Butler
Ever since I discovered LaunchBar (several years ago now), I’ve felt that any Mac (indeed any computer) without a launcher triggered by abbreviations is broken. Once you get used to hitting a hotkey, then typing a few characters to find anything on your computer (applications, files, bookmarks, address book entries and so on), having to browse file system hierarchies feels positively 20th Century. I cut my launcher teeth on LaunchBar, then switched to the dashing and rebellious newcomer, Quicksilver. Quicksilver is somewhat more powerful than LaunchBar in some respects, and is extensible with plugins, but with great power comes a certain amount of complexity, and it can be difficult to remember exactly how to use all of the features. For example, there is a great image manipulation plugin which you can use by feeding it a file and a string of commands (for example to change a TIFF file to a PNG and resize it to particular dimensions), but I don’t use it often enough to remember how to format the commands, so I have to look them up. Again. I’ve also found it slightly unstable at various times, so I’ve tended to switch back and forth between LaunchBar and Quicksilver, pulled between the conflicting forces of stability and excitement.
Since installing Leopard, I’ve been almost tempted to revert to using Spotlight as a launcher, because the speed has improved enormously. But it’s still the Scooty Puff Jr. of launchers, so I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
