Google Desktop for Mac Released 186
Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes "Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop. This software, like the PC version, indexes the content of a hard drive and serves it up on familiar Google-style search-result Web pages (or via a its own drop-down results list, if you prefer). But Google Desktop for the Mac is streamlined compared to the busy, gadget-y Windows version, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The focus is squarely on search — including local indexing of an online Gmail account of your choice. It will also index your iDisk."
Umm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Plus, I always find that the text field in Spotlight freezes up after I've typed in a couple of letters. I've downloaded the Mac version of Google Desktop because I'd seen it working on Windows and was jealous of the better performance.
Is anything worth it? (Score:2)
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It is kind of like google toolbar. With Camino I have have a variety of tool bar searches, now built in flash control, pop up blocking, etc, all without google spying on my searches.
Google is still too much focused on replacing the deficiencies of the MS Windows OS, and not enough on novel apps. We
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Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Spotlight is a desktop search. Google Desktop will index your entire browser history, will index your Gmail account locally, and your Google search history. So, that means you can search across both Web content and desktop content simultaneously.
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1. I already have something that indexes my hard drive. The resource usage implied in running a second indexing service is a tad excessive.
2. I already have a plug-in enabled framework for desktop search. Google *could* have released a Spotlight plug-in for search and Gmail.
3. Google desktop adds a server to your network profile. Just because it's so far proven secure doesn't mean its not borked.
This is just petty completism on t
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need to ask that question, don't bother downloading it, while people who DO want to do that will download it. Sound good? I doubt Google released this to please you specifically.
Oh, and it's nice to have your Gmail locally searchable while offline without having to use the piece of crap that is called Mail.app (spotlight cannot index Thunderbird, the only desktop client I can stand using).
What good does an open browser window do you if you're on a plane or bus with no internet connection? You see, there are these wonderful things called laptops. Wireless internet coverage is absolute crap up here in Canada.
Sorry, but it really bothers me when people say "Why would I want/need that?" just to downplay the usefulness of a product. I can't think of a single product, excluding things like toilet paper, that are meant for every single possible purchaser or user on the planet.
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I'll agree there's no perfect solution yet for the multiple mailbox issue. One of these days, someone will get it right. But I'll
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BTW-- I retrieve my Gmail using Thunderbird.
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BTW-- I retrieve my Gmail using Thunderbird.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't travelled much have you? Many cultures do not use toilet paper.
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I made do in India for a month with hand+water (+antibacterial soap to wash hands with afterwards) and it suprisingly only took me about a day or two to get used to it.
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Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
You might think you could get around all this via editing in plaintext mode, eh? No dice. There is effectively no first-class plaintext mode in Thunderbird's mail editor. E.g. you can change to "plaintext" mode, but all it does is hide the formatting bar.. any fonts in the document remain, but now you can't change them, even to make them fixed width. Pasting into a "plaintext" editor preserves the original formatting -- including the big fonts and glaring colors from that web page you just copied from. So much for WYSIWYG -- there's no way to actually see what the mailer will send out with plain text formatting. You just have to smack it all to "fixed width" and hope for the best.
Aside from that, Thunderbird's mail filtering is fairly functional and does what I want. It seems to handle large email boxes allright, but its search is pretty slow.
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That is "home" directory being indexed by a net/3rd party connected tool for you. Also that tool had a very weird security issue lately.
Someone should ask Apple why they didn't Internet enable spotlight at first place. They couldn't? I don't think so. It was the fact that i
I know this may sound stupid . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I know this may sound stupid . . . (Score:4, Informative)
That said, 10.5 looks intriguing, so if the Spotlight-like feature is the only feature of Google Desktop I would need, it would serve my needs for 2 months, at most.
Re:I know this may sound stupid . . . (Score:5, Informative)
The download page says you need 10.4+ to run Google Desktop so you're still SOL.
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now, however many months later, I don't use dashboard ever, and I use spotlight for 1) typing in application names to start them 2) in File Open dialogs occasionally.
Re:I know this may sound stupid . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
now, however many months later, I don't use dashboard ever, and I use spotlight for 1) typing in application names to start them 2) in File Open dialogs occasionally.
I use a Mac at work. The first time I tried the dashboard I could not believe anyone thought this was either useful *or* cool; I haven't touched it since. (I use Karamba on my home Linux box, so it's not that I hate widgets; I just don't think the way they're implemented on Mac make them worth using. I'd rather have them persistent, but able to be turned off.)
