OSX in the Spotlight Search integrated into the OS. Who Cares! At least that’s what I thought at first. Mac OSX Tiger sported a highly touted feature known as Spotlight. At first I was unimpressed, so now we have a little magnifying glass at the top of the screen that I can use to search for files. Sure it’s a bazillion times faster and all, but what’s all the fuss about? Then it hit me, Spotlight fever. *Search to open applications* Before long, I realized that it was quicker for me to search for “Disk Utility” than it was to open Finder, click on Applications, scroll to Utilities, expand it, scroll to Disk Utility, and double-click to launch. A quick Cmd+Space brought up the spoghtlight search, type “Disk Util”, wait for it to appear (~1 Second) and hit Cmd+Return to launch it.

Windows users, search the web for “Launchy” to have a similar experience. *Search to open files* Ok, so Launchy brings this same feature to Windows users, what else is there? Every dialog in OSX has search integrated into it. If you were in Excel and wanted to open your document named “finances.xls”, press Cmd+O to bring up the open dialog, go to the search box and type “finances” a list of files begins popping up almost instantly. Select finances and you’re done. No awkward clicking around directory structures looking for what you want. I haven’t even touched on Spotlight keywords, but wow! So, Mac users, try it out! It has changed the way I work! Oh, and Windows users… Keep the pressure on Microsoft, because once it’s integrated into the OS there your productivity can skyrocket as well.