Apple Spotlight Patent Reveals 3-Year Head Start on Microsoft [UPDATED]
TMO Scoop - Apple Spotlight Patent Reveals 3-Year Head Start on Microsoft [UPDATED]
by , 5:15 PM EST, January 27th, 2005
A patent granted to Apple January 25th, 2005 appears to reveal that Apple had a multiyear head start on Microsoft for Spotlight, the Apple search technology that will be released later this year in Tiger. Many had seen Spotlight as a quickly developed, me-too technology intended to compete with Microsoft's long-delayed Longhorn update to Windows, but the patent application shows that Apple began working on the technology in January of 2000, years before Longhorn was announced.
Spotlight offers a new paradigm on searching for anything on your Mac. From one place, you can search e-mails, contacts, images, calendars, and applications, and the results appear as you type. The company has also made it possible to integrate with other apps, with some of the Apple's iApps being the first to use it.
All of these features appear to be covered by patent 6,847,959, Universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system, which was filed on January 5th, 2000, and granted to Apple on January 25th, 2005. The abstract of the application is as follows:
The present invention provides convenient access to items of information that are related to various descriptors input by a user, by means of a unitary interface which is capable of accessing information in a variety of locations, through a number of different techniques. Using a plurality of heuristic algorithms to operate upon information descriptors input by the user, the present invention locates and displays candidate items of information for selection and/or retrieval. Thus, the advantages of a search engine can be exploited, while listing only relevant object candidate items of information.
That translates into a patent application for a means of searching a variety of files using a variety of algorithms to produce results that are relevant to the user.
Figure 3B from the patent shows an early version of the Spotlight interface before it was Aquafied
The patent suggests that a key to Spotlight's flexibility is that it uses a system of plugins for any particular data type to be indexed and/or searched. This allows Spotlight to be indefinitely expanded for new file types, as well as new applications that wish to incorporate the technology.
From the patent:
In the second general category of global heuristics, the user input can be provided to most or all of the plug-in modules in parallel, and the results that are returned from each one are then processed in accordance with a given heuristic.
[...]
For instance, if the user desires to look at prior tax return information, each of the letters "T," "A," and "X" are provided to the modules as they are typed. As soon as the letter "T" is entered, sets of matching items of information are returned by the modules, and the top five candidates are displayed. Entry of the letter "A" causes the list to be updated according to the candidates which match the sequence of letters "TA." After the letter "X" is typed, the displayed list might contain the five most recent tax returns that were filed by the user.
You can read the patent in its entirety at the US Patent & Trademark Office's Web site.
Spotlight differs from both Sherlock and the Finder's search function in both scope and power. Panther's Finder can search for a variety of data and file types, and can even search the content of some documents, but as represented above in Apple's patent application, Spotlight takes the notion much farther, and it is much faster.
It also goes far beyond what Google has put together with its Google Desktop search utility. Google Desktop can specifically search Outlook and Outlook Express files, AIM chat logs, Internet Explorer files, text files, and Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, but nothing else.
Google Desktop is currently available only for Windows, though a Mac version of the software has been promised by the company.
John Kheit assisted with this article.
Observer Comments
And yet that sweaty Ballmer dude still lives in a fantasy world where Microsoft invents everything first:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/004216.html
Thu Jan 27, 2005 8:37 pm Subject: Re: We Win, WE WIN!!!
QuoteMany folks said that Apple copied the search concept of Longhorn because it was announced to the public earlier than Apple announced Spotlight. However, the patent granted to Apple's Spotlight proved otherwise. Microsoft is the one copying not Apple.Anonymous wrote:
What the heck did we win?
QuoteMace wrote:QuoteMany folks said that Apple copied the search concept of Longhorn because it was announced to the public earlier than Apple announced Spotlight. However, the patent granted to Apple's Spotlight proved otherwise. Microsoft is the one copying not Apple.Anonymous wrote:
What the heck did we win?
I thin it's a little strong to say Microsoft was copying. I doubt Microsoft somehow broke into the labs at Apple to rip off the idea. If so maybe Apple should consider suing Microsoft instead of their 19 year old college fans. I think it's reasonable to suspect they both are interested in search improvement with everyone googling about.
Interestingly, a million years ago, Steve Jobs announced that NeXT was developing an Object Oriented Database-based file system for OPENSETP 4.x, which never came to being. This seems more of the approach taken by Microsoft with longhorn. Apple is taking the indexing route. We'll see which turns out better. I personally like the idea of a database, but I'll reserve judgement until both products are released. The reality is it may be taking both companies 5 years to get the technology working, just that Apple started earlier.
