Looking forward to getting your hands on Yosemite? Does Spotlight look like something you'll use regularly? What do you think of the changes? Sound off in the comments. Search results populate quickly and with ease. Upon launch, the app opens with a simple console highlighting its search bar and prompts you to try out a few things. Instead, it's layering on top of them, providing you with a front-line interface to get at the information you need to get things done. Hain has a very clean and user-friendly interface with no bells and whistles. It's doing the work of several applications you already depend on, like your web browser, the Maps application and others. Bottom lineĪpple has evolved Spotlight from a simple file search tool to something much more robust - a general search tool. Each of them has features and functionality unique to themselves, and it'll be up to the individual developers to continue to differentiate their products to appeal to customers. In truth, Apple hasn't "Sherlocked" any of these apps with the new Spotlight. Ever since then, the term "Sherlocking" has existed to describe what happens when Apple incorporates a feature into OS X that had previously been supported by an independent developer. When Apple introduced its third iteration of the Sherlock search tool - Spotlight's distant predecessor - it focused on web search instead of local search, as previous versions had done. Apple was accused of copying the concept wholesale from Karelia Software's Watson, which offered similar functionality. 'Since Aug 14, 2011, Alfred has been used 2804 times. Even by itself, Alfred is an awesome help to me. And while I have dabbled with the powerpack, I paid for it mostly to support the dev.
#LAUNCHBAR VS. ALFRED MAC#
In the same token, Objective Development's LaunchBar and Stranded Design's Quicksilver both help Mac users find content quickly and easily with just a few keystrokes. Spotlight is fine for freshly installed OSs that have little on it, but it doesn't learn. Third-party developers have certainly filled in Spotlight's gaps over the years, and when Apple showed off the new features of Spotlight, some users of Running With Crayons' Alfred noticed some similarities right away, such as quick Web searches, map searches and more.
It's not quite as complete in the WWDC build as the actual Calculator application, but you can enter simple arithmetic or measurement units and Spotlight will yield results on the fly. You can also ask Spotlight to do calculations and conversions.