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Spotlight search top hits problems in iphone 5 ios 6

I upgraded from Iphone 4s ios 5.1.1 to Iphone 5 ios 6.02 yesterday. (Att to verizon, but not relevant to this post)


On first glance at spotlight search on new iphone 5, I thought for sure the index for my spotlight search was totally corrupt. If I start typing 'Hol' for holly, after h or o she should come up as a top hit...instead my top hit is Chris Luxxxx (nothing to do with H or O)...I keep typing...top hit area totally disappears and Holly xxxx shows in middle of very long list of what would appear to be totally unrelated contacts. I have to get to Holly Bo before the list is down to 4 names...and 3 of those aren't related to her (on the surface....)....and top hits still doesn't pop up?? I still had my 4s next to me...and the results were night and day different...and the iphone 5 were so totally irrelevant compared to the 4s for what I was trying to do (just look up a contact...the thing i use spotlight search for most!?!?)


NOTE:


1) At this point, I had already disabled all categories but 'contacts for my spotlight search to minimize the hundreds matches I was getting in all kinds of categories that looked irrelevant......and to focus on what was going on with my contacts.

2) My contacts are synched with MS Exchange config connected to google apps account

3) I have about 1500 contacts and 1700 other contacts (email addresses only), and TONS of notes in contact 'comments' fields (foreshadowing here....'comments' fields....)


After about 60 minutes of thinking the index for my records was corrupt...and reboots and resets and internet searches..I tried thinking differently....and I started looking at the 'comments' fields in my contacts...and whoooaaaa....arghhhhh...


It appears spotlight is now indexing 'comments' section of contacts now as well many other fields in the contact records that I don't believe were previously indexed.........and apple is NOT not prioritizing the results by any fields (like giving first name, last name, business name top hit result priority)....and I know for a fact it did not use index notes..because i needed that function so I downloaded an app to do that....I found the fact that it did not index 'comments' section annoying, but tolerable...now they they are indexing it, but with poor implementation and no prioritization, spotlight has become a great tool for locating **** near anything on my phone...but a really crappy short cut to get to the contacts I wanted to get to....a better implementation of prioritization of 'top hits' would go a long ways...


Back to my searches again....when I searched 'Ho'.........Chris Luxxxis showed up first as a 'top hit'....made no sense at all....but this is what I pieced together.....e he was the most recent phone call I made, and 'ho' is in the 'comments' section of his contact info 6 times........in the words home, home inspector, house masters, house password.....arghhhhh.....I did a lot more searches...and made some phone calls, and when I ran same search again....Chris Luxxxx was not longer an immediate top hit!?!? ****...I don't need a short cut to recent calls in my top hits spotlight search!?!? It's not the magic genie!!!! And when applied like that..it just makes a huge bowl of spaghetti!!


I thought...okay...well, overall it's a better tool for finding EVERYTHING on my phone, just crappier for shortcutting to contacts to make calls and send emails....(i never used the contacts section of my phone on 4s for 3 years...just used spotlight, and it was awesome, easy and fast and got me to my contacts better than any other search system on any device i'd ever had).......So I thought.....ok so maybe I'll just have to used my contacts area more now to get to my contacts........and guess what...it appears the same darn alogrythim for search results there!!!


Apple has obliterated the concept of top hits in spotlight search..and made finding the common items in the phone like contacts a heck of a lot more typing....I only have 1 Holly in my contacts....and I have to type 'Holly Bow' before she is the sole contact shown...and I have to get to 'Holly B' before the list is down to 15 results....oh....but if I recall this issue and start with her last name...only need to get three letters in to find her...unfortunately, but its individuall relevent...ie another contacts last name is a bomb for searching, but first is quick....


Apple use to think for their users...they assumed what was most important given a spot in an application...and overall, made some decent decisions for the non technically oriented....(personally, I didn't like it...been a pc guy for 20 years..and a programmer...drove me nuts, but had a place for their customer base and nice if what you did with your computer was inline with the applications apple designed their machines to be great at....)...and I loved my iphone 4s compared to too many config options and poor implementation on windows phones ...and i'm still an iphone fan...for it's simplicity and lack of total cusomization actually (i get my creative juices flowing doing things other than customizing smart phones)........but in this case, too much info can be as bad or worse than not enough if you don't include some controls to start limiting relevance somehow....


I'm 90 minutes into this...guess now that I seem to have concluded what's up...I can start working with it or around it...but it's a big departure for where spotlight was...and while it offers more...for me, it's offering a lot less for my hourly and daily needs.


If my assumptions about these changes are wrong or anyones figured out how to get top hits useful again, please advise.


thx

iPhone 5, iOS 6.0.1, spotlight top hits search results

Posted on Feb 9, 2013 9:42 AM

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Spotlight search top hits problems in iphone 5 ios 6

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