Spotlight I use occasionally, but it gives me weird results. I'm sure I'm not using it right, but whenever I do I end up with a million results that have no relation to what I'm looking for. From what I remember, I also couldn't figure out how to search for, say, a set of files with a word in part of the name and a specific file extension.
If Google Desktop for mac is a little more intuitive and powerful, I'll probably end up using it over Spotlight.
Another anecdote (Score:3, Informative)
The first time I tried the dashboard I could not believe anyone thought this was either useful *or* cool; I haven't touched it since.
I'm an academic writer and I find the F12 call to bring up the calendar and the dictionary + thesaurus a godsend. As with anything, YMMV.
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Agreed, dashboard is over rated (Score:2)
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I found that Apple *had* loaded Dashboard with 3 widgets that are quite handy, and for which I'd either had third party addons installed or icons in my dock since X.1.
i.e. : Calendar Widget::MenuCalendarClock
Calculator Widget::Calculator Icon in Dock
Weather Widget::Meteorologist > Forecastfox
All in all a quick F12 to do a calculation, or check stats when the bro
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- create a folder named FordChevyDodge. Search for 'Chevy'--it pops right up. Search for 'hevy'--nada. Oops. (That works just fine in 10.3.9, by the way.)
- create a file named 'file.txt' and put the text 'whateveryouwant' in it. Spotlight for 'whateveryouwant' and it pops right up. Change the file name to 'file.php' and Spotlight for 'whateveryouwant' again. No matches. Oops.
There's lots about Spotlight that I hate. I *loved* how search worked
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Its the capitalisation. Change the file to FordCHevyDodge and search for 'hevy' and it shows up just fine. I'll admit that it is odd though. Maybe they are assuming that if a word starts with a capital then that is a proper name and you wouldn't want to find it if you missed the first letter. Possibly it helps the indexing by reducing size. Or something.
Nice one though, I've never run acro
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It all depends on the user. Like you said, you've used Spotlight for a long time and never come across it. I found that practically my first day on and I trip over it all the time.
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If your files AREN'T CamelCase, you're prettymuchscrewed. Back before everything was camel case, everything was all lowe
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Damn, where's the "-1, Factually Incorrect" mod when you need it? It's too bad people give out "+1, Informative" mods just because something sounds correct.
The thing that comes up when you press Command-F uses Spotlight's engine. Try my 'FordChevyDodge' example--Command-F gives the same results as Command-Space which gives the same results as using the little search box in the top of every finder window.
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Spotlight is incredibly slow, it's hard to do compound searches, and misses data. Other than that it's great.
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Rather than Spotlight? (Score:5, Informative)
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Edit for accuracy, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
The referenced Tuesday was yesterday [arstechnica.com], not six days from now. It's completely understandable that some stories are posted late, but is it too much to ask that they be edited to remain factual?
Comes down to performance (Score:2)
I already get the GMail search effect, since I download a copy of my GMail messages to Apple's Mail application via POP3.
So, the real test comes down to how effective the Google syste
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http://hiram.nl/ipsedixit/artikel/801/the-boolean
but why? (Score:2)
QS (Score:2, Informative)
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Third party desktop search toolbars are dead? (Score:2)
Third-party search toolbars also seem like a major step back in terms of security: you have yet another thing with access to your local filesy
Vista searching == crap (Score:2)
Also the sidebar included with googledesktop (>v5) is much better than the build in one and the gadgets available are far more in numbers and superior in features.
Unedited (Score:2)
> "Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop.
Call me old fashioned, but I am not sure that posting the submissions "unedited" is as good an idea as CmdrTacco seems to think. Any semi-literate person knows that you may have to supply additional information to keep the context of the citation correct. In this case, the missing part would be "Julio *wrote* the day before yesterday". As it is, the citation wrongly refers to next week, although it meant to be th
What would have made more sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
[1] http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Co nceptual/MDImporters/Concepts/WritingAnImp.html [apple.com]
Re:What would have made more sense... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm watching it run right now, and Google didn't reinvent the wheel, exactly. Google Desktop is running mdimport (the program that invokes the Spotlight plugins to convert files to collections of terms) in the background. What Google is providing is a replacement/supplement for the Spotlight search interface, but not all of the Spotlight software stack. This is how Google Desktop takes advantage of all your existing Spotlight Importer plugins. (Which are damn easy to write. Props to Apple for that.)
