by David Sparks

 

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1:16AM

The LaunchBar Experiment

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Since posting on the issues with Quicksilver, I've received two distinct groups of emails. Faction A is with me that "the Man" will indeed need to rip Quicksilver from our cold dead hands and faction B is telling me that I'm being silly for not even giving LaunchBar a chance. So I decided to do an experiment and run LaunchBar for a couple weeks. I've just installed it today and spent most of the day in meetings and away from my Mac. So far I seem to have its application launching, address book, and iTunes features down but that is about it.

I have no idea how to really use it to move files as I do in Quicksilver. Likewise I have no idea if LaunchBar can append text files, run timers, email files from my desktop or a variety of other tasks I use Quicksilver for. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and run it for a few weeks and see what happens. I'll report back and maybe even do a review at some point in the not so distant future. Stay tuned.

Reader Comments (5)

David:

Launchbar is fantastic. It does a great deal more than just launch apps. I found it more stable than QS and easier to use. I would suggest watching Don McAlister's screencast tutorials on Launchbar. Here is Don's site:
http://www.screencastsonline.com/sco/index.html

Look for videos 11 and 12. They are indexed as SCO0011 and SCO0012. He also had a screencast on the more recent updates.

Also, there is an excellent but brief screencast about Launchbar on MacWorld's video podcast.

December 8, 2007 | Unregistered Commentermarieboyer

Looking forward for your conclusions on this experiment. I too plan do an in-depth test of Launchbar at home during my Xmas holidays. But QS is so natural to me now, I use it without even thinking about what I'm doing. That's probably why I overlook its frequent sluggish performances and crashes.

December 8, 2007 | Unregistered CommenterFrancois

Hi there again, I'm quite curious of what you will turn up about this. I for myself have already made my decision to Count myself to Faction A and i wont' drop quicksilver. But i'm still curious what the other kids on the block have come up with. Be sure to let us know david!

December 9, 2007 | Unregistered CommenterMartin Hauser

I need to spend more time on it but have to say so far it seems like LaunchBar sacrifices some functionality but gives more stability. Now back to work ...

December 10, 2007 | Unregistered Commenteradmin

I've been doing the same thing lately. I absolutely love Quicksilver, but after getting tired of the bugs, & Quicksilver's developer saying 'I really want the branch to die' (and we don't have any idea as to when we might see the next version of Quicksilver will see the light of day). I thought I'd spend some time giving LaunchBar a proper tryout.

So I went through all of the manual & spent a few days learning & using it.
I have to say it's really stable, it's really fast & it does a lot of the things Quicksilver does (but sometimes does them in a slightly different way).
Some things I prefer in Quicksilver, but I'm also finding I prefer some of the things that LaunchBar does (or the way it does them).

It does most all of the things I was using Quicksilver for so I’m going to stick with it for a while. I much prefer Quicksilver’s UI though, so if a new & stable of Quicksilver is released in the future I’ll jump back right away.

March 3, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterJono

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