i navigated through all the folder hierarchies on Tiger. Seems antiquated now.
 
I never sort things. I rarely even clean my room. I just find its easy to sort through the mess in seconds.
 
In answer to your question, I almost never use it, because the regular Find (Command-F) seems to do the same thing, or close to it.


If I may add this: I cannot possibly be the only one who misses the simple, adequate Find of System 9. Especially when we have Spotlight for more powerful searches, why do we need a hydrogen bomb to swat a nat (the regular Find)?

Therefore, if I may tack this question on, does anybody know of a forum, thread or place where this topic is discussed (the dislike of the too-powerful Find, and a discussion of what can be done to provide us with at least an option for something simpler)?

I'd like to read it, but it is hard to find effective search words on a subject called "Find."
 
I probably would use it in the Finder more (i.e. ever) if there was a good way to search specifically by file name. Has anyone ever figured out a way to do that?

Otherwise, I tend to get too many hits for it to be particularly useful. If there was a semi-powerful syntax for doing searches in the Spotlight Shortcut (so I can limit my searches up-front, say, by telling it on-the-fly to only search for images), it'd probably be more useful to me.
 
i find its good for itunes:

i think of a specific song. instead of searching in itunes (for which there isn't a shortcut for, so it's very mouse orientated) hit apple+space and start typing. it'll usually be the top hit, so press down twice and hit enter.

that's a point: how irritating is it that the top hit... isn't? i mean the top hit is second to the stupid "show all" feature.
 
I must confess, I do not really use Spotlight often. And if I do, I normally search in the old fashioned way for file names. I use the search when I look for a file that I just can't find. When looking for something different, like an adress or MP3, I use the programs for that (AdressBook, iTunes etc)

But I was never a big user of the search function anyways, so...
 
I ripped spotlight out of Tiger. And I don't miss it. I use the traditional Find (file name) or EasyFind (file contents). But, I use the traditional finds like once a month.

I see the longterm advantages of spotlight, but today, I couldn't be bother with tailoring it to find "everywhere". I really think Apple did a mistake in having the initial spotlight setup like they did.
 
I find it extremely useful when I have to prepare my scientific presentations... in many cases, I have to extract and merge slides from other presentations, and if they're a bit old it's not so easy to remember the name I chose... or also where I placed them...
 
For the most part I use it and it's very handy, but I do wish Apple-F would have remained as it was in Panther, just a basic find like you could do in Mac OS 9 and so forth. Much simpler.
 
i use Spotlight, where i can't find a file or don't know where a folder is, like adding widgets i can never seem to remember where the heck that folder is. ::ha::
 
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