Spotlight's indexing could use some improvement, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Google Desktop performs on my large collection of PDF and Postscript files. Spotlight doesn't seem to do very intelligent ranking of the documents it returns, so unless the search terms are fairly unique, the results can be impossible to sift through. Hopefully Google (or maybe 10.5) will improve that.
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I think a desire to have an alternative UI was in fact a driving factor in Google's decision to make this, rather than just a technical constraint.
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Anyway, long story short, the amazing Mekentosj [mekentosj.com] pair came up with this PDF library app called papers [mekentosj.com]. They make a ton of other free apps [mekentosj.com] that have won awards, papers is the first one that costs cash. But if you want to organise a lot of PDF
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Why run to indexers on one computer? (Score:2)
Unless Google Desktop uses the Spotlight APIs and thus the same indices, I think that I will pass.
That said, I always considered Google Desktop as a must have Windows utility so I might change my mind
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Ironic, since it's the 10.3 users who really need it... if you have Spotlight already it seems pretty marginal.
Re: I don't have a Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, I haven't laughed that hard all week.
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Good lord, and that's only if you're adding things to an existing PC! That's almost $1200 right there! Note I'm not talking about pond muck systems, but a system that actually would allow an apples to apples comparison
Exaggerated prices (Score:2)
The copy of Vista that comes with most PCs is good enough for the average user and it's absorbed into the price of the system so you won't even notice paying for it. Hardware prices for Vista capable machines are dropping all the time, but even now a PC with Vista is much cheaper than a Mac. There are many improvements from XP to Vista so forget everything you know about XP. Once you have tried Vista, I doubt you will want to use a Mac again. Don't take my word for it though
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I have done exactly that...and quickly restored my HP laptop to XP and felt thanks for having my OS X.
All the things I could do easily in XP were now an almightly trial in Vista. The interface in Vista has the feel of "change for the sake of change" instead of making anything more useful or easier to do. I won't go into the whole "You moved your mouse pointer, cancel
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*I'm* missing *your* point? (Score:2)
Is this site just anti-Microsoft, or what?
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Mac Minis can be had for $500 or so. The cheapest Vista PC is about $400 and won't run anywhere near the speed of a Mac Mini, runs Vista Basic (basically XP w/ DRM) and isn't the system I'm comparing. The low-end are AMD Semprons, by the time you hit the first dual core systems, you're in the $600+ range.
I don't care for Vis
I guess you will never try Vista (Score:2)
I wonder how many people that complain about Vista have actually tried it. It's a vast improvement over XP, and represents five years of work.
> there are some virulent MS fanboi's here.
Mac fanbois are worse in my experience.
> Add in the DRM'd OS, and there's no reason to run it at all.
This is a common misconception. DRM doesn't lock you out of your system. The addition of DRM to Vista *enables* you to play DRM'd media, which you would otherwise be unable to play on X
Who has tried what (Score:2)
I find the length of time Vista has been worked on to be irrelevant and unimpressive, especially considering they changed directions in the middle of that timeframe.
The real question in my mind is - how much have YOU tried OSX? Plenty of us have tried Vista and use Windows every day for work. But how many Vista proponents such as yourself to really see what the diff
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I wonder how many people that complain about Vista have actually tried it. It's a vast improvement over XP, and represents five years of work.
Many people have tried it. Some of us are forced to use MS software at work no matter what our own desires or even the inappropriateness of an MS OS.
> Add in the DRM'd OS, and there's no reason to run it at all.
This is a common misconception. DRM doesn't lock you out of your system. The addition of DRM to Vista *enables* you to play DRM'd media, which you would otherwise be unable to play on XP or Mac.
Just keep repeating that as you wait 30 minutes to copy a 100MB directory tree on your system.
And I think you mean "legally play on XP or Mac" based on current DMCA law. We can only hope that the iTunes DRM issue in the EU will continue to roll over all DRM issues, because iTunes is actually the biggest argument against DRM I've seen.
More software works on Windows than on a Mac.
