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12 Responses to "QotD: Launcher"

1. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 9:34am #
   

   This trick and many others put LB 4 back on top. LB 3 was getting a bit long in the tooth… but it's back now baby!

2. | Reply BrentN
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 10:11am #
   

   I really liked LB, until I tried Butler. I'm using it full time now. Only a few complaints, but the added functionality, and having the preferences make sense is worth it.

3. | Reply Gary
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 10:55am #
   

   Ummmmm the Dock? Call me crazy, but it does enough for me. If something that I need to launch on a regular basis isn't in the Dock it's just a cmd-shift-a away. Then again, I'm very keyboard oriented so Internet Explorer is a cmd-shift-a-in-arrow-arrow-cmd-o away. Probably comes from working in vi so much. (and vi mode in bash/ksh)

4. | Reply Phil Dokas
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 1:30pm #
   

   The reason that so many people turn to these launching utilities is that while yes, they do do what the Dock does, they do so much more in addition. The Dock can't show you the phone number of any person in your Address Book, nor can it open any url you can think of, or traverse your bookmarks, history, preference panes, Watson tools, iTunes library or iPhoto library.

   About a year ago I gave Launchbar a try and I really didn't like it. Right before the 4.0 beta came out, I gave QuickSilver a try and also didn't like that (the interface is a bit weird at this moment). I gave the LB 4.0 beta a try and fell in love. I liked it so much that I turned DragThing off for the first time in about two years and I'm not missing it at all.

5. | Reply Brad
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 5:36pm #
   

   LaunchBar. I played with QS some, but it never felt as natural as LB for some reason. There is one feature of QS that I'd like to see LB steal though, the multi-clipboard. It was a nice feature to have.

6. | Reply BrentN
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 6:04pm #
   

   I got spoiled with clipboard buffers with Keyboard Maestro, before it vanished into stagnation. Butler does have multi-clipboard functionality, although I don't think there is a way to assign a keystroke to 'pop' the recent buffers, a la BBEdit. You can stick a clipboard menu into one of the Butler menus, and it will show you the last N clipboards. I'm not sure how QS does it, but that works well enough for me.

7. | Reply Nis Sarup
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 6:05pm #
   

   Quicksilver. It was the first launcher i tried.

   I might try the others someday when I'm bored. But Quicksilver, for now, floats my boat.

8. | Reply Grayson
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 6:14pm #
   

   I was a LaunchBar loyalist until Quicksilver. I like the extra visuals and the stuff like clipboards and the shelf. I still swear by LaunchBar (and may go back one of these days), but for anyone without a launcher application, Quicksilver works great in my book. And it's free.

9. | Reply Thomas Chai
   Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 10:45pm #
   

   I was once a LaunchBar loyalist too. But once I try QuickSilver, there was no turning back. The killer feature than beats LaunchBar is that not only we are able to such for an object but also search the associate action to be done to the object.

10. | Reply Mathieu Legrand
    Posted 12 Apr 2004 at 4:46am #
    

    QuickSilver is the one for me. Once you understand basic configuration tricks, it's surely the best: it's full-featured, fast and easy, and still in active development: every week a new beta comes out adding new features that people request thru the forums.

    QuickSilver didn't take the time to get as easy after the first launch as LaunchBar... yet. Btw, QuickSilver also have web-searching, iTunes integration.

11. | Reply Paul Howard
    Posted 12 Apr 2004 at 4:17pm #
    

    I'm with Grayson, Thomas, and Mathieu.

    I've been a registered user of LaunchBar for what, a year now? -- and evangelizing the Hell out of it to anyone who would listen. But a recent comment on macosxhints.com made me curious about both Butler & Quicksilver.

    Butler didn't last more than a couple of days; there's just too much to it, and configuration takes more effort than I'm willing to give.

    But Quicksilver really got me. It does everything LaunchBar does and then some, without adding too much complexity. And it's free to boot! How can you beat that?

    Now that beta 22 is out, and the bugs involving iTunes libraries stored on external drives are fixed, I feel confident that I won't be going back to LaunchBar.

12. | Reply Nicole Lee
    Posted 13 Apr 2004 at 3:18am #
    

    Quicksilver, for all the reasons others have mentioned. Plus, I think the Launchbar icon is kinda ugly, and the Quicksilver icon is prettier. That's just purely aesthetic though.