Mac OS X Lion 10.7

I hate spotlight

I hate spotlight

― dan selzer, Friday, 14 October 2011 08:33 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://virturl.com/pile/art/faces/disgust.jpg

btw Launchpad is fiddly and ill-thought out and woefully inconsistent and disgustingly savage

Once again, AA, we have to disagree, because something that works perfectly fine and simply for me is frustrating to you.

The thing I don't get about hating Spotlight is that it's completely and totally out of your way unless you need it (although so is Launchpad now that I think about it)

I initially hated spotlight because it's key command conflicted with very basic Adobe key commands, then because it's indexing took forever. Now I just don't need it...because I don't have to search for things if I already know where they are.

gestures are incredibly useful. they nullify most of the shit i would use keyboard shortcuts to do. mission control is also key. i tried really hard to drink the spaces/expose kool-aid but that drug just wasn't working. the double-tap gesture for mc on my magic mouse is freakin delightful. launchpad is useful when i need it. i mostly use spotlight for launching tho.

its been hard to parse whats good about what bc I'm coming off of 6 yrs on a G4, now on an i7. I'm pretty overwhelmed.

app store is kinda clutch. I'm glad i can give 99¢ to the developer of I Love Stars w/ two clicks. über universal apps would be good so i don't have to buy pages twice.

tighter integration w/ iOS would be good. like being able to move anything from one to the other.

i have a feeling that apples going to rule the 21st century.

I initially hated spotlight because it's key command conflicted with very basic Adobe key commands, then because it's indexing took forever.

Ah, I see what you mean. You can change the keyboard shortcut iirc, and I think you can even reduce the indexing by telling it to not index anything.

I've done both.

i tried really hard to drink the spaces/expose kool-aid but that drug just wasn't working.

I've done away with Spaces altogether, which I HATED doing because I've been using virtual desktops for maybe 15 years. I have a few apps in full screen mode but it's a compromise, and if ever I want to e.g. drag music into itunes I have to un-full screen it.

Just on Spotlight, I use it for everything all the time because I'm a hacky terminal user from way back, and find it easier and faster to type part of the name of something than go looking for it in folders/menus (although I do recognise that that's just me)

why do you have to un-fullscreen iTunes? you can drag and hold files at the edge of the screen to move over to the full screen app.

wow I had no idea, cheers

i rarely ever go looking for some random file. usually what i need is in an app thats already open or one of the folders on the dock which i clean out regularly. so i use spotlight only to launch apps that i use occasionally.

spotlight is great for launching apps

I tried spotlight out for 2 minutes in tiger and have never used it since

its good for searching for things

ha. tiger in spotlight blew chunks all over grandmas new dress.

er, spotlight in tiger

I have reserved my top right INFINITE PIXEL to expose though, launchpad is much better for app launching

I have been using Spotlight equivalents in Win (Launchy) and Ubuntu (gnome-do) for years. Could not live without them.

hot corner users, dire barbarians each one

upper-left for show desktop is useful

I have never had an upper left corner. OMG

I made it into "post I Miss You youtube"

upper left is apple menu, you monster

bottom left and right are useful.

if the only launching you ever do with spotlight is just running applications it's just about fine (although the amount of crap i have to scroll through to launch itunes after typing "it" is kind of amazing), but alfred or launchbar are _way_ better for everything spotlight does except actual searching.

aa, if you are a hacky terminal user you should try one of those, or quicksilver

upper-left for show desktop is useful

― shaane, Friday, 14 October 2011 09:19 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not judging but what do you use show desktop for? I never ever need to show my desktop.

I installed alfred once but all it did was return snide erudite one-liners

I should definitely look at Alfred, been hearing good things recently

i have never used alfred tbf. i hear it mentioned. launchbar all the way.

they keep threatening to resurrect quicksilver but afaict the og developer is basically insane and its open source community is not much better.

http://www.alfredapp.com/powerpack/

http://www.alfredapp.com/images/powerpack/itunes-mini-player.jpg

if you don't use the desktop then obv show desktop is not useful. i just use the default expose shortcut for that when i need it.

bottom left hot corner is lock screen for me.

oh, wait, I thought the user was searching for "Polite Dance Song" and got Elliott Smith, nm xp

xxp oh great, more helvetica

the basic thing is spotlight is so much more than a launcher and as a result the UI isn't really optimized for launching stuff (and certainly not the kind of object verb subject stuff that even the basic dedicated launchers do). so get a real launcher, disable/reuse the spotlight shortcut, and one the rare occasions you need to use it's full text search then click the spotlight icon or use the keyboard shortcut that opens the dedicated spotlight window.

that is how i break it down

i use the desktop as a scratchpad so flicking between apps and the desktop comes in handy. its usually empty.

hahaha re: the hate for upper left. i chose it just cause the gesture of flinging the pointer up-left to reveal felt natural.

caek, what kind of object verb subject stuff do you do on a regular basis?

ftp, email, append to clipboard

probably some other stuff

when I picture caek using his mac, it looks like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q

yeah, i can imagine using those

i use the desktop as a scratchpad

Sorry, I don't get what you mean. Temp file storage (e.g. text files), or an actual scratchpad like a big magna-doodle?

real launchers also have a bunch of stuff built in that is basically just executing an applescript but is convenient to have prewritten (play/pause, show someone's phone number in big text, drill through folders, move, delete...)

when i use a mac it is more like http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134336/focus=134979

jeez how does the mailman get your replies back to ILX so quickly

another thing i use it for is searches, e.g. i can type cmd-space then "a z" then space then type some text and a browser tab launches with it searched for on amazon. if i type "a z d e" then it searches amazon.de.

it also has clipboard history. i hit cmd-opt-\ and i get a list of the last 40 things i put in my clipboard. i can either scroll down or type a few letters from the entry i want, then hit turn to put the item back in the clipboard. this is on the verge of becoming bloatware, but LB does a way better job of it than the dedicated clipboard things that i don't mind. clipboard history is one of those things you don't know how you lived without.