Both Spotlight and anything appearing in Longhorn were ideas stolen from (in order of development):
– Kickstart (1995)
– SpeedApp
– LaunchBar
Kickstart was a rock star. I’d carry it around with me on a floppy disk, for anyone’s Mac that I’d use or be asked to fix. I would copy it on and after a very quick index scan, I could launch any program without knowing where the hell it had been installed. 18k of pioneering genius.