Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

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You immediately ran a spotlight query, despite Spotlight itself looking radically different, being in a different place on the screen (floating in the middle, instead of anchored to the upper-right), and didn't even notice the message it tried to tell you? That's pretty impressive.

> in the bowels of a preference menu

This is not the first time you've resorted to hyperbole in order to try and paint Apple in a bad light. It's not hidden anywhere. The moment you go to the Spotlight preferences, you see it.

What's more, the first time you see a search result that came from the internet, a) it should be obvious that means that your query must have gone to the internet, and b) the very first place you'd go in order to disable this behavior, the Spotlight Preferences Pane, is the same place that has this prominent button that gives you a detailed explanation.

> Not unhappy enough to subject myself to a Linux desktop, but Apple is making it closer and closer with every release.

It sounds to me like you're trying to invent reasons to hate Apple. This is a widely-advertised major feature of the OS (it was even in the WWDC keynote IIRC), with a very prominent warning explaining how Spotlight is different in this version of the OS and making it very easy to find out how to disable this behavior, with a very prominent button in preferences called "Privacy" that, again, explains what's going on and how to disable it. And yet you're trying to insinuate that Apple is trying to stealthily sneak in the behavior that sends your queries to them, without letting the user know, as if that was something they'd even want to do.

How is it sarcastically impressive that I hit cmd-space and typed "it" for iTerm, like I do every time I start up my computer and have for the last two years? How is it sarcastically impressive that I just start typing into Spotlight, because I know that's what Spotlight is? And what makes you think I've gone to Spotlight preferences since upgrading to Yosemite? I had my preferences the way I wanted them, why would an OS upgrade make me psychically know to go there?

Going further, what makes you think I give a material shit about Apple's PR materials? I don't read about OS X releases, I upgrade when they show up because I trusted (past tense) Apple to do the right thing. Something you can bypass without even acknowledging it is at best sneaky. If Apple thought this was seriously all that and a bag of potato chips, an opt-in is real easy.

Be better than defending this, man. It's dirty.

The functionality changed dramatically and extremely visibly. If you are intent in completely ignoring the obvious changes, both to the aesthetics of the functionality, and to the actual behavior, that's your prerogative. But you can't turn around and claim Apple is behaving badly when you intentionally blinded yourself to the numerous ways that you could tell something is different.

And besides all that, apparently this issue doesn't even affect you. If you launch Spotlight, type "it", and hit Return, in order to launch iTerm, to the best of my knowledge, Spotlight won't have even sent your query to Apple. It had a local application result to deliver, and you accepted it without waiting for more results. From playing with it myself, and from watching patterns of network traffic, it appears to me that it doesn't even initiate the search unless it thinks you don't want the first result.

The only thing dirty here is your desire to publicly accuse Apple of bad behavior when you blindly installed a brand new major OS upgrade without reading anything about it, ignored the blatant message they gave you, ignored every single visual cue about how the functionality you were using has been radically changed, and then read on the internet that there was a possibility that your search queries might be sent to Apple and freaked out.

The entire OS changed how it looked. Shifting Spotlight to be a window instead of a dropdown doesn't imply a change in functionality. Do you stop and frigging gawk at every change in an OS?

And I don't know what they're not asking me to opt into sending. That's the fucking problem. You can play with it all you want and fiddle with it however you like to determine you're okay with it, that's fine. I am blanket not okay with remote services receiving local anything by default. I got pissed when Ubuntu did it, I'm pissed when Apple does it.

You know what kinda did "imply a change in functionality", though? This text that you see, writ large, when you open Spotlight:

"In addition to searching your Mac, Spotlight now shows suggestions from the Internet, iTunes, App Store, movie showtimes, locations nearby, and more. To make suggestions more relevant to you, Spotlight includes your approximate location with search requests to Apple."

Seems pretty clear to me. It also might be a subtle clue that you are getting various kinds of search results from the Internet.

There's also very easy-to-understand hand-holding built right into the UI to help you disable it, if you want to.

It's pretty obvious, for the non-obtuse at least, that if you extend the functionality of a feature such that it searches the Internet, that means it's going to actually search the internet, which means sending your search terms to external services.

But that's the thing: you don't see that text when you hit cmd-space and immediately start typing, as somebody trained to use Spotlight is naturally going to do. Therein lies the problem. It's not that they added the feature--sure, go nuts. It's that they enabled an internet-facing feature without the courtesy of something modal to ensure that a user who has been trained--by them--to just go will understand the ramifications of what they chose to do.

