Platform Peace

Besides VMWare Fusion and Parallels, Quicksilver was probably the foremost application that got me interested in buying a Mac.  I kept hearing great things about it from many different sources.  I have always been a big command line user and prefer using the keyboard as much as possible so any application that helps minimize mouse usage is extremely compelling to me.  On Windows, I have tried a variety of keyboard launchers - SlickRun, ActiveWords*, Dash Command, etc.  SlickRun is what I settled on due to its light weight and price (free).  It is a great application and I still use it in my Windows virtual machines.  However, it is not really functionally equivalent to Quicksilver.

In my opinion, using Quicksilver simply as an application launcher is worth the download.  However, it really is capable of a lot more.  I won’t attempt to summarize what it can do as other people have already done so better than I can.  When I first started with Quicksilver, I used this as a primer.  It does a great job of covering some of the basic things you can do with it and whets your appetite for some of the advanced things you can accomplish.

I have been using Quicksilver since the first day I received my Mac and it is absolutely indispensable.  I never use the Dock or Finder to launch applications - a few keystrokes in Quicksilver handles all.  I can use Quicksilver to check the currently playing track on iTunes, to rate songs, to add an item to my todo list, and many other things.  And, I know that I have actually not even scratched the surface.  I have not explored features like Triggers yet and have only tried a small set of the plugins that are available.  I highly recommend Quicksilver.  I have read a lot of people are initially intimidated by it but I encourage you to try it even if you only use it as an application launcher initially.

* To be fair, ActiveWords is a lot more than an application launcher and is a great product.