Sure Apple was thinking about search a long time ago (this even seems to be MacOS 9 related). But what the heck is innovative here? They are describing a design but nothing that new.
These days I think big companies seem to be able to patent anything and everythign with regards to software, whereas smaller companies don't have the funds to do similar or even to defend a patent.
It's such a one-sided grab for intellectual property that should be in the common.
Great system.
Cheers,
Ashley.
QuoteGuest wrote:
Sure Apple was thinking about search a long time ago (this even seems to be MacOS 9 related). But what the heck is innovative here? They are describing a design but nothing that new.
These days I think big companies seem to be able to patent anything and everythign with regards to software, whereas smaller companies don't have the funds to do similar or even to defend a patent.
It's such a one-sided grab for intellectual property that should be in the common.
Great system.
Cheers,
Ashley.
Beat it hippie. We don't need any communists here at Apple.
<sarcasm directed at Paul Thurott>
Werner Von Braun copied Jules Verne with the Atomic Reactor.
Oh, right. Jules Verne only MENTIONED it in 20,000 leagues.
Hmm. I guess making up the concept dooooosen't really mean the same thing as actually rolling the thing out.
Too bad Paul, and nice try.
Thurrot (i think that's how you pronounce his name ... an alternative pronunciation is "whore") maintains that Apple's spotlight is a total copy of Windows ... which is just about as untrue as 99% of the b.s. that comes out of the Bush whitehouse, but that's another thread.
It's people like Thurrot that continue to legitimize Microsoft's lazy, greedy, disrespectful ways ... another Good Nazi in a long line of them.
I clearly remember Steve Jobs in an early Keynote after his return to Apple demonstrating a Spotlight-like technology. It may have even been in the Keynote where he introduced the concept of merging the MacOS with NEXT or sometime when he demonstrated an early version of OSX. In fact it seems to me a lot of features rolled out in the last year were demonstrated and promised very early on in the OSX development cycle.
I wish I had the streams of all those old Keynotes saved.
It's not strong to say that Microsoft was copying, it's absolutely true. Their whole existance is based on making poor copies of pioneering software and selling them with a crushing advertising budget, and buying up anything innovative and turning it into ackward bloatware. They're incapable of innovation themselves, and they always have been.
QuoteGuest wrote:
Sounds like a description of the search in Panther, particularly the T-A-X example. Is there anything about grouping the results into categories like pdfs, images, etc? I don't think this is spotlight.
I think this part describes Spotlight: "That translates into a patent application for a means of searching a variety of files using a variety of algorithms to produce results that are relevant to the user." The grouping, etc.. is added on top of Spotlight.
Be sure to take a look at the patent itself. One image in particular shows the use of plugins, which Spotlight uses but Panther's search does not.
This is a system for an extensible on-the-fly search technology. Traditional technologies await complete input and a user-defined "send" command before digging out the results. Spotlight, on the other hand, returns result immediately as the term is being entered.
While there are application-level systems for this, what is important is the heuristic that performs the search and the database that stores the information.
Is Google's algorithm for web searching just another algorithm? I would suggest you review standards for patents at www.uspto.gov before suggesting that this is nothing special.
Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:33 am Subject: Perhaps that's why longhorn is lacking the search feature
Yes, its true that Apple's implementation predates longhorn but MS has been promising this database/search stuff since like Windows 95. They just haven't been able to do a good enough design or figure out the problems in order to get it working. Apple did - and is shipping a product far before MS.
Kudos to Apple - but Im sure Apple knew all about MS's search intentions when they started working on Spotlight. Its something thats obvious as drive sizes increase, and certainly something that became obvious with the rise of the web.
QuoteGuest wrote:
It's not strong to say that Microsoft was copying, it's absolutely true. Their whole existance is based on making poor copies of pioneering software and selling them with a crushing advertising budget, and buying up anything innovative and turning it into ackward bloatware. They're incapable of innovation themselves, and they always have been.
Micro$oft doesn't care to do too much R&D, they halved their R&D spending in the last quarter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/27/microsoft_fy2005q2_earnings/
QuoteGuest wrote:QuoteMace wrote:QuoteMany folks said that Apple copied the search concept of Longhorn because it was announced to the public earlier than Apple announced Spotlight. However, the patent granted to Apple's Spotlight proved otherwise. Microsoft is the one copying not Apple.Anonymous wrote:
What the heck did we win?
