Apple Computer is 14 days away from shipping Tiger: Mac OS X 10.4. I already ordered a few copies from MacZone. Besides for all the new cool functionality included such as dashboard, very improved iChat AV, Automater, Safari RSS and more, they have done some really good work with search. Apple named the new "find anything, anywhere, fast" built in search engine Spotlight.

Apple says it is super fast because "Spotlight indexes every file on your computer transparently and in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns." On the usability front, "A permanent new fixture of Tiger’s menu bar, the convenient Spotlight search field gives you instant results encompassing not only files, folders and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, System Preferences and applications." They say that Spotlight is "Organically Organized", where Tiger utilizes something called "Spotlight Smart Folders" to save your search results. One of the flashier features is "Star Power" which places these illuminated spotlights on your files when you do a search, screen capture here.

I am excited, a bit too excited.

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