I don't know whether it's just me, but the one thing that I've always felt was lacking from Spotlight was the ability to quickly and easily reveal the enclosing folder for search results. It was never a major problem, but on the rare occasion when I do use Spotlight, I often seem to need to see the search result's containing folder. Earlier I was looking up a rogue "mds" process which was hogging 60% of my MacBook's CPU when I came across
an article on Macintouch, with this little tidbit at the end from Chong-Yee.
"Apple's "Spotlight Tips" page is good, but doesn't include the following tip I discovered. If you want to reveal a file in its enclosing folder from the drop down Spotlight results list, hold down the Command key and click the result."This is probably something I should have discovered on my own anyway (holding down Command during any action in OS X usually reveals some kind of useful alternative action), but because the problem wasn't so annoying that I felt the need to research it (hence my accidental discovery) I never thought to try. Usually I'd click "show all", and then right click the item and press "reveal in Finder". That usually took a few seconds -- now the process takes less than a single second.
This personal example reminds me of
Steve Garfield's entertaining interview with David Pogue (seriously, check out the bit at the end where David sings and plays the piano) where he talks about cool shortcuts that developers put into their work which, for whatever reason, don't make their way in the official documentation.
The door to my garage doesn't have one of those elf doors or a potted plant or concrete gnome. A couple of years ago I acquired a dead G4 tower, the model affectionately termed "mirrored drive door G4." After gutting it down to the fan and a few cables, I set it outside my door. Why? Sometimes I'm carrying an arm load of items and have to set something down to unlock the door. This tower table is the perfect height to sit a glass of water down while I get my keys. Notice how the mirror finish, even after years of exposure to the elements, is still pristine.
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