rayhau's Profile

I love the Spotlight Idea.. but the implimentation is poor tbh. Aside from the inconsistant interface and bad application 'open' dialogs.. it's not very quick and feels 'Bolted' on rather than an integral part of Tiger. What has been 'bolted-on' is the WinXP own version of spotlight called MSN desktop search (or something boring)... but I have tried this and I must say... for something that is actually just bolted onto the OS (rather than built with it ala Tiger), it is very, very quick and accurate and will index ALL files you want to and ANY files you don't with a plethora of options for the end user. I can't help but feel that MS has done spotlight better as an afterthought than Apple who tote it as one of the 'killer' new features in Tiger. One example that really bugs me is... if I search for all the image files with "car" in it, Spotlight will take a few seconds to find them. BUT if I clear the search and immediately search for the same items again... why the hell does it still take a few seconds to find it when it has already found/indexed them a few seconds earlier??? This is where MSN search wins hands down aswell... If I search for the same items and then immediately search for it again... the 2nd time round, the results appear instanteously... and in general, finding items using MSN search is a lot faster than Apples own spotlight. TBH... I feel cheated by Apple... all big features in Tiger has not lived up to my expectations... Spotlight is slow, Dashboard is konfabulator, and Core Video/Image is not even switched on!! I am getting an itchy feeling that I may 'switch' back to windows...!

I hate the way mac purists bash Microsoft so readily and make excuses as to why they are crap. But the story so far is that MS is big, very big and Apple merely dents, if that. You can complain all you want about how low MS can go but the bottom line is... they are a successful company. Business at this level is cut-throat (for one of a better word) and to be make the profits and be successful, anything counts. You may say Apple is better than MS, it is more creative, it doesn't steal ideas, it is hip! and maybe it is (I would probably agree with you aswell) but that isn't going to make a successful company in the same light as MS. If any Mac zealot thinks that fan brand support is going to elevate Apple into large market share, over-take the world ala MS status, then they are sorely mistaken imo. The only way to make it in this business is to follow the MS model i'm afraid... small sized creative companies are in its nature more creative and can change idea directions easily, but if they don't change they remain just that. Small. Take snipes at MS all you want, but imo they are number 1 for a reason... we here may all think that OSX is far superior to XP, but that's not the point if the CEO of Apple isn't looking at the wider picture. In my view SJ may be a creative genius, but that genius has made not room for a business mind to grow, and it is for this reason that MS will alway be bigger, even if things look good for Apple at the moment.

TBH, and at the cost of sounding bitchy, the real not-so-nice feature in Tiger is its stability! It is very very bad! I can understand a new OS having problems with third-party software, when when your finder and spotlight constantly restarting and beachballing at the thought of any large multimedia files, and safari beachballing every other web page and widgets crashing!!! How can a widget crash and need to 'retry' opening it? And don't let me start on QT7, that must be some in-house joke by Apple to see how many people they can irritate! Anyway, rant over... I would point out what nice touches I have seen in Tiger, but the system and integrated applications just foul up so much and so frequently that I can't remember what they are.

The article and the comments all make one (major) assumption... That all the iPod purchasers are computer savvy, so to speak. I personally don't own an ipod but in my circle of friends and family and aquaintances, I am only one of two people who uses a mac out of a very large amount of people who have iPods and iPod minis. They don't really care about the windows platform, or even the Mac platform... they buy the iPod to listen to music and if the iTunes software is a joy to use, so be it. But they wouldn't (and I know they won't) even consider switching a whole computer just to complement their choice in music players. I know because I have tried to explain the advantages of the Mac system. What you are forgetting is that people who take an interest in these Apple sites are apple 'fanatics' so to speak and 'computer savvy' people. The rest of the population just want a decent, good looking music player and they have just that. Most people wouldn't even know (or care) that sites like Apple Matters existed. As long as they can get their music from their PCs/Macs onto their iPod, they are happy. The minority are people like us to care about the numbers of apple sales etc etc and ofcourse it is going to be a more biased view.