I thought that Win7 had a good solution to that, with typing immediately doing a search within the start menu. Then, Win8 made it also search for files, destroying any utility of the search. If you want people to have muscle memory (e.g. WinKey + moz + enter to start Mozilla Firefox), then having severe lag on the search, and having the top result vary as a function of time (as more search results are found), is horrendous.
Win7's built in menu search was great. Win8 technically had similar functionality but it was awful for all the reasons you mention (lag, poor search capability) plus it took over your whole screen in a horrible, visually jarring flash making it very unpleasant to use. Win10's is halfway between the two, but close enough to Win7's that I actually use it now instead of just using Launchy and pretending the Windows menu doesn't exist, like I do on Win8.
Edit: While we're talking about laggy keyboard interfaces, AAARGH the Win10 logon screen is awful. You have to hit a key, then wait for the screen to load and be shown on the screen, before you start typing your PIN, or it'll eat the first character of your PIN going from "press any key to log on" to "enter your pin". What the hell is so hard about understanding that keyboard interfaces shouldn't be laggy even if graphics don't quite keep up? Electric typewriters from 1990 got this right!
> having severe lag on the search, and having the top result vary as a function of time (as more search results are found), is horrendous.
There's no reason search has to do this, though. Spotlight (the macOS version of this) is able to find results pretty much instantly, and it doesn't show any results until it's searched everything, so the top result never changes. I really don't understand why Windows hasn't been able to do the same thing (and if anything, the win10 search is worse).
I wish Firefox would do this too. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve pressed return just as Firefox changes the ordering of the items in the search bar suggestions. Very fustrating as I’ve since learnt to wait for Firefox to complete its suggestion process before hitting return.
> it doesn't show any results until it's searched everything, so the top result never changes
I don't see how that follows. If it also searches files, the top result can change if any indexed file changes, which would still break the app launching scenario.
Is this case, they are referring to consistent display of results within a single search, not the consistency of several search results using the same search terms. Progressive searches that display results as they are found have a nasty habit of changing which result is currently underneath your mouse, right when you are about to click it.
Yup. Mobile Twitter is horrible in this regard. Search for something, it comes up first or second, wonderful; tap i- DAMMIT WHY DID YOU REPLACE IT WITH AN UNRELATED HASHTAG!?!
Result: search, wait 10 seconds for the damn UI to stabilize, tap the result and NOPE, THERE COMES ANOTHER LATE RESPONSE MESSING IT UP AGAIN.
