What you’ll need

You’ll need an iPhone 4S with Siri turned on to get started, of course; TouchPad by Edovia from the iOS App Store ($4.99); and Alfred running on your target Mac, which you can pick up for free from Alfredapp.com. You’ll also need to make sure Screen Sharing is enabled on your Mac, which you can set up by going to System Preferences > Sharing and then checking the Screen Sharing box.

How it works and what you can do

Alfred basically allows you to quickly accomplish tasks through typing queries, application and filenames, instead of having to use the mouse to navigate through folders and your Launchpad application manager. With TouchPad, you can dictate text instead of typing it, which, if you’re operating a media Mac from your couch, for example saves you a lot of time and potential for improper entry via your iPhone’s software keyboard.

To get started, make sure Alfred is running (after the first run, it should be configured to launch at Login). Then, using TouchPad on your iPhone 4S, select the target Mac as the server, and use the software keyboard to type “Alt (⌥) + Space,” which calls Alfred up. Then, tap the microphone icon on your iOS device’s virtual keyboard within TouchPad, and simply say the name of any application you want to find. It should then transfer the text to Alfred, which will show if it found a match, and you can hit “Return” on your iPhone to launch it.

You can dictate any text you like, and options for searching the web will pop up, including Amazon, Google and Wikipedia by default. In Alfred’s preferences under the Features tab, you can also set up a custom search for any URL of your choosing, such as Facebook for instance.

Under the Features tab, you can set keywords to trigger actions related to certain files. By default, saying “Find xx” will locate files in Finder that match whatever term you use; “Open” followed by a keyword launches the file using its default associated application; and using “in” will find specific instances of a term within a file. Keywords allow you to control system features like shutting down your Mac, restarting or emptying the trash.

Even more possibilities

With the paid Alfred Powerpack for £12 ($18 USD), you can add more features to your Siri-enabled voice commands, including the ability to launch and control iTunes, email a contact or open Address Book, and enter specific URLs that launch automatically in your default browser.

Of course, this is all about Siri basically replacing typing, and you still have to hit the software “Return” key to make the magic happen, but it’s a lot easier than fumbling with VNC or virtual trackpad software when trying to navigate a Mac set up as a media center. If you’ve found other neat ways to use Siri on your Mac, please share them in the comments.

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Although still in beta, Alfred puts up a good fight against its more established peers, especially when it comes to looks. It definitely looks at home on OS X. It also has all the features you’d expect from this type of app, including app-launching, plus file and web search. Those features are included free in the basic beta, or you can purchase the “Powerpack,” which includes extra things like iTunes control, clipboard history and “Result Actions.”

Result Actions allow you to do things such as copy, email and move a file once found, which is very helpful if you just downloaded something and want to move it to somewhere other than Downloads, for instance. Alfred can do that without you ever touching the mouse. When emailing a file, Alfred not only supports Mail.app, but also some popular third-party mail applications like Postbox and Mailplane.

Alfred can perform simple system tasks, too. You can do things such as shut down, empty the trash, log out and start the screensaver by typing the appropriate command and hitting return. It’s a good idea to double check you’ve saved everything you need to first, as the action is carried out immediately. It doesn’t take much time to open the  menu and choose Shut Down, but it does let you keep your hands on the keyboard.

The beta of Alfred (version 0.7.2) is available to download now for free, or you can purchase the Powerpack for £12 GBP (about $20 USD). Purchasing the Powerpack now gets you free updates for 0.X and 1.X. Note that this is a special beta purchase price, so once the app reaches version 1.0, the price will increase. If you want to further support the development of Alfred, you can purchase the “Mega Supporter license,” which will cost you anywhere between £30 GBP (~$48 USD) and £100 GBP (~$160 USD) — you can choose any increment of £10 between those values. Purchasing the Mega Supporter license gets you free lifetime updates, no matter what version.

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If have somehow missed out on the whole launcher family of apps; if you, as many people do, travel from your hard drive icon, to applications, to scroll down, to double click, to open application – then you are probably wondering what on earth is the point of another application just to do that. Surely for such a simple task, adding intermediate steps must make it all much more complicated? Well, possibly to start with, but not after a little practice, and there is a sweet smooth swiftness to knowing your machine well enough to be able to launch any application in a second or two with a couple of key strokes. It’s a control thing. It’s a delight thing.

The mother of all launchers, the UberLauncher, is Quicksilver. Quicksilver quite rightly gets a lot of press. It was amazing the last time I tried it and I’m just about to give it another go after rediscovering it via Quicksilver: The Guide.

Searching and launching applications is however the very tip of Quicksilver’s considerable, iceberg like abilities and for me this depth and ability was, and possibly will be again, just too much. Quicksilver is a whole world and needs time and effort to explore and appreciate. So many worlds, so little time.

My own road to regularly using an application launcher has been patchy and inconsistent. Or, I would argue, I’m picky and like to test choices out thoroughly before settling on just one. I won’t list out the choices, but, for now at least, I have settled on one: Sapiens.

Sapiens has only the basic application launcher functionality of the heavyweights in its field but has a visual simplicity which defies it’s underlying basic intelligence. Sapiens sometime idiosyncratic design philosophy is a radial one – a radial look and a supposedly radial launch facility via circular mouse gesturing. More about that later.

The radial look is very nice. Sapiens can mirror your desktop through the interface, or not, and lays out your 13 most commonly used applications in sensible groups. If an application is already open then, of course, it doesn’t show up in the Sapiens interface, the next most regularly used application takes it’s place. The search is adaptive via the ‘Brain’ and Sapiens will learn which applications are your favourites; favourites get a more prominent placement; ah, twas ever thus.

The search is also user adaptable via a right click where you can either increase or decrease an application’s importance or even tell Sapiens to forget about it completely. There is a simple but complete Tools menu which does everything you may need behind the scenes and five different gui layouts to choose from.

Enter will launch a centrally placed application from Sapiens, so that in theory one circular mouse gesture and one click will launch your most used application. Now it may work for you but I found this circular mouse gesture just isn’t available in my muscle memory so I have opted to open Sapiens via a double shift-click, an option available from the Tools menu; no problemo then, three clicks not two, not too shabby.

If the application you want isn’t visible when Sapiens opens, if it isn’t one of the applications you use very often, then just start typing its name with the Sapiens interface open and Sapiens will search for it, exactly like Spotlight. Once you see the icon pop up in Sapiens you’re off.

Prior to Sapiens I was used to using Spotlight via Cmd Spacebar to search for everything, but I love the focus of Sapiens. It launches applications – that’s it.

And this may be why my re-entry into the world of Quicksilver will fail once more.

So many worlds, so little time.

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Dash is the latest attempt for the Microsoft platform to emulate the power, flexibility, and usefuleness of Blacktree’s Quicksilver. There have been several popping up in the past year, with just as many disappointments (in this Quicksilver-addict’s opinion). But on the surface, Dash seems to be a great step in the right direction. It’s clean, and looks mighty fine, and the functionality is even fairly fluid – at least moreso than it’s Windows-based competition.

Worth a try if you spend more than a little time on Windows…Course it’ll cost you $20 to register under the special pre-release pricing – $50 normally. (Quicksilver by the way, is free.)

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