My problem with Leopard spotlight is aesthetic not functional. I can still find anything I care to look for on my home server/local computers.. but the presentation of said results is far less useful in Leopard than in Tiger IMO.

Try reading my post again. It cannot search RELIABLY – If something gives me unreliable, inconsistent answers then it doesn’t work. 10.3 Find File is FAST and always gives me the same results. Spotlight searches take a few minutes and give different answers each time. I’m searching very large hard drives here with hundreds of thousands of files. I can do a reliable, fast network search which takes 35 seconds with my old LC475 running System 7.5, but with Spotlight the same search takes 6 minutes, ignores some of the files, and sometimes it just sits and spins its indicator without finding anything.

If Spotlight’s searches were as pedantic as you are, I’d have no problem with it. But if I do a network search three times, sometimes I get 16 results, sometimes 60 results, somtimes 43 results. It’s impossible to predict. However with OS 10.3 I always get rock-solid results.

My plumber told me he could fix the waterproofing in my bathroom, but after he re-did the job three times it still leaked. In my books, that means he CAN’T fix it, even though he said he could. Just because something says it works doesn’t mean it works. If it doesn’t work as advertised then it doesn’t work, period.

Have a look at this website detailing how Spotlight works (or doesn’t work):
http://cocoacafe.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/fscatalogsearch/
It’s quite scary knowing it ignores results without telling you.

I’m sick of being Apple’s beta-tester. Spotlight is broken, and I just moved to Vindows Vista because it works better, ditching 21 years of Mac loyalty. 90% of the planet use Windows so it’s not all bad. Half my software is open-source so the change isn’t as drastic as I previously feared, and my network searches are now reliable again.

Click on “Show all” as always. In the upper right-hand corner of the window that opens, below the search box and to the right of the save button, hit the plus (+) button. There you see the option “Kind is Any.” Choose the option under “Any” if it appears. If it doesn’t appear, chose “other” and type in anything you want such as, for example, “mail” or “microsoft.” It’s not as nice as Tiger, but it works.

Anyway, as I scroll down through the display, and in another window locate and inspect files, the spotlight display, because it is jumping around, loses my place in the list. Working with this feels like trying to put a tattoo on an acrobat during the performance, and it really ruins it for me.

I guess that the main problem is that, if I move the slider down ferom the top and highlight a paeticulaqr file, within a few seconds the slider goes back to the beginning of the file and I have completely lost my place, and don’t know how fqr I had searched down already when I want to continue scanning the files fond using my search criteria.
Admittedly, I may often have a search returning several thousand results, but, as they are arranged by file type and then by date, I could search them efficiently if the cursor did not keep flying up to the top. I have tried to avoid this by the primative method of keeping my finger on the mouse button (selecting the slider continuously rather than only when I am moving it) and this is a little better but not much.

I have a 5 gigabyte Pioneer hard disk, partitioned into 5 volumes, ranging from 40 megabytes to 155 megabytes in size, and I have wondered whether the problem arises from the large number of files on my computer, but see no way to test this. Most of my volumes are over half full, so i have a lot of material on the computer (which, by the way, you might need to know is a G5 tower, in case that makes a difference. But I also have this problem running on my wife’s G4 tower. I think it does not happen on my G5 dual processor Laptop, but I don’t use it very much.

Does the spotlight indexing system have limitations on the amount of material it can manage?

Has anyone else had this problem? I don’t even find anyone reporting this problem, let alone anyone who has a solution, so it is lonely out here. I had thought that maybe I should upgrade to leopard in the hope that this problem might go away, but the entries on this website give me no encouragement that I should have anything to do with Leopard if spotlight is my main problem.

Sorry Greenie, but now you’re changing your tune. You claimed Leopard couldn’t search network volumes – which is blatantly wrong – and since that was debunked now you’re gripe is how fast it performs. There goes your credibility.

