Spotlight search is infinitely more useful than the Windows 10+ start menu. 99% of the time I'm just using it to open an app or a recent document/download.
In Windows, if I hit [Win], type "fusion" (to open Fusion 360, an app in the "Start Menu" folder, for what that's worth nowadays), there's a 70% chance it will do a Bing search for "fusion".
Spotlight works great for me but the index can occasionally become corrupted. There’s a set of commands you can run to force a rebuild if you’re having issues. I’ve had to do this a few times over the years. This is another place where it’d be nice if Apple had a GUI to manage things like this.
You can thank Apple for that. I even have autocorrect turned off yet it still insists on doing it... Most annoyingly it will change the word previous to the one I'm typing...
I forget what combination of settings does it but my Windows start menu now only searches the two start menu folders. It's perfect, completely deterministic, instant.
Trying to turn the app launcher into the magic "accio <anything>" bar was a huge mistake. You can have a second UI element for search, I promise it won't scare me.
In Windows, if I hit [Win], type "fusion" (to open Fusion 360, an app in the "Start Menu" folder, for what that's worth nowadays), there's a 70% chance it will do a Bing search for "fusion".