New Windows Search Interface Borrows Heavily From MacOS (arstechnica.com) 86
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Press clover-space on a Mac (aka apple-space or command-space to Apple users) and you get a search box slap bang in the middle of the screen; type things into it and it'll show you all the things it can find that match. On Windows, you can do the same kind of thing -- hit the Windows key and then start typing -- but the results are shown in the bottom left of your screen, in the Start menu or Cortana pane. The latest insider build of Windows, build 17040 from last week, has a secret new search interface that looks a lot more Mac-like. Discovered by Italian blog Aggiornamenti Lumia, set a particular registry key and the search box appears in the middle of the screen. The registry key calls it "ImmersiveSearch" -- hit the dedicated key, and it shows a simple Fluent-designed search box and results. This solution looks and feels a lot like Spotlight on macOS.
I though Apple only copied everyone? (Score:2)
The thing I don't get about Windows 10 is its continual upgrade. This means there is always changes to the UI, which can get annoying... Sure I like a change in UI for my home system, but that is me and I like trying new things, but I have seen users stop in Panic because I have changed the background from #3366CC to #0033CC just so the white text would be easier to see. I had to deal with many angry emails from this change.
Re: I though Apple only copied everyone? (Score:2)
I can't even tell the difference. I actually had to use a color comparison tool to compare them side-by-side to see any difference at all. It's amazing that anyone noticed, let alone got angry.
"clover" my ass. (Score:4, Informative)
that is known since the 80s as the "splat" key. n00b5, anyway....
"Splat" my ass. (Score:3)
There were Apples [wikipedia.org] before Macs; show some respect for your elders. And get off my lawn.
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Didn't Apple steal the idea from Launchy?
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It looks like shit.
... It's good to know that Microsoft has yet to be accused of tasteful UI design.
What is wrong with the search on the start menu.
The only thing I can think of is that the center of the screen is also the center of attention.
LaunchBar (and QuickSilver, Launcy, whatever clone you pick for whatever OS) are useful for a lot more than just launching programs, which is why they're so popular.
Has Linux improved any in the 'having games worth playing' front?
Depends on your tastes, of course. The following is a selection that covers simulations, racing games, FPS games, strategy games, survival horror...
* Anything from Valve
St
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The cool thing on steam, you own the game licence so, whether you play on Linux or Windows, it is the same thing to steam, so a whole bunch of people own a whole range of Linux games without them realising it (they are just 'temporarily' playing them on windows).
Re: Bad (Score:3)
And, of course, thereâ(TM)s Steamâ(TM)s remote play capability, and NVIDIAâ(TM)s cloud gaming.
I can see remote rendering becoming serious business - no console to buy, no expensive gaming rig. Just stream to an tablet or phone with a Bluetooth controller.
It may not do for latency-sensitive games like multiplayer FPSâ(TM)s, but 40-80 ms of latency isnâ(TM)t an experience killer for an awful lot of games.
Having used remote rendering for games, I can say first-hand: itâ(TM)s not
Clover-Space? (Score:1)
All of it (Score:2)
Instead of focusing on this stuff, Apple should instead focus on making a decent piece of hardware: like a keyboard that doesn't suck. I'm sure someone in the world likes that keyboard, but there don't seem to be many.
Italian Lumia blog = Apple? (Score:2)
Breaking news! The ghost of Steve Jobs has been secretly running Apple via an Italian what-I-imagine formerly Lumia/Windows Phone focused blog. More at 11.
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Search is for retards who don't know where they put their shit. Like Mac users.
Want to cripple a computer's performance? Don't disable search indexing. No fucking thank you.
I know exactly where I put my shit.
Apple's search indexing is completely unobtrusive, except in the first couple of days after a major rev. OS upgrade.
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Who said apple focuses on Microsoft?
And up until jobs carked it, they've always made pretty great hardware.
But yeah, that goddamn keyboard.
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Dude, I am with you on the keyboard. 3 the MacBookPro, especially the touchpad, hate the keyboard (mostly due to lack of keys). I have ranted on this repeatedly. I've been wondering if anyone would be interested in a kickstarter to fabricate a new bottom for the MacBookPro that would feature a full keyboard and be thicker with extra ports. I call it the PhatBook Pro. And while we are on the subject, I refuse to buy anything without at least on old school USB 2.0/3.0 port.
Why stop now? (Score:1)
Copying Apple has worked for 30 years. Why quit now?
http://applemuseum.bott.org/se... [bott.org]
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'Except they aren't copying Apple...
It's an old UI paradigm. It's been implemented since 1996 (and probably earlier), and has multiple implementations including two in KDE alone (to say nothing of the dozens of others that exist in Windows, Mac and Linux).
The only interesting thing here is that Microsoft is baked one into Windows, just like Apple did; and in both cases, they did it years after third-parties did it...
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Copying Apple has worked for 30 years. Why quit now?
http://applemuseum.bott.org/se... [bott.org]
Yep, like this never gets old!
https://youtu.be/N-2C2gb6ws8 [youtu.be]
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I just install agent ransack and use that instead. I was fine with the Windows 2000 search, which was the same as search in Windows versions before it for the most part. I could even tolerate the extra clicks and brutally slow dog animation introduced to it in XP. But later versions of search fail to find files I know are there so it doesn't really matter if they're fast or indexed or whatever.
