Google Desktop for Mac gains features, fixes, localisations

Stephen Withers
Monday, 03 September 2007 04:06

Business IT - Technology

While some Mac users seem to object to Google Desktop on principle, those open to an alternative to Spotlight may benefit from improvements made to Google's integrated search tool.

The headline feature in version 1.1.0.520 is support for non-Roman languages plus localisation for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, English (UK), French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

Useful changes to email-related issues mean messages marked as spam in Mail or Entourage can be ignored, and Address Book and Mail contact groups are supported.

With Mac OS X 10.5 expected next month, the Google team has taken steps to make Desktop for Mac more Tiger friendly. Splitting the software's kernel extension into two will "avoid future reboots on Tiger" says the release notes.

Several bugs have been fixed, including slow performance when changes are made on a volume not being indexed, or when a file contains an extraordinary number of unique terms. 

Installing the update "will most likely require a reboot", Google warns. That wasn't our experience, but it does force reindexing to improve search quality in the event material in any of the newly supported languages is stored on the computer.