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Spotlight on NetNewsWire 3.0

A shiny new NetNewsWire was released today, my go-to RSS feed reader. I hadn’t tried any of the betas, just jumped right in with both feet at version three point oh. Big mistake. I noticed that search wasn’t working (I was looking for posts about the closing of Copa Too, which should be a post in itself) and learned that NetNewsWire uses Spotlight for searching now. (Spotlight!!! Gaaaack! Urggh! We hates it! We hates it! We hates it forever!) Since I had forbidden Spotlight from indexing the folder where NetNewsWire stashes its stuff, NNW couldn’t find anything, so there was no alternative but to unleash Spotlight. I gave Spotlight ample time (I think) to index the folder before trying a search, but Spotlight rendered poor NetNewsWire basically useless—searches took forever, CPU usage spiked, and I finally got a persistent beachball, so I force-quit and slunk back to NetNewsWire 2.

Search was working perfectly in NNW 2, so I can’t understand how Spotlight ever entered the picture. Reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: Overheard at the Stonehenge construction site, “What was wrong with the old wooden one?” Pity.