I was one of the lucky million who was able to download the Public Beta of Apple’s new OS earlier this month. I have only installed it a few days ago and I must say, so far so good. While I have not explored all of the new features of the OS, I must say I have been very drawn to the changes they made to Spotlight.
Spotlight has always been a favorite of mine, but now it’s only getting better. When you hit the Command+Space key a nice window pops up right in the middle of your display. Start typing in anything you want, and within seconds, a list with a full preview to the right of it will begin to appear. In the older version of Spotlight, to activate the preview function you would need to hold your cursor over the line for a few seconds then a very small preview would pop out of the menu. Now its automatic and the preview is nearly full size.
For example, when looking up a contact, it displays all the information, just the same as if I had opened up the app and searched for it in there without all the hassle, and it’s fully interactive. This means that right from Spotlight you are able to find your contact, click on their email address, and Mail will open a new message addressed to that person. For those of us who use keyboard shortcuts all the time, this is a real time saver.