I thin it's a little strong to say Microsoft was copying. I doubt Microsoft somehow broke into the labs at Apple to rip off the idea. If so maybe Apple should consider suing Microsoft instead of their 19 year old college fans. I think it's reasonable to suspect they both are interested in search improvement with everyone googling about.
Interestingly, a million years ago, Steve Jobs announced that NeXT was developing an Object Oriented Database-based file system for OPENSETP 4.x, which never came to being. This seems more of the approach taken by Microsoft with longhorn. Apple is taking the indexing route. We'll see which turns out better. I personally like the idea of a database, but I'll reserve judgement until both products are released. The reality is it may be taking both companies 5 years to get the technology working, just that Apple started earlier.
You'll have to wait a while, maybe two or so years, to be able to compare.
Fri Jan 28, 2005 12:20 pm Subject: Not enough information
1) MS announces the Longhorn search feature.
2) Apple announces Spotlight.
3) We discover that Apple was working on Spotlight before Longhorn was announced.
4) We all cheer.
Why? The only thing this proves is that Apple didn't think up Spotlight in response to Longorn. There is no proof that MS didn't start working on their search feature long before Apple. It certainly doesn't prove MS is copying Spotlight.
Personally, I don't give a crap.
I find it rather amazing people will accept patents and/or beta products as acutal, tangible products. I congradulate the Mac Observer for their success in contributing to an overall increase in the level of bullshit on the Internet. Patents are a poor basis for who "came first," as are beta or pre-beta products. Should we include the stated goals of Copeland and Cairo in our never-ending search? BeFS? Where do we draw the line? Three year head start? Right. People should realize that both companies have, most likely, developed similar prototypes for years.
I choose to believe whoever ships the ACTUAL PRODUCT publicly deserves credit for the initial idea. The attempts by Trolls on either side to marginalize the achievements/ideas/etc of either company is quite pathetic. The Mac Observer should aim above such trivial bullshit.
Some are suggesting a patent and/or test product (beta or pre-beta) is reasonable proof of a product's existence and, thus, which company "innovates." Why, then, do I feel every aspect of Spotlight/MSNDS/WinFS has, essentially, been delivered through third parties such as Copernic, the Quicksilver project, Approcket, GDS, BlinkX and MSNDS. The only missing piece of the desktop search puzzle from these third parties is greater integration.
Congratulations on this useless article.
Fri Jan 28, 2005 3:13 pm Subject: Longhorn announcement came before...features later
Whistler (XP), Longhorn & Blackcomb were announced way before 2000...probably sometime in 98-99. I guess what you refer to as "Longhorn announcement" is actually when MS detailed their goals for Longhorn... the so called "3 pillars" (1 has already crumbled though 
So some "facts" need correction!
Fri Jan 28, 2005 3:17 pm Subject: Re: Quite sad, really
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
Why, then, do I feel every aspect of Spotlight/MSNDS/WinFS has, essentially, been delivered through third parties such as Copernic, the Quicksilver project, Approcket, GDS, BlinkX and MSNDS.
I guess you don't really understand this technology. It is deeply intertwined with the OS itself. It's not something that you could simply buy and add to Panther, for example.
Because of that I very much doubt that any previous application you can find would be the same as Spotlight at all.
Granted, I haven't seen Spotlight yet, so I just might be wrong, but I AM certain that it's not just another application.
You know you're on the right track when you get a smack-down from Windows fanboy Thurrott, and he refers to TMO as a "fan" site. Nice work, Bryan!
"
I choose to believe whoever ships the ACTUAL PRODUCT publicly deserves credit for the initial idea.
"
That's convenient for companies incapable of innovation, isn't it? Copy an idea and recieve credit for coming up with it when they're the first to market it. That's the way Microsoft likes things. A copied idea is still a copied idea, though, and that's what they deal in. They're followers.
Long ago (before the first version of Sherlock, in the days of Copland development) Apple was working on a technology called AIAT (AppleInformationAccessTechnology).
If I remember correctly the idea behind this project was what we are seing realized today in iTunes and in Sportlight. If this is where Spotlight comes from Apple has been working on this for about a decade...
Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:20 pm Subject: Thurrott ever get tired of being wrong or stupid?
