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.saNNic. · Jan 29, 2005, 09:14 PM

Read about it here......

Chuckit · Jan 29, 2005, 09:25 PM

I wonder if this means Microsoft and Google are screwed.

Ah, I hate software patents anyway.

mishap · Jan 29, 2005, 10:20 PM

This is pretty bad..

f1000 · Jan 29, 2005, 10:24 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
This is pretty bad..

Why?

Ganesha · Jan 29, 2005, 11:32 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
I wonder if this means Microsoft and Google are screwed.

Read the patent... This is clearly NOT the search engine they are patenting. But a user interface that subcategorize and refines the results based how the user interacts with the results.

In my mind that means if the user skips certain results from a search, they system automatically tries to find some common criteria the user is rejecting and then updates the search results to reflect that.

CharlesS · Jan 30, 2005, 12:33 AM

The interesting part of that patent was that it was granted in 2000. Before all of this WinFS ballyhoo. It's important because it proves Apple was working on this stuff before Microsoft, and that Spotlight is therefore not merely a me-too and a response to the WinFS vaporware.

.saNNic. · Jan 30, 2005, 11:36 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
The interesting part of that patent was that it was granted in 2000. Before all of this WinFS ballyhoo. It's important because it proves Apple was working on this stuff before Microsoft, and that Spotlight is therefore not merely a me-too and a response to the WinFS vaporware.

Actually, it was applied for in 2000 and granted on Jan 25 2005.

CharlesS · Jan 30, 2005, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by .saNNic.:
Actually, it was applied for in 2000 and granted on Jan 25 2005.

Whoops, my bad. Still, the point remains the same - it shows that Apple has been working on this stuff for a long time.

utidjian · Jan 30, 2005, 01:23 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
The interesting part of that patent was that it was granted in 2000. Before all of this WinFS ballyhoo. It's important because it proves Apple was working on this stuff before Microsoft, and that Spotlight is therefore not merely a me-too and a response to the WinFS vaporware.

It proves no such thing.

It proves Apple applied for the patent in 2000. It does NOT prove that Apple was even working on it for any length of time previous to that. They could have bought the rights from someone who was workingon it 5 minutes before the application. Though I doubt that was the situation.
It does NOT prove that MS (or anyone else) was not working on a similar technology for years before the patent application.

Apple may, in fact, have hundreds of patents that they are not actually using in any product at this time (do a search at www.uspto.gov for Assignee name Apple... I got 1875 patents). I am sure the same can be said for MS and any other company with large patent portfolios.

I am not saying that Apple did Spotlight in response to WinFS... but they could have dusted it off and restarted development on the idea again after hearing about WinFS. I would find it hard to believe that it took Apple five years to come up with a useable working implementation of Spotlight.

IOW I think it is a bit premature to declare that Apple was the leader in this technology based on a patent application without knowing more of the details.

CharlesS · Jan 30, 2005, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by utidjian:
[BI would find it hard to believe that it took Apple five years to come up with a useable working implementation of Spotlight.[/B]

Er, how long will WinFS have been in development by the time it is released? It's already been quite a while, and it's still got a lot of time left...

bmedina · Jan 30, 2005, 10:01 PM

Originally posted by f1000:
Why?

Because software patents are lame?

Hopefully Apple will only use this to counter potential lawsuits against them in the future, not to bring those suits against others.

MPMoriarty · Jan 31, 2005, 01:20 AM

Well, a good idea as to when Apple might have begun working on Spotlight is when they hired the guy from Be who created the BFS.

Agent69 · Jan 31, 2005, 01:35 AM

Most of what Spotlight does BeFS used to do; all they did was combine it with file content searches. I would be surprised if this patent stands a legal challenge.

utidjian · Jan 31, 2005, 02:56 AM

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Well, a good idea as to when Apple might have begun working on Spotlight is when they hired the guy from Be who created the BFS.

That was early 2002 IIRC....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03...tabase_sliced/
is an interesting read. Makes the origins of the ideas that Spotlight and WinFS may use even more clear. As far as who was "first"... it was neither. BeFS was before either of them. Dig around enough and you can probably find stuff like this going back well into the '80s.

I speculate that Apple will have the better of the two implementations. At least as far as user experience goes. Apple will also most likely have it sooner since they have the lead FS guy from Be.

There is a similar project going on for Linux called Beagle. The difference is one can download it and use it right now:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
From the archived downloads page it looks like they have been working on it since, at least, mid 2003. I haven't tried it yet but since none of the major distros includes it yet I doubt it is past beta quality yet.