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.
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