I don’t think I’m alone in this thinking either. On Mac OS X Tiger, when you searched for something, the list that appeared is much like the list that appears now, under Leopard. Leopard’s speed improvements for these searches, when compared to Tiger, is undeniable and welcome. Where Spotlight in Leopard begins to break down is when you click Show All to see all of the results for your search.
In Tiger, when I clicked Show All I got a really nice Spotlight-only window that I could then drill down into the results more specifically. For example, if I was searching for photos of my friend Chris Fehnel, the window in Tiger looked like this.
Tiger’s Spotlight "show all" window.
Pretty straight forward, right? It breaks out Documents (or in this case conversations I had with Chris in iChat), Email messages, his Address Book entry, and photos that I had tagged with his name. Brilliant!
Tiger’s Spotlight window also allowed for some sorting options on the right "panel". Sorting by date, kind, location of the file, etc, – is quick, easy, and straight forward.
Now, let’s take a look at Leopard’s Spotlight window when clicking Show All for a search for "Chris Fehnel".
Leopard’s "show all" window.
I don’t even think I have to explain how bad this is. Imagine being new to the Mac, and seeing this window. This is horrible, unusable, and makes me wish I could downgrade to Tiger.
If anyone has any suggestions (besides Finder replacements), I’m all ears.