It's at best shitty UX and at worst dirty.

I just tested this out on my Mac. When I type comand space and then begin typing text actually stays for about a second befor results are shown. This gives you enought time to notice the text. If you then back space the text will reappear. This really feels like apple is going the extra mile to make sure that people understand what is going on.

Really what would you do with the UI to make this feature prominit enough to the user?

Modal dialogue box with two buttons: Enable Internet Searching and Disable Internet Searching. Make it a choice. Pretty simple.

Have you actually even looked at Spotlight? You seem to be claiming all they did was move it around on the screen. It pretty obviously changed a lot more than that. That should be especially obvious the first time you actually get a Spotlight Suggestions result.

> And I don't know [...] * That's the fucking problem*

Yes, that is the fucking problem. You're arguing very loudly about something you don't know anything about.

Dude. I'm well aware of what it's doing. I've since disabled it. That I had to disable it, rather than enable it, is my beef. An operating system upgrade should not start barfing things at their remote servers without making damn sure I know about it and okay it before they do it. Opt-in is cool, opt-out is not, and opt-out that relies on you not using the feature as it's designed to be used (cmd-space and type) is extra uncool. All they'd need to do is create a modal dialog with a yes or no response and there'd be absolutely no problem, none whatsoever, but instead they slid it into a low-friction workflow in which the primary action is unconscious after you've been using it for any length of time.

It was wrong when Ubuntu did it with the Amazon lens crap. It's wrong when Apple does it. They're not special.

power users just hit it and go.

Power users use Alfred or LaunchBar (or Quicksilver, IIRC that project was resurrected).

No power user ever uses spotlight to launch apps? Those are some awe-inspiring mental gymnastics you're doing to take Apple's side here.

A flippant response to a flippant response. But thanks for the hyperbole there.

Really, this thread just looks like a bunch of paranoid conspiracy nuts, thinking Apple is out to steal your searches. I get it, privacy is important. I don't disagree. But you're* acting like they installed a keylogger on your computer (in point of fact, someone on IRC accused Apple of making "something that sends all of their local query keystrokes to Apple", which is a pure fabrication).

* that's the plural "you", not you personally

You see it as conspiracy nuts, but I just see a bunch of people complaining that it's not explained well enough. I see no comment on motivation at all.

By the way, there's a perfectly good English word that means "plural you minus you personally," which is "they."

My argument is that it is explained well enough, but most people complaining in here haven't even looked at the feature beyond seeing the original article talking about how to disable it with scripting. For example, as near as I can tell, eropple doesn't use Spotlight for anything except as a quick app launcher, which is a usage that doesn't involve Spotlight Suggestions (and AFAICT doesn't even try to send any queries to Apple). And yet he's been extremely argumentative, making wild assumptions about what's going on and then publicly complaining about it. Anyone who doesn't even look at the feature hardly has any grounds to complain about what it does and doesn't do, since they don't even know what it does or doesn't do. And their lack of knowledge is entirely their fault.

> By the way, there's a perfectly good English word that means "plural you minus you personally," which is "they."

If I was talking to you personally, one-on-one, I'd use "they". I used "you" because I was speaking to the larger audience of the people involved in this thread.

How does the new Spotlight know whether or not you're using it as a quick app launcher without communicating back to the mothership? I would have thought that it would send every query and then display the result or not depending on what comes back. I don't see how you could reasonably do it otherwise, unless you want to block internet searches for any term that matches an app name.

From using it, when you start typing, it immediately shows the top local hit, but it doesn't expand to show results until you've stopped typing for a noticeable period of time. Note that if you type a long query slowly, you'll never see results, even though you've been typing for a while.

Based on the consistency of the delay, I assumed it was doing the quick local search for the top hit, and then deferring the more expensive searches (including internet-enabled searches) until it's decided that it's time to show the results window. So I tested it, sniffing http traffic, and while I didn't pinpoint which particular queries are sent by Spotlight, there was reliably a burst of HTTP traffic right before the results window was shown every time, and no noticeable HTTP traffic before then. This suggests that my assumption is correct, that it's not doing the internet-enabled search until it believes that the user is done typing.

Based on this, if you type your search and hit return immediately, then it won't have sent your query anywhere.

I don't even care, personally, what their motivation is. I care that they didn't ask before jamming it in there. I trusted Apple to not do invasive things as opt-in, I don't now.

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