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Comment by DougBTX | Hacker News Reader

Quicksilver is dead?? I still use it every day. Where did people go? :-/

Leopard changed added app launching functionality to Spotlight, which is certainly why I stopped using it.

Actually its not dead, just the developer (Nicholas Jitkoff) stopped developing it but did make it opensource: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/blacktree-quicksilver

Jitkoff works at Google and went on to produce QS "clones" called Google Desktop & Google Quick Search Box: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-google-qui...

I'm still using the original non-opensource QS here with no problems (well at least no probs on Tiger!).

I've trying Google QSB; it is super fast, looks great, and works more like QS than LaunchBar. It is supposedly extensible, so hopefully people develop for it.

I went to LaunchBar http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

It's not really a fair comparison. Apple essentially built Quicksilver into the OS starting with 10.5 in the form of Spotlight.

No, Quicksilver has much more to offer than app launching. It's sad that most people never got past this. :-/

It's sadder that they never got past that due to it crashing continuously. It was a wonderful tool, but nobody I know ever experienced it as a reliable one. Tell me you don't know the disruptive experience of Cmd-Space and...nothing happens. It's like having your leg fall off mid-stride.

After the third or fourth crash I added a launchd item to restart Quicksilver whenever it crashes.

I never even notice the crashes any more, and when it starts acting funny I can Cmd+Q it and it will be freshly restarted in a few seconds.

I use Quicksilver as my sole means of launching applications (plus a few other utility functions) and I've never experienced the kind of instability you're describing. Let ß56a7's low PID testify to it's rock solidness!

  ~ bgilmore → uptime
  12:35  up 23 days, 56 mins, 5 users, load averages: 0.22 0.19 0.21
  ~ bgilmore → ps ax | grep Quick
    149   ??  S      1:31.43 /Applications/Quicksilver.app/Contents/MacOS/Quicksilver -psn_0_36873

In all seriousness, though, I can imagine the irritation that would be caused by crashes. I've just never experienced them, and I've been on the Quicksilver train since 10.4.1 or so.

(I'm a ⌃Space guy myself)

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