Quicksilver vs. Launchbar

Launchbar is one of those very rare pieces of software that one cannot do without. Until last week, I’ve told everyone I know who’s switching or upgrading to OS X that it should be the first thing they download and install, and that they won’t regret paying the license fee.

For those who haven’t been bitten by the Launchbar bug, the utility allows you to launch applications, open files and display contact information from your Address Book, all with a couple of keystrokes. It even learns as you use it, quickly working out what application you want when you type a couple of letters, with an efficiency that is almost creepy.

Now, there’s competition in the form of Quicksilver, a free application that works in the same way as Launchbar, but with greater flexibility, more features and a choice of display options.

At first glance, this makes Quicksilver seem unwieldy in comparison to the elegant simplicity of Launchbar, which you can use out of the box, intuitively. After a few days use, and a bit of tweaking, I think I’ll be pimping the new kid on the block from now on.

Here, in no particular order, are a few reasons why:

• iTunes integration

  This is just amazing. Whack the command key combination you have set to invoke Quicksilver, type browse or itunes and up pops a listing of all your iTunes playlists. You can then browse them by typing initial letters, and hit return when you find a playlist you want to play, or move down a level to look for a particular song. That sounds a little complicated written out, but in practice, it means you can be playing a song within a split second. (The same applies to iPhoto Libraries too, if you use that to manage your photographs.)

• Window, Menu and Bezel views

  You can choose from three display modes for Quicksilver. The Window option is default, but makes the app feel more of a standalone thing, lacking the tightly integrated feel of the other options. For now, I’ve been switching between Menu, which layers the Quicksilver interface over your Menu Bar - a nice, neat option for those of us lacking screen space - and Bezel view. I’m leaning towards the latter, which is not unlike the centered pop-ups you see when changing volume or brightness settings, or Liteswitch X’s interface for tabbing through open applications. (Although the fact that many icons end up looking ugly and pixellated is putting me off a little)

• Clipboard Viewer, the Shelf, and Finder replacement

  Hit your Quicksilver command key combination, then Command-L and you get a view of the last ten items you copied to the Clipboard. I don’t need to explain how handy this can be. The Shelf is a feature I haven’t used much, because the slickness of the basic features almost render it unnecessary, but with Quicksilver running, tap Option-Command-S and you get a little place to keep stuff: just drag whatever you like there - files, folders, apps, contacts - for easy retrieval. Lastly, I hate using the Trackpad on my laptop, and there’s no room on my messy desk for a mouse, so I like to do everything from the keyboard. Quicksilver makes browsing the Finder as quick as navigating from the command line, but with all the advantages of graphical cues. You can, say, type a forward slash to start browsing from the top level, and find what you’re after by typing initial letters, or using the arrow keys, very quickly indeed.

• Launching URLs

  I can’t quite put my finger on this, but I quickly disabled URL launching in Launchbar, finding that the thousands of bookmarks available cluttered up results. With Quicksilver, and its little window displaying lists of choices, finding what you’re after is an easier proposition, and it seems to learn more quickly than Launchbar, figuring out immediately that when I type s I want to launch Safari, and when I type sr, it’s this website I’m after. A subtle difference, maybe, but one of several deft touches that are persuading me to switch.

• It’s cute!

  When I invoke Quicksilver, and type the first couple of letters of a friend’s name, up pops their photograph from Address Book. With a click or two of the right arrow key, I can launch their homepage, send them an email, or display their ‘phone numbers. It’s not more functional than Launchbar, but it’s a nice little touch, and shows the attention to detail the developers have put into maintaining the familiar look and feel of OS X.

So - and it almost pains me to say this - Quicksilver is the new essential OS X launching utility, and Launchbar is unlikely to keep its place among my Startup Items. I should say at this point that comparing the two is, perhaps, unfair: Launchbar is still the better simple launcher, but the extra features of Quicksilver just about make up for the fact that the learning curve is a couple of degrees steeper. And, where Launchbar is as stable as can be, there are still a few bugs in the Quicksilver beta, not least the annoying window layering quirks when using the Clipboard Viewer or Shelf.

The fact that it’s free and soon-to-be open source is not a clincher for me, as it might be for some. But, that said, having replaced Photoshop with the Gimp and installed OpenOffice in place of Word some time ago, if I now ditch Launchbar I’m fairly sure my computer will be completely free of commercial software and shareware, either stolen or paid for; exclusively running bundled Apple applications, freeware, donationware and open source software instead.

Even for someone who isn’t a raving open source evangelist, this feels pretty good. The open source underpinnings of OS X aren’t just a boon in terms of making for a vastly improved operating system. They allow those of us too fond of shiny, pretty things to move completely to an open source platform - however much we know it is, politically, the right thing to do - a chance to claw back all the cash those capitalist pig-dogs at Apple grub out of their users for hardware and software upgrades. Which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, A Good Thing.

Update: In a timely fashion, Quicksilver now has preliminary documentation, which reveals that it’s even more sophisticated than I thought, including features allowing you to move files around, manipulate them, even compress them. Wow.

Posted at 3pm on 28/03/04 by Jack Mottram to the mac, politics category.
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Tags: efficiency, foss, osx, quicksilver, reviews