Q: Unable to search network drives with Lion...

Right...finally talked to someone, only to hear that Apple does not support networking problems like this. It was suggested that I should call Microsoft.

The fact that searching MobileMe has the same problem only led to the remark that this is handled by a different support service that is not reachable phone. The fact that the problem started exactly after going to Lion did not make any dent either.

Going to blow off steam somewhere now, while waiting for the new advisor for .Me support through chat.

Have been on the waiting list/phone/chat for about three hours since previous post. Result so far:

Mac OS X does not use Spotlight metadata for network volumes because it can't index those. Instead for network volumes the Finder acts as a front end for the Unix "find" command. This command works just fine for me on network volumes. (You may check yourself in the Terminal). Preliminary conclusion is that Lion has a bug in its connection to the "find" command. Currently pending confirmation of that hypothesis.

I think it's more than that... It is stil lsomething they changed from Snow Leoapard to Lion and that has been the case with network drives all along.. If the share isn AFP share, the search works fine. If it's and SMB share it does not. And one of the reasons we along with many others are having problems with SMB shares is because Apple decided to not use Samba any more and develep their own. We are seeing the fallout from that. For example Several vendors that depend on SMB shares (like Sonos) are still working on a fix because of the changes made. So, at least for me, I'm not doing anything new...But Apple did and the answer you were given about network drives was true in Snow leoapard but search worked. They have bugs and they need to fix them.. I wouldn't be surprised to see a bug release any day now.

If the problem is not resolved in 15 days, I back to Leopard and I will ask my money back. Apple may well take an action.

Right... so here is the response from Apple...

I do apologize for the delay.

For this concern, since the iMac is updated to the latest Mac OS, 10.7, we recommend to update the firmware/software of the network router. Networked server shared drives (such as NASes) are expected to already have a spotlight index on them, created by the server, thus we need to ensure that all devices on the network are updated.

As for the NTFS external drive, I am currently looking into this further. As of now, since the connected drive is NTFS, the Mac will not have write access to it.

I'm not so impressed with their response.  Does anyone have any comments to make before I reply to them?

To be honest we can go around all day trying to figure out what the problem is but it really is down to Apple to solve. If you bought a new car and that car didn't turn left, you wouldn't try to fix it, you'd expect the manufacturer to rectify the problem.

The way I see it it's simple, the product (Lion) is not fit-for-purpose. A search function is part of every day use within an OS of Lion's stature. If I'd paid the normal £99 odd for it I'd be asking for a refund but for £21, I'll live with it until a fix arrives. If they don't fix it then I'll roll back to Snow Leopard and lose even more trust in Apple.

I'm still waiting for my response. Having talked to 5 people on this I have found the content and quality of the responses vary heavily.

I'm concerned by your response. I have no illusions that Iomega, my NAS vendor, will include it's own Spotlight indexes. Why would they? They support AFP and that's it. It's silly for Apple to expect other vendors having Spotlight indexes. As for NTFS: I use MacFuse and Paragon and I'm not counting on Apple to support that, although it would certainly be a bonus. I'm not expecting native HFS+ from Microsoft either.

Otherwise I'm totally on the same page as Fugu Agency: I expect nothing less from Apple than to be able to search any volume it can read, regardless of it's connection protocol. Anything less than that is a crack in the fit-for-purpose state of Lion. Instead I now use the freeware tool EasyFind which was mentioned in this thread before.

As a side note: Lion has been my worst upgrade ever to the extent that I no longer regard it an upgrade, but rather a 'migration'. This searching thing is just one of my problems. If 10.7.1 does not bring Lion up to par with Snow Leopard I'm going back to Snow Leopard. iSync, Front Row, AFP, CalDAV, Java, Network Searching, and all those dramatic iOS "improvements" all add up to the worst Mac OS experience to date since System 7.5.1.

OK, this is what I sent back today... my frustration with Apple about this bug is growing by the day.  I've also had a couple of 'black screens of death' over the last couple of days.  I am very disappointed with the instability of Lion compared to Snow Leopard as I thought it would introduce new features and functionality - rather it has crippling bugs that remind me of my Windows Vista experience.  Anyway, let's see what happens next... will post the update when it comes through!

I do not agree with the findings that have been sent - all of my network drives have the latest firmware and simply present SMB shares to the local network.

Firstly, Snow Leopard searched the SMB network drives with no problems.  What has changed in Lion to 'break' the ability to search these drives - including those presented by my Windows 7 machine that are simply shared folders that I have read/write access to?

Secondly, why would NAS suppliers be expected to support spotlight searches, in the past all you needed was the ability to read/write to the drive with Spotlight leaving its indexes in every folder that was accessed?

Finally, a simple application called Easy Find (available from the App Store) can search the drives without any problems whatsoever.  I understand that Spotlight actually uses the terminal 'Find' command to search non-OSX shares - perhaps there is a bug in this command.  If Easy Find works, why doesn't the most sophisticated OS ever?

If you review the conversation at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15823270#15823270 you will see that there are many others affected by this bug.

I do believe that Apple needs to address and resolve this bug - there are many people (and businesses) that need a Finder that can 'find' files when performing searches on drives that they can read and write to - it is a basic OS operation and it is inexcusable for it to not function correctly.

Does anybody know if this problem is fixed in the 10.7.1 update?

No, it's not fixed.

Nope, not fixed with the update.

Apple clearly aren't taking this problem very seriously.

Doh!

Still not fixed in 10.7.1.

Apple we NEED to be able to search SMB drives...

How hard would it be to reverse whatever they have done so that we could get this back - I mean the search experience with 10.6 was great, in Lion its just been torpedoed, sabotaged and bombed and now it's non existent!!!

Apple, I use my mac for work, not for play, this is important, its not something nice to have its a basic fundamental. At least you could have let me know that I would not be able to seach my network drives, then I could have saved myself the trouble and waited till it was sorted out.

I think that everyone must have got confused over there! Whats this "All my files" business anyway, I still haven't figured that out!

Apple if you are looking at this thread, we need to search.......

If you are also listening I still have not got the middle mouse button on my magic mouse yet.... How hard would that be to add in system prefs rather than through a third party app!

Now I am using a third party app to search!!!!!!!

Wow, we have really gone down hill.