Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

typoon · Jan 27, 2004, 02:09 PM

I just discovered launchbar. WOW what a great app. It makes working much better now. A lot faster. A friend showed it to me once and this is definitely something that is needed for OS X. If anyone isn't using it you should definitely use this.

bbales · Jan 27, 2004, 04:04 PM

I discovered Launchbar on these forums, as a matter of fact. Look through the "best shareware/freeware" posts and you'll see lots of nominations for LaunchBar.

Macanoid · Jan 27, 2004, 04:23 PM

launchbar impresses my windows friends no end !!!!

gorickey · Jan 27, 2004, 04:28 PM

I downloaded and tried LB back in the day and though very nice, it didn't fit my needs very well...but it's very nice none-the-less...

Russian Mac fan · Jan 27, 2004, 04:37 PM

I recommend Another Launcher 3.2 instead - does essentially the same thing and more for free

BlakIce · Jan 27, 2004, 05:38 PM

whats so special about launch bar does it talk or something. How would it increse productivity, im not being an ass just curious

gorickey · Jan 27, 2004, 05:40 PM

Originally posted by BlakIce:
whats so special about launch bar does it talk or something. How would it increse productivity, im not being an ass just curious

http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/

You basically can use keyboard shortcuts to mimic faster mouse movements...therefore increasing productivity for some...

crouchingtiger · Jan 27, 2004, 10:02 PM

the best part about launchbar is that it is dynamically updating: no more maintaining various folders of aliases containing frequently used programs, etc.

the "fuzzy logic" it incorporates to figure out what you're looking for is outstanding as well.

maxintosh · Jan 27, 2004, 10:49 PM

I love LaunchBar, but the Setup Scan takes waaayyyyy too long and bogs down my (relatively new) computer on login.

Giving Another Launcher another look.

crouchingtiger · Jan 28, 2004, 12:49 AM

yeah, the setup scan time could be improved. Fortunately I only reboot every few weeks or so so it's not too big a deal. You could also try turning off the auto-setup scan.

I tried and liked Another Launcher quite a bit. It's a very smooth and elegant program. Unfortunately, I found myself "tinkering" way too much with it and the simplicity of typing a few letters in LaunchBar is just much quicker than going through a bunch of menus in Another Launcher.

poocat · Jan 28, 2004, 01:29 PM

what's up max! anyway, the point of this is that make sure you're running the newest version, if you're trying launchbar on osx. there was a bug for a while with the startup scan hanging that they've fixed... it could still be faster, but on a pismo5 it's really no big deal for me, two seconds max.

another launcher is tinkertoy. launchbar is just straight up smart tech.

poocat.

hardcat1970 · Jan 28, 2004, 01:34 PM

Originally posted by maxintosh:
I love LaunchBar, but the Setup Scan takes waaayyyyy too long and bogs down my (relatively new) computer on login.

Giving Another Launcher another look.

There's the only drawback i can think of. Otherwise this is a good stuff.

I did set up many things for manually scan though. But launchbar will be great when it can scan a little faster.

typoon · Jan 28, 2004, 02:36 PM

It scanned pretty fast for me.

torifile · Jan 28, 2004, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by typoon:
It scanned pretty fast for me.

As you add things to the setup and have bigger directories for it to scan, it gets SLOW. Fortunately it's only once a login. The setup scan is my primary complaint about this program. Another is that if you MOVE something, it won't know about it. It should just follow the file....

That said, it was the best $20 I ever spent on shareware. I bought it about 2 years ago and I'm still getting free updates. Well worth the $$