Copies all the way down (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worth noting that Apple copied Spotlight's current interface from an app called Quicksilver. Sherlock, Apple's previous search interface (also cribbed by Windows), was taken from an app called Watson. While I'm at it, don't forget that iBooks was copied from Delicious Library and then later reproduced across with Windows ecosystem.
It's the circle of life.
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Although just a month or two ago, I switched to Keypirinha [keypirinha.com] because Launchy development stalled out long ago and I was starting to have some weird bugs with it (long hangs when I started trying to use the calculator feature or search for anything that started with digits).
Re:Copies all the way down - it goes back further. (Score:3)
QuickSilver started off in 2003, and is a knockoff of LaunchBar, which has been around for NeXSTEP since 1996.
Launchy started ~2007 or so.
To say nothing of the dozens of others for Linux, Windows, and Mac.
It's a useful (and popular) enough interface that both Apple and Microsoft baked it into their OS.
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Quicksilver was/is nice if you have a bunch of custom actions you want to set up. I tended to just use it as a simple launcher. So once Spotlight got fast and accurate enough at that (which did take a few years), I stopped installing Quicksilver.
It's pretty much the only way I open apps and documents now - so on those rare occasions it doesn't work, it's incredibly vexing.
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It is because all the Microsoft Developers run Mac OS/X with Windows as a Virtual Machine. Everyone wants to be the cool kid, but looks only get your so far.
Looks like something (Score:2)
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I'd turn off and never use...
Well you're in luck! From the summary
set a particular registry key and the search box appears in the middle of the screen
It's not on by default.
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That's your prerogative, to be certain, but why? You prefer to have to click through a bunch of icons and/or menus to get to a search functionality option somewhere in your UI? Do you just memorize the location of everything?
Me? I have 0 icons on my desktop and only a handful on my hidden taskbar and I use the MacOS search to launch just about everything else.
It's fast and easy; like tab-complete on the CLI. Just seems like a no-brainer. To each their own.
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That's your prerogative, to be certain, but why?
Because having to switch between keyboard and mouse kills productivity. Of course, everything is where it's supposed to be, so I don't have to memorize where it is. I can still navigate to it and open it with a mouse quicker than typing and selecting. It's one of the things that I really hate about Win10, no easy to navigate by mouse hierarchy making me use the much less efficient search functions.
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If you get used to the interface style (key combo + the first character of the program)... it's actually hard to go back.
So I just searched Google for "clover space"... (Score:2)
It's mentioned on the 2nd page of search-results and it, erm... points directly back to this article.
Anyway, I guess we all finally learned what "CMD" means after all these years.
It's called a keyboard launcher (Score:2)
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It makes me wonder what axe TFA's author has to grind. It's a UI model people liked, and (shocker) Apple added a similar interface to Spotlight. It's far from the first on the Mac, and exactly nobody at Apple would claim otherwise.
The first (that I know of) is LaunchBar, which started on NeXTSTEP; and even that is probably not the first interface (I'll bet Xerox PARC had something similar too...)
There were probably a dozen (at least) LaunchBar and similar launchers in OS X before Apple made their clone.
Bott
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It seems the TFA's author doesn't have an axe to grind...
There's no mention of it being a "stolen" interface anywhere.
So... seriously... this appears to be BeauHD getting the Anti-Apple crowd into a frothy mess because Microsoft has decided to do the same thing Apple did -- add a bit of good UI into their OS.
Ignorance is rampant... (Score:1)
Welcome to the current year, where despite having access to the INTERNET, the amount of ignorance from FAGs is so rampant, it's spreading into everyday life. Moving from Mac OS to Windows was the best thing I could have done, as it's at least a clear separation from all the FAGs that still masturbate to their ignorance about OSs in general.
If you want
I still keep locate32 installed (Score:3)
Even "everything" isn't particularly good compared to it.
Why can't people develop a powerful search? I want to include an exclude file types, search within size ranges, specify a path to search, etc.
Locate32 still does this, I think the latest build is 3.1 RC3m 11.7100 - it's sadly abandoned but does the job flawlessly..
I'd bet dollars to donuts, without even looking, that the Microsoft search looks flashy and 'clean' with very little tweakability to it. (example, I index my NAS drives)
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The search interface that comes with Directory Opus does that and more (you can setup advanced filters and save them).
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The search interface that comes with Directory Opus does that and more (you can setup advanced filters and save them).
Even before Spotlight, macOS allowed for saving search templates.
MS's modus operandi (Score:2)
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Microsoft is innovating in Software Licensing agreements and cloud lock-ins. I have MS stock and it is rocking!
Major difference between windows and OSX remains (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nope, when I hit Windows and search for Documents I get my Documents folder. Oh, I'm using Windows 7, not that pile of shit they're shipping now.
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1) Windows+S to open search
2) type "documents"
3) press Enter
4) My Documents opens in a file explorer Window
This is on Windows 10. What are you talking about?
Pretty wont change stupid (Score:1)
Microsoft search is broken. It was okish in Win7. But something changed and now trying to search the pc for basic features like ‘accounts’ or ‘user’ will confuse the fuck out of me.
Spotlight is fucking amazing, quick and packed full of useful OS features. The two are just not the same at all.
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It's like registering a square (Score:1)