Alfred - Always There When Needed

Well, here we are in 2012 - Happy New Year to you all!

Every effective household needs a butler and the Apple Harvest is no exception. The difference is that we have one. He's called Alfred and he's resident on all the Macs on the network and he's always there when you need him. And he keeps getting better and better!

It's quite hard to describe what Alfred really is so I'm not going to try - I'll let his makers speak for me...

Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Whether it's maps, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, you can feed your web addiction quicker than ever before.

• Increase your productivity by launching apps with shortcuts
• Instant access to web searches, bookmarks & more
• Browse and play music from your iTunes library quickly
• Perform actions - copy, move & email files & folders
• Ward off RSI - skip using the mouse with easy shortcuts

As if that isn't enough the basic programme is free. For a little bit extra (£15.00) you can add the Alfred Powerpack and add a whole bunch of new features supported by a community of developers. But let's get back to basics first!

Ever since I got my first Mac in 2007 I've used Tiger Launch as my programme launcher. Tiger Launch is a simple menubar resident which displays a (configurable) list of applications when you click on it. At one stage I dallied with QuickSilver but there seemed to be a bit of a steep learning curve to get over before being able to get the best from it, and more importantly, its future was (is?) somewhat uncertain. Alfred seems to have been created by people familiar with QuickSilver but who seemed to have real end users in mind rather than technophiles. Which means that Alfred can be used on many different levels and it allows the user to grow into the programme in their own time, slowly building up their knowledge, understanding and growing in productivity.

Alfred springs into action on a hot key press: in my case Option+Spacebar. At its simplest level Alfred does what Spotlight does - it locates files, applications, documents or whatever, based on search parameters that the user types into the input bar. In this respect it's a fairly standard launcher. But you can also force Alfred to look in more specific places - start your search string with google and it will do a google search on the next text your type in. Start with imdb and it'll search the IMDB database. Specific searches can be user defined as the need arises, but there's a whole bunch of them predefined for you.

Alfred can also do calculator, dictionary and iTunes related things automatically.
As mentioned, the Powerpack add-on extends Alfred considerably. I have written a small extension to load a set of applications that I normally use during the day without having to load them at start-up. I recently downloaded an extension that performs currency conversion by typing (as an example) "convert 100 USD to GBP", and another to add an event into iCal. The possibilities are endless, and there is a serious community of developers out there who are happy to share their creations.

My guess is that anyone who starts using Alfred will soon become a convert. Certainly the testimonies on Twitter suggest that it has an increasing and enthusiastic following. My advice is download it and start playing. After a couple of weeks get yourself the Powerpack. I suggest that you use the Alfred website directly to do the download, and get Alfred to check for its own updates. You can get the basic programme from the Mac App Store but not the Powerpack and this causes a few problems when you later want to install Powerpack.

I've now been using Alfred for over a year and it's probably the most used utility across the Apple Harvest. Highly recommended - if Steve Jobs had designed a launcher from scratch it would probably have looked something like Alfred!

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2011 - the Late Post

It's December 28th and the world has just about recovered from the excesses of Christmas and is preparing for the New Year festivities.  In some respects I'm looking forward to seeing the back of 2011, although all in all, it has been quite a good year for the Apple Harvest.

In March I got the call to return to Zurich, initially for about four and half months, but I ended up staying for eight months. That's a long time to be away from friends and family, but it has enabled me to get the Apple Harvest infrastructure to the state where I'm now really happy with it. An Airport Extreme, 3Tb Time Capsule and an additional Airport Express now work together to provide decent WiFi coverage throughout the house. The 2008 24inch 3.06GHz iMac has been upgraded with a new 1Tb hard disk and still acts as the main workhorse, running OS X Lion and Lion Server. The shiny new 13inch i7 MacBook Air is my run around of choice, but my first Mac, the 2007 15inch MacBook Pro still has a place in the office. The original iPad and iPhone 4 complete the hardware line up. Not intending to upgrade either of these yet - they work perfectly well as they are and they compliment the MacBook Air.

There are lots of new toys supporting the network now. I replaced the wired Apple keyboard on the iMac with Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard (for Mac), and Mobee Magic Chargers for the Magic Mouse and Apple Keyboard also help make the Apple Harvest a bit greener. I also got the Mobee Magic Numpad kit which lets me use the trackpad as a dedicated numeric keyboard - great from when I'm doing all my expenses, and after eight months there's a lot of number crunching that needs doing!

Finally on the infrastructure side there's the Moshi hub - a self powered Firewire and USB hub that lives under the iMac. Sadly it doesn't work with the MacBook Air because of the lack of a Firewire port on that machine, but I'm regularly scanning the internet for news of a Thunderbolt hub, and it looks like Belkin may be first to market with one which was first seen in September but there have been no official updates since then.

As usual, I seem to have acquired a bit of software over the year. The Mac App Store makes it so easy, and now that the initial problems have been resolved I use it in favour of direct purchase from the developers wherever possible. There is one notable exception and that is Alfred which just gets better and better. If you haven't heard of it go and checkout the website. I'll post more info about Alfred next time but no Mac user should be without it.

The worst thing about 2011 was that I did find it really difficult to post anywhere near as much as I wanted to. My output was half of what it was the previous year. I'm going to have a lot more time next year but in 2012 I'm going to try a new approach and write smaller posts more often. This isn't a New Year resolution and I'm not setting targets or goals. But I think it'll improve the overall quality of the blog and hopefully attract more people and more interaction. The overall aim of the blog won't change one iota. It's still going to be a blog for users and enthusiasts like myself, and it'll steer clear of rumours and bickering.

So, on that note - let me wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thanks for all your support over the past 12 months (and more!) and I hope I can repay you in 2012!!
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