Snow Leopard's Address Book now Requires Full Name to find a Contact

Question

In all previous versions of Address Book, the user could simply type 'T' to instantly go to contacts with last names that start with 'T' (and businesses that start with 'T').
In Snow Leopard, Address Book can no longer search with one letter the way it did before; it uses a 'Spotlight' type of search where the user must type the full name in order to get an exact match. This type of searching is useful for finding documents on the Mac or searching the Internet, but is totally inefficient for finding contacts in Address Book.
It sounds like someone at Apple decided this was a better way to search for contacts, because this change in search method is described in the new Address Book 'Help' file; it says, "As you type, Address Book begins to search all the information on the cards, including notes, and displays matching contacts, with the matching text highlighted in each card." For example, let's say someone used to type 'T' to search for a contact named Bill Tilman. Now what happens is that Address Book stops at the first person who's first name starts with 'T', and highlights all the T's in the person's card (the T in 'telephone', the T in 'Street', etc. The user must now scroll through all their contacts manually to find Bill Tilman, or else manually type out the complete name 'Bill Tilman'. (If they just type 'Bill', they will only get the first person named Bill.)
I hope Apple will reconsider and will allow Address Book to do the quick one-letter searches by last name (as opposed to 'Sort' by last name, which it still has) like it used to. (Or at least make this a choice in Address Book Preferences.) This would also be more compatible with the way iPhone searches for contacts; when you select a letter in the iPhone's contacts, it finds contacts who's last name starts with that letter, as well as businesses, just like Address Book always used to.

Answer 1

Thanks for your response Ernie. You are correct in that whenever you type a series of letters, Address Book (as it always has) finds every single thing with that combination of letters - Names, businesses, adjectives, people's dogs' names, letters in product serial numbers, etc. This is useful for finding a subject on the Web, or finding all documents related to 'iPhoto' on your Mac, etc., but not useful, quick or convenient when trying to find one person to call in your Address Book (which is what people use Address Book for).
What is DIFFERENT in the Snow Leopard version, is that the ability to type one letter to instantly go to last names with that letter has been removed. Previously, you could easily find 'Bill Tilman' in one second by simply typing 'T'. Now you get every word that starts with T and all the words in the card that have a T in them. If you type out a full name like 'Bill', it finds every person named Bill. No one would ever want to find all their contacts named Bill to call them. You could type out the full last name 'Tilman', but there again you are forced to type out a complete name to do a search. It would actually be quicker to scroll down and find it manually. The ability to type a single letter to find the last name (or business name) of a contact you needed to call, was much quicker and easier than having to type out the entire name.