In the last two days I came across two incredibly useful Mac OS X shareware apps. The first, brought to you by the same wonderful folks behind WindowShade X, is FruitMenu, which turns the horribly static OS X Apple Menu into a fully customizable menu like the classic Apple Menu. In fact, I'd say FruitMenu actually offers more features than the classic Apple Menu.
On top of that, FruitMenu lets you assign arbitrary key bindings to items in the menu (including, but not limited to the Fkeys), so if you're already using an app to handle Fkey launching, FruitMenu can replace it and give you so much more.
At $7, FruitMenu is a steal. And what's better, if you (for some crazy reason) haven't bought WindowShade X yet, you can buy both FruitMenu and WindowShade X for $13 and save $1.
The second (and much much cooler) app is LaunchBar. This thing is just really incredible. Basically, you configure some directories for it to know about (for example, mine knows about my Applications folders, my Documents folder, my Terminal Sessions folder, my Bookmarks, and my Music folder (among others). It then scans these directories when it starts up and indexes the contents. Then, I just command-space (the shortcut is of course configurable), type a bit of the document I want to open, or the app I want to launch, or the song want to listen to, and it off and does it.
Here are a few examples of what I type and what I get as a result (By the way, it's not case sensitive, so I'm just writing them in caps because that's how it echos your input):
- HOBU - Pulls up the file "Home Budget.xls"
- LS - Pulls up my Linkstew bookmark.
- IT - Pulls up iTunes.
- G - Pulls up Gimli.term, a saved Terminal session, which will open a huge wide window and ssh to my web server.
- DATIM - Pulls up the song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" the first time, but then I can scroll through the list with the arrow key and select DateAndTime.prefPane instead, and -- this is where it gets really cool -- the next time I type DATIM, the Date & Time preferences will be the first thing it pulls up.
Basically, it's all cool and adaptive. It's $20, but just putting my Terminal sessions in there will probably save me five minutes every day, let alone all the other savings that are just going to pile up. In just a few hours of use, I can tell that it's already going to significantly going to change the way I use my Mac. And it has other handy drag and drop features that just make it that much more useful.
LaunchBar is really an incredible interface, and I'm already having trouble imagining doing work without it. It's that cool.
After a day of use I’m very impressed with LaunchBar. The only problem is that my intricate network of aliases and cross-linked folders which took a lot of time to build is pretty much useless.
LaunchBar is the only app I go out of my way to tell others about. Most reviews do not make it clear that the shortcuts are flexible and adaptive. You type _any_ characters of the filename in _any_ order, and LB finds the file. With use, LB remembers your choices, so four keystrokes to reach a file quickly becomes one or two.
It is also a pretty good finder replacement to use to navigate directories, and will get even better, per my correspondence with the author. If you find navigating save dialogs a pain, LB solves the problem by letting you save folder paths you can paste into the save box. I use the Finder to copy/move files; LB for every other finder function. Its that good.
Cheers, Eric
Sorry, more LaunchBar :-))
I think one of my most common Finder tasks is flipping back and forth between two Apps. The LB way:Cmd-spaceBar-spaceBar.
Dock? What Dock ??
softcore xxx
heel ballet
LaunchBar is extremely awesome. I could hardly live without it.