Ever been on the phone to a client or journalist and suddenly have to call up a file? Rather than tediously open a couple of folders, Mac users are in the envious position of simply hitting the Spotlight icon and typing in the file name, only to retrieve it in a matter of seconds. There’s no selecting which folders to search or selecting file types. It’s fast, it’s easy and as all Mac owners would testify ‘It just works!’

I’m a bit shocked that the likes of Wired and Cnet are only getting round to praising Spotlight, the new Tiger feature for Macs, now. Put simply, Spotlight is nothing short of amazing.

Hit the magnifying glass icon in the top right hand corner of your screen, type in your query and hey presto, search results start appearing almost instantly. The new search algorithm really highlights how much easier your day can get thanks to Apple.

I can’t wait to hear everyone harp on about how great Safari is for RSS now.


2 Responses to “Cast a Spotlight on that missing file”  

  1. 1 Stephen Davies

    If you’re a none Mac user (like myself), a good substitute for Spotlight could be the Google Desktop Search. Simply download it and install where it will sit in your system tray. Then you can search for various files including Word, Excel, Power Point, PDFs, Outlook emails, video, images music and others.

    I’ve never used Spotlight so I couldn’t comment on which one I prefer, but the desktop search is a handy tool, and it’s free.
    (http://desktop.google.com/)

    P.S Great blog by the way!

  2. 2 Ed Byrne

    Or setup F8 to bring it up automatically so you can type your query without using a mouse. You should check out Smart Folders as well - basically a perma-link to particular searches.

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