Dan may think he’s the Google Desktop master breaking the story and writing about it for Macworld, but I’ve got insight. Hot, stinking loads of insight. First, while Dan has had nothing but good experiences with the beta, I’ve found it downright buggy. Yes, yes, beta means buggy. I know.
Because I’m a responsible, security conscious Mac, I use a normal account for all of my day to day activity. I even use it for installing software. This is when things went wrong. While Google Desktop properly probes for administrator authorization to install, it doesn’t seem to do anything with it. Once getting it, the installer hangs on “Authorizing…”. Continued attempts to install fail. I had to resort to installing from my admin account proper. Not cool.
Once I got it installed, I turned off Google Desktop in that account because I don’t use it and therefore doesn’t need indexing. I returned to my normal account, and turned it back on. I waited a few minutes to build at least a small index. I tried a search, got results, then chose “See all 22 desktop results for derik”. Then I waited in vain for a results page that never came. I turned on “Google.com Integration” but it doesn’t work in any browser I try. So much for that.
As a user of Google Desktop for Windows in another life, I expected to find other features that are outright missing from the Mac version. I’m speaking, of course, about Google’s Desktop Widgets. Most people will probably sigh relief. I find some value in a couple of those widgets though. In particular, the machine status and email widgets are two that I’ve used daily.
Some people are bothered by its ability to cache deleted files. I can understand the concern for personal privacy reasons, but it’s something I’d likely find more useful than worrying. However, it also means that Google Desktop may soak up countless amounts of space on my hard drives.
One other thing about Google Desktop bothers me. It’s in the dock. It’s always there. I don’t want it there, just taking up space. That alone is enough to drive me crazy. I don’t feel particularly worried that I have it installed now though, Gruber reports the uninstaller is actually effective. Or at least I hope that part isn’t buggy either.
To get Google Desktop out of the dock, just uncheck the "Show icon in dock" checkbox under Google Desktop Preferences > Search Results. You can also have it show in the menu bar. Hopefully you now can get some better sleep at night.
Yah, I was about to tell him the same thing. For someone writing an article about a beta prog. being buggy, it's kinda funny that the general preferences weren't even looked at (the checkbox for getting it out of the dock isn't too hard to find :)
My biggest concern (care of Mr. Gruber) is that Google throws files, without telling you, into two very scary places: /Library/InputManagers and /System/Library/... These are areas on your hard drive with which you do not muck about.
But maybe I am just a little paranoid.
Sorry, I was tired last night and looked right past that option. My bad.
I'd also like to point out that google desktop widgets are not included because... Macs have the dashboard. If you want a gmail widget or hardware status widget, get one for the dashboard- give that F12 key some use. Gmail offers their own widget. Use that and iStat and you're set.