Sun via Apple.
One is under NDA, so I can't talk about it, the other has been demoed
in public, so it is fair game.
Apple's Tiger is the next version of OS X. And has many nice features.
I think that one in particular, Spyglass, will be used by web
developers, in the near future.
Spyglass, quite simply is a search widget, that is pre-built into some
applications like iTunes. Tiger has implemented a system-wide search
with a little Spyglass icon it the right corner of the Menubar. It will
also be available for inclusion in programs that developers write for
the Mac -- presumably this will include web apps.
I have no Developer specs yet, but I assume that Spyglass is scriptable
(almost everything on OS X is scriptable -- photoshop, word, etc)
I have been told that Longhorn will have a similar feature, but I
haven't seen it.
In a sentence Spyglass, quickly searches, names. content and meta data
of every file in the system.
It is very fast, I did a search on Arlene (my sister's name) and i was
amazed at some of the things it found -- one was a mp3 in my iTunes
library, named : "See what the boys in the back room will have.mp3".
The song is by Marlene Dietrich -- but her name was in neither the file
name nor the content, but in the metadata for that file.
Spyglass will examine things like email headers, and camera settings of
captured photos. It will intelligently search the content of file
types other than text files. For example it can find things inside pdf
files, etc. You can search for all image files that are 350 x 400
pixels.
Or, any file containing <cfinvoke (I was thinking about Michael's
Debugger problem).
Multiple search terms are fine, as are partial words -- it starts
searching when you type the first letter. (This can be a little
off-putting, but it is a pre-release).
It neatly categorizes the hits into things like: email, images, etc.
and shows the top n in each category, with an option to display the
rest.
I can see developers using this in several ways -- as part of the
development process (wouldn't that be a nice Eclipse plugin). And, as
an alternative to Verity, Glimpse or Lucene to provide search
capabilities for the sites we develop.
If you get the opportunity to see the Tiger pre-release, spend a few
minutes and try Spyglass -- it will be worth the time.
HTH
Dick
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