Anyways, I wholeheartedly agree re: the old Tiger spotlight search window. I have been searching for a ‘fix’ for this. I was actually hoping a bit of console wizardry would bring it back for me in Leopard but I guess this is too good to be true

A network ’search for file by date’ search that takes 13 seconds on my 10.3 machine takes over 4 minutes with Leopard and often crashes or simply sits there with a spinning circle indicating something is happening, but no results show up. When it does sort-of work, I might get 24 results with 10.3, but only 14 results on Leopard. I’ve tried this in numerous networks with the latest of the latest hardware, older hardware and some very old hardware. The simple fact is: A 350MHz iMac with 10.3 is MUCH FASTER and more reliable at searching for files than a quad processor MacPro. If you can prove me wrong, I’ll be happy. This is a case where I’d love to get magic fix-all answer and admit I was wrong. But unfortunately nobody’s been able to prove me wrong yet. I’ve asked a LOT of people and put my results on a lot of message boards, yet nobody has an answer.

10.3’s Finder windows also have a box at the top right so I can search for files inside that window. It’s fantastic, narrowing down search results in a fraction of a second. Until somebody writes a proper Find File replacement I will never be able to use a new Mac to get real work done. It’s simply impossible. I currently use 10.3 on an old 450MHz PowerMac to do network searches and data recovery from damaged hard drives. Would love to upgrade it to something faster, but if Spotlight cannot index a damaged hard drive then it cannot search it. Period.

Nabeel, I’ve tried setting up discussions about this on Apple’s discussion boards but they are usually deleted within a few hours. Apple are censoring people who don’t agree with their views. Hundreds of people have written to Spotlight boards asking along the lines of ‘Why can’t I search for files like I could in OS 9?’ but you’ll notice every one of those questions is marked ‘Not Answered…’ or they get stupid responses like ‘Use EasyFind’ which is one of the slowest, least Mac-like and unstable applications ever, and can ONLY search for file NAMES, not dates or any other information. PathFinder just doesn’t cut it either.

Have a look at this website, it may scare you to know that Spotlight doesn’t always reveal every file you want to find:
http://cocoacafe.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/fscatalogsearch/

Nabeel I hope you and I can find a solution, then I can go back to using and loving my Mac. I’ve seriously considered paying somebody to write a replacement Find File application, but I can’t find an interested Mac programmer in Sydney. All the programmers I know use the command line so they have no issues with Spotlight, because they turn it off immediately and ignore it!

I just bought my first Windows computer. I hate Windows, but it’s far more useful than Leopard. Apple removed so many beautiful features over the years that Windows is actually better feature-wise. Networking is more reliable, and surprise surprise, I can actually SEARCH NETWORK FILES, like in OS 7.5! Wow! Amazing. I have never, and will never use any applications beginning with ‘i’, and rely almost entirely on open-source software for my complex workflow. The ONLY Apple software I used with OS 10.3 was the Finder, with Find File. Now that Find File is gone, there’s simply no reason to own a Mac. As soon as Find File is restored with all the original functionality, I’ll be buying a brand new Mac. But I can’t see that happening any day soon.

Oh, and I agree that the change to the “Show All” Spotlight window is a downgrade.

It also annoys me that the previous version of Mail would show how large an email was as you attached files to it – before you sent it. I can’t find any way of doing this now! It was very useful for me as I routinely send large files to clients with sometimes 5 or 10MB limits to their mail.

I was really surprised to see this change in Leopard, especially remembering the large segment it got in the Tiger keynote address.

And I’m sorry, but CoverFlow is a sad replacement and useless in this context — I love browsing my album art like LPs, but I sure don’t want to browse my file cabinet in this way! (this one? nope, flip. this one? nope, flip, etc.)

But, it’s also not nearly as bad if you switch to cover flow view. It’s not the same as tiger, but better than a plain list of files. Combined with QuickView, it’s nor horrible at all.

I might just install my copy of Tiger on my new MBP. Hmm..

Oh, and I always search things in Finder. Spotlight has never really fit in my work flow.

I miss the old dock, the beautiful white menu bar, and sometimes even the brushed metal. My main problem, is that they don’t allow you the choices like Windows does! They let you change the interface without 3rd party apps almost substantially.

I wish we had the option to switch back to the old interface just like Windows does. Come on Apple! Who’s with me?