Microsoft copied/latched on to the database file system idea from NeXT back in 1993. NeXT came up with an object oriented database file system as part of their MeCCA project. Microsoft later went into vapor promotion mode on this and everything else they could from NeXTSTEP to try and sound all object-oriented, which they are not till this very day, but FUD counts. Anyway, Microsoft then got a "clue" and added this "bullet point" onto the upcomping features of Cairo, which really never manifested into anything. In actuallity, everything OO in Cairo, actually all of Cairo was dropped with the exception of this OODBFS, which was morphed into longhorn after all these years and thats where they got the idea.
Here's a news group post describing Mecca from mid 94, but it was known and compared against by microsfot from before then.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.next.advocacy/browse_thread/thread/f73a4c0d69318e8c/5d645b6258d77904?q=next+object+%22file+system%22+(mcca+OR+mecca)&_done=%2Fgroups%3Fas_q%3Dnext+object%26num%3D100%26scoring%3Dr%26hl%3Den%26ie%3DUTF-8%26as_epq%3Dfile+system%26as_oq%3Dmcca+mecca%26as_eq%3D%26as_ugroup%3D%26as_usubject%3D%26as_uauthors%3D%26lr%3D%26as_qdr%3D%26as_drrb%3Db%26as_mind%3D1%26as_minm%3D1%26as_miny%3D1981%26as_maxd%3D28%26as_maxm%3D1%26as_maxy%3D1995%26safe%3Doff%26&_doneTitle=Back+to+Search&&d#5d645b6258d77904
This Byte article shows all the rage of OO'ness a few months later when Microsft just announced thier additon of an OO filesystem after thinking it was such a great idea by NeXT:
http://www.byte.com/art/9411/sec12/art3.htm
However, it appears even NeXT pilfered some of these ideas from the Taligent project and a caltech project called eText that was worked on at least as early as 92. All of this file system stuff was "in the air" at the time, but a lot of the others like BeOS etc. were later to the party--and to date, no major operating system vendor has actually fully implemented an OODBFS. Microsoft, as always, just likes to take credit when it's not deserved, even in vapor wars! Then agian so does Apple! It's all typical corporate revisionist history. However, one thing we can say with relative certainty, it wasn't a case where Microsoft was first.
QuoteGuest wrote:
However, it appears even NeXT pilfered some of these ideas from the Taligent project and a caltech project called eText that was worked on at least as early as 92. All of this file system stuff was "in the air" at the time, but a lot of the others like BeOS etc. were later to the party--and to date, no major operating system vendor has actually fully implemented an OODBFS. Microsoft, as always, just likes to take credit when it's not deserved, even in vapor wars! Then agian so does Apple! It's all typical corporate revisionist history. However, one thing we can say with relative certainty, it wasn't a case where Microsoft was first.
To show how everything "new" is usually just a rehash of something older, check out this Steve Jobs NEXSTEP 3.0 demo (I think this was around 1991) and you can see basically all of OS X in the demo (Use VLC to view the video, it's really good). Although we still don't have LipService Voice email attachments, a cool shelf, or the full Webster's dictionary (with pictures!) and the COMMAND "=" universal word-lookup service like we used to in NEXTSTEP all those years ago:
http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/28/1159234&mode=thread
Please to understand that Apple's Spotlight is NOT a solution... it's just opening the door.
There are hundreds of file formats.
Also... has anyone thought about this aspect? Since there is any number (no, nr, nmr, nmbr, nbr, #) of ways to speel a word, how do you search on such things?
The fly/flaw in the ointment is the assumption that a string of characters (typically called a "word" has meaning... which is clearly not true.
Without context, a sting of characters is just that, a string of characters.
If you doubt, visit <http://www.acronymfinder.com> & search for your favorite terms.
It's GREAT that Apple is opening the door... but the swamp beyond is HUGE!
MS has been working on the Longhorn search feature and its supporting filesystem since the early 1990s. It was to be called the Object File System (OFS), and debut with "Cairo" (Windows 2000). Unfortunately, technical limitations held it back til this decade, where it can now be realized.
QuoteGuest wrote:
MS has been working on the Longhorn search feature and its supporting filesystem since the early 1990s. It was to be called the Object File System (OFS), and debut with "Cairo" (Windows 2000). Unfortunately, technical limitations held it back til this decade, where it can now be realized.
And that feature was pilfered from NeXT's announcement of an OODBFS. Which was pilfered from eText, taligent and other research sources. Nice try winboy
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