
Behind the App: The Story of Alfred - srikar
http://lifehacker.com/behind-the-app-the-story-of-alfred-1624424125
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chime
Over a decade ago, I wrote something similar (but not as advanced) that I
still run on any Windows machine I use -
[http://chime.tv/products/hotchime.shtml](http://chime.tv/products/hotchime.shtml)

When I switched over to a Mac as my primary machine 4 years ago (Jan 2010), I
tried Quicksilver, which was the closest replacement to my app. It was ok but
never really felt as snappy as my Windows app. After a few months of trying to
make Quicksilver work, I was on the verge of porting my app to OSX when I came
across the newly launched Alfred.

I have been a very satisfied user ever since. The moment a family/friend of
mine gets a Mac, the first thing I tell them is to install Alfred. I'm so glad
the Pepperrells built Alfred. They saved me a lot of time I would have spent
(1) porting over my app to OSX (2) manually launching apps in the meantime.

------
torrenza
Doesn't the new search feature in Yosemite make Alfred obsolete?

~~~
mikeash
I'd be rather surprised. My main uses for Alfred are:

1\. Launching apps.

2\. Searching developer documentation with Dash. I can pop up Alfred and type
"dash nsstring" and it'll show me the docs for that class.

3\. Clipboard history. If I type "clip" it shows me everything I've copied to
the clipboard in the past day. I can filter that by typing. Pressing return
pastes the selected entry.

4\. Hotkey actions. The main one I use binds cmd-shift-5 to a custom script
that starts the GUI action for taking a screenshot of a selected area of the
screen, then uploads the resulting image to my web server and places the URL
on my clipboard.

5\. Searching Google by just typing stuff into the Alfred bar.

6\. Invoking Wolfram Alpha by typing "w stufftocalculate".

7\. Searching Wikipedia by typing "wiki stufftosearch".

Of those, I don't think 2, 3, 4, 6, or 7 have any hope of being replaced by
Apple. 1 could, but on the other hand this has in theory been supported by
Spotlight since 10.4, and it's just been too unreliable and slow. I doubt
they'll finally get their act together on it now. 5 is the only one that seems
likely to be obsoleted by Yosemite, and that's a minor one.

~~~
oostevo
Do you know a place to find more examples like these?

When I was re-learning Vim a few years ago, I found things like VimCasts to be
incredibly useful -- reading documentation is one thing, but seeing how
experts use the tools made a big difference in understanding for me. I suspect
something similar would be helpful in moving beyond using Alfred as an
application launcher and file explorer.

~~~
dangoor
I usually just google "alfred (something I do) workflow". For example, I
wanted to be able to turn Caffeine on and off through Alfred. There's a
workflow for that. I wanted a timer. Yep, already there. Look up the weather?
Sure.

Alfred seems to have enough enthusiastic users that whatever you do regularly
is probably done regularly by someone else as well.

