Supported by some of the many patents awarded to Apple’s engineers, a year-by-year account of the development of Spotlight from 1994 to 2019.
Sherlock
As the web exploded in size, early curated directories were replaced by search engines. These were revolutionised by Google’s PageRank for popularity, and are now being replaced by AI overviews.
The most popular interface to Spotlight, through the menu bar, dates back 27 years to Sherlock, when mixing web and local search seemed a good idea. A great deal has changed since, but not Spotlight.
From AppleSearch and Find File in 1994, demand for search has grown with rising storage capacity. Sherlock was released in 1998, then replaced by Spotlight in 2005. Twenty years later it’s still going strong.
Making their appearance for the first time in macOS 14.4 are Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot, branches from nerve cells, and isolated fragments of states. What can they be?
The Eclectic Light Company 