Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
, Inc., might be coming to the front late in the desktop search engine wars, but it's coming with a bang -- as is wont with the computer maker.
Granted, its new desktop search engine technology, Spotlight, will be limited to personal computers running the new version of OS X, 10.4, also known as Tiger. And it lacks a Web component, so searches remain restricted to local files.
Integrated Approach
However, Spotlight's integrated approach to desktop searching, compared to the "bolted on" tack taken in the Windows world, could enrich computing for years to come.
"What you can provide [with Spotlight] is a much richer searching experience that integrates more closely with applications," Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for Jupiter Research in New York City, told MacNewsWorld.
"Clearly this is the wave of the future," he added.
Gartenberg noted that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) 
has announced plans to incorporate similar search technology in the next version of its Windows operating system, code named Longhorn, scheduled to ship in May of next year.
Microsoft has been demonstrating robust desktop search capabilities for years as part of its WinFS files system technology, which was supposed to be part of the final Longhorn release. However, since Microsoft has scrapped that game plan, it's anybody's guess what kind of search technology will be deployed in Longhorn.
Bad Metaphor
By insinuating desktop searching into its operating system, Apple can intimately link the search process with the creation of the data itself. Additional data -- called metadata -- can be attached to files to make finding information faster and easier.
When you can search for the metadata attached to a file, things begin to get interesting, Gartenberg noted. "A photographer might want to see every shot that he took on a recent trip with a 200 millimeter lens," he explained. "He can do that with metadata."
"You end up with a way of cataloging everything and not having to focus on the old model of hierarchical storage," Gartenberg said. "That model worked fine for 20 megabytes of data, 100 megabytes of data, but it tends to fall down as you get into 500 gigabytes of data."
The reason that a hierarchal system of folders, subfolders and so forth breaks down as storage capacities increase, he asserted, is because it's based on an outdated metaphor.
"It mimics a paper filing cabinet," he explained. "That's a very, very inefficient way of finding things, as anyone who has ever had to file something under one category and look for it under another can tell you."
In Metadata We Trust
However, it takes a degree of trust to depend on an OS-dependent search engine. "You're faced with the file formats and other things that the operating environment supplier thinks is appropriate," Dan Kuznetsky, vice president for system software research at IDC in Framingham, Mass., told MacNewsWorld. "A third party may offer different functions."
"If Microsoft built this into their operating system, it's fairly certain that it would support the Microsoft file formats," he added. "It's probably unlikely that it would support the file format for Open Office."
If desktop searching becomes de rigeur for operating systems, will it have an adverse impact on the fortunes of Internet megaplayers like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) ?
"It's certainly going to put more pressure on them," Gartenberg maintained. "Anytime something is built into an operating system, it's always a challenge for third parties to come up with a more compelling solution than the one that is already in place."
Web Integration Missing
One aspect of ferreting that is missing from Spotlight is the ability to incorporate Web search results with local ones. Whether or not that's an advantage or disadvantage for Spotlight is a matter of perspective, Gartenberg said.
"People like Google obviously want to focus search not only on the desktop, but also on the Internet, where they make some money," he said.
"For Apple," he continued, "searching the Internet is something you do through your browser. It's more concerned with tracking things from a local perspective."
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