I don't need 500 version
Microsoft leaves scars? (Score:2)
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You're crazy. You must be trolling because nobody could throw out that line of shit with a straight face. I run Vista on my machine, and it runs fine. It is a year old, and not counting the monitor cost me about $300. I have a Sempron 2600+, semi-cheap mobo, 1GB memory, 256MB video card, and 120GB HDD. Everything Vista does works fine. It's certainly not a top of the line system, but it performs *very* well and compares well to a Mini. You could build a similar system to the Mini for much less than t
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I wasn't defending Vista. I was just saying your estimates were ridiculously off. My PC, which again cost only $300 over a year ago, runs Vista well (yes, even Aero). The only thing that is worse on my PC than on a Mini is the processor. Everything else is significantly better than the low level Mini. You can easily get a PC that runs Vista well for much less than your wildly overestimated $1200.
You don't have to lie and exaggerate to make your point. If you think Vista sucks, then say Vista sucks.
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Besides, Vista will run on much less than that, if you want it.
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Not that big a problem, really (Score:4, Informative)
That's not as big a problem as you'd think.
1. Other apps haven't had a problem because of this. Both Mozilla and OpenOffice, for example, insisted on writing their very own framework and widgets, so basically they're _neither_ Gnome nor KDE. Your line of thinking seems to be that that would make them shunned by both KDE and Gnome users, yet that's not really the case. And then there's stuff like XMMS, which doesn't even try to look even remotely like the desktop, and had no problem either.
2. In the meantime both KDE and Gnome can use each other's themes. So you can just write your app with either set of widgets and it won't look out of place on the other desktop.
3. I'd buy your argument if it were some really complex app, with lots of forms and controls. Essentially all you really need there is a freakin' web-page-like page, in a frame. As long as you can draw a white background with a rectangle for the input and a button, you're actually good to go for a simple search app. (The borders and title bar of the frame will be drawn by the window manager anyway, so you don't have to worry about those.)
4. And you don't even have to do that, if your goal is to look like Google. I.e., like a web page. Think about it. You can just serve HTTP on the port of your choice, restrict it to localhost so it's not abusable from outside, your "application" icon just starts a browser on that port. There you go: now the user can use whatever browser they prefer, and have it look like any other page in that browser. They can use Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror if they absolutely have to have a KDE-only environment, or whatever.
Basically, let's lay _that_ tired argument to rest at least in this case. Linux has some problems with mass adoption, yes, but constantly claiming that you can't write apps because there are 2 desktops... is just false, and it's getting repetitive and boring by now.
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Headline: Stepchild beaten and sent to bed... (Score:2, Insightful)
I didn't say that (Score:2)
At any rate, I didn't say they _had_ to. There are plenty of existing widget sets. They could have used any of those if they didn't want to write cool frameworks.
Also, the "haven't had a problem" meant: the users don't really have a huge problem wi
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Both. Just build yourself a daemon service that does indexing in background and then add frontends to it (CLI, GNOME/GTK, KDE/Qt). Since frontends will just query a service (via DBUS f.e., or even TCP socket) I would be extremely easy to build multiple frontends for it. Maybe even document the protocol used to query and wait for open source community to build frontends theirself.
Or you could use FreeDesktop.org standard pro
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> You missed the obvious one tho, HTTP. We already
> know that Google can write HTML and webservers,
> so why not write a daemon that can serve up
> searches via http://127.0.0.1/google/ [127.0.0.1] ?
Yeah of course they could do that - write a daemon that indexes stuff and allows do queries via web or XMLRPC. I bet Google would have no problem with writing server application for Linux - they have it done already (their appliances are running something
Beagle (Score:2)
http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page [beagle-project.org]
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Honestly, I tried the apple "MAIL" app when I got the Powerbook, and found it limited and frustrating in the extreme - using it IS a sacrifice.
After taking a crack at Thunderbird, then Entourage, I have settled on Gyazmail, [gyazsquare.com] which really is a nice bit of work.
(The power supply for t
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Google is all about "relevant" advertising. Their early (revenue) success (AdWords) came from watching your search activity to determine what topics are of interest to you. That's fine; Google provides me a service, they get to use the information (my search terms) that I give them as part of the service request.
Google has moved on to hosting my data (email, and now documents) on their servers, and now to installing their software on
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Sigh
Wrong, you have not studied the structure (Score:2)
When you have a system that is architected well things like this do not have to drag down system performance overmuch.
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What? We should trawl our way back up to another post of yours where you explain that some post that you wrote earlier that looked like some kind of lame comment was actually written in a jocular style that was too subtle for us to notice on first reading. Wow! I don't think I can get to the 'back' button fast enough.
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