Computer maker Apple provided a sneak preview of the next version of its desktop software on Monday, highlighting the growing importance being able to search through mountains of data at high speed.
During a keynote speech to programmers at Apple鈥檚 annual Worldwide Developer Conference, CEO Steve Jobs revealed a raft of new hardware products. But the highlight was a preview of the next version of Apple鈥檚 operating system, Mac OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger.
The 鈥渕ost revolutionary鈥� feature of Tiger, according to Jobs, is a new search tool, known as Spotlight. This fits into the desktop task bar and promises to let users search through various types of data, including email messages, address book entries, text documents and images in a fraction of a second.
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Spotlight can scour through more than 100,000 files in less a second. It achieves this by using special classifying information known as 鈥渕etadata鈥�, which is automatically tagged to documents to provide a simple description.
Metadata appended to an email message, for example, would include the name of sender and recipient, subject line, email address, time of sending and name of attachments, plus other details. By keeping all the metadata in one place, it is possible to search the key data from many files very rapidly.
Tiger vs Longhorn
This functionality is already built into some Apple applications, but the company has now developed a tool to allow programmers to build Spotlight compatibility into their programs. Spotlight can also perform a more detailed search of the content of documents but this will take considerably longer.
Tiger will compete with Microsoft鈥檚 forthcoming desktop operating system, known as Longhorn. But Tiger is scheduled to debut sometime in 2005, a year earlier than Microsoft鈥檚 offering. 鈥淲e think Tiger is going to catapult us even further ahead and drive the copycats crazy,鈥� Jobs told the audience at WWDC.
However, Microsoft has gone a step further, rewriting the file system for its operating system to make searching easier. The design of their new system is founded on category-based business databases. Dan Kuztnetsky, operating system analyst at US company IDC, says computer makers are keen to use these existing technologies.
鈥淎 number of people have started to say we need to use the technology developed for databases and web searching and use them for the file system,鈥� Kuznetsky told 快猫短视频.
Ranking algorithms
Google, the world鈥檚 leading web search engine also appears poised to use its expertise to change the way computer users manage information. Reports suggest Google is developing a desktop search tool of its own.
Kuznetsky says Google could bring into use new ways of searching for information on a computer, based on its method for searching the web.
Google鈥檚 PageRank algorithms categorise search results according to the way web pages link to one another. Examining similarities between documents could perhaps provide a way of ranking desktop search results.
Tiger will include 150 different features, including a program called Automator, to let users build simple computer programs, or scripts, using a graphical interface. Other new products revealed at WWDC include new widescreen displays, one measuring 80 centimetres from corner to corner.