Butler Tutorial [Mac OS X]

[dwarfflambe]

"Buy some cake, maybe?"

[bigmac3108]

hey,

how can i assign an abbreviation to activate the screen saver?

[bigmac3108]

how can i asign an abbrevation to: activate screensavver?

[gbaby4ster1]

Very good video man, must have been hard to overview all the features in butler since there are so many. I have a question though. This vid is 2 years old, do you still use butler?

[Zettt1981]

No i don't use it anymore. I recently changed to LaunchBar. But Peter is working on a new version off Butler. According to what he was telling me it wil be a *big* update since Quicksilver is dead and there aren't many choices except LaunchBar and Butler.

[gbaby4ster1]

That sounds good. Do you know if we can expect it around to come out in this year?

[Zettt1981]

Unfortunately i don't know anything about the release! I hadn't my fingers on a beta or even an alpha. :(

[gbaby4ster1]

Okay thanks, I'll keep an eye out.

[gusphraba]

His accent drives me nuts. And I'm German.

[Zettt1981]

haha!

[TollpatschICH]

@gusphraba Me too and I'm also German^^.

[gpbakalov]

dude, we can hardly see anything. too small of a resolution

[jsruok]

If we discuss Butler and QS, I guess we ought to include LunchBar as well.

I've used QS for a quite a while but the latest system upgrade to OS X 10.5 brought forth such stability issues with QS that I needed to consider another app. Stability is something Nicholas Jitkoff mentions in his interview with lifehacker [just google: lifehacker quicksilver interview]. Stability was the key reason he encouraged to give LunchBar a try.

[Zettt1981]

Yes, but LaunchBar has some things i don't like about it. Like the GUI isn't customizable (which is much appreciated by such an application)

LaunchBar lacks in some great functions QS has, too. Like "capture Finder selection", which i use about 50% off all other functions for moving files around, tagging, setting labels.

[jsruok]

All good points. I'd love to run QS, but restarting it dozens of times a day is not my cup of tea..

[pistonfire182]

im soon going to install mac on my pc once ive built it and this thing looks interesting for its shortcuting to open things up but which is better butler or quick silver and also whats mac like for anyone with it?

[joshzweig]

You know that you can't install OS X on non-apple hardware (without hacking it), don't you?

Or do you intend to use X86?

[pistonfire182]

if im honist im not sure about anything at the moment i had no idea i need to have apple specific hardware?

[joshzweig]

Yeah. You can't install OS X (the operating system is really called OS X, prounounced Oh-Es-Ten, not Mac), on hardware that's not from apple. However, I beleive if you use an intel processor, you can do a little hacking and put OS X on it. Google "OS X86" and you should find a little help.

[pistonfire182]

talking about intel processors on the pc i am looking to build im hoping to buy a gigabyte motherboard that holds a intel core 2 duo 775 processor what does the hacking inviolve and is it illegal i would like to get the components ive looked at for this new pc because i want lightning performance for games and work

[joshzweig]

Yes, it is illegal. It involves messing around with some files in Leopard and whatnot. And I've heard the hack you need makes it run rather poorly.

[pistonfire182]

looks like im better off with apple software then either that or ill have to go with windows:( thanks for yer help mate its cleared some stuff up for me :)

[slashpot]

Mate, I'm a fairly new Mac convert, but I assure you, you'll love OSX (I thought it was pron. 'oh-es-ex').

Having built a system or two, I reccommend giving it a miss this time and getting an iMac. If u want to run both OS's it's by far the easiest way (use boot camp to run XP or Vi$ta).

Having said that, I've had my iMac for a month now and haven't even looked at boot camp yet. I probably will, but ONLY because my favourite app (ZBrush3) doesn't have a Mac version yet.

Good luck.

[fcommmisso]

quicksilver is much better

[Zettt1981]

Yeah, i've waited for that comment. Thanks for sharing your opinion with the rest of us.

[fcommmisso]

Butler has the same functionality, more plug ins and better "eye-candy" for users. No problem, I'm just giving you hard time because I learned the quicksilver way to do stuff and i'm skeptcal about switching now. But do you agree with my previous comment? or were you being a bit sarcastic?

[Zettt1981]

No i was a little bored because of your comment.

Erm...anyway! You got a question. So let me help to answer.

I agree that Butler and QS share a very little portion of functionality. Like launching apps, accessing Address Book and Safari bookmarks.

[Zettt1981]

But what you really can't do with Butler is accessing the filesystem like you can do within Finder. Alcor (the programmer of Quicksilver) wanted his software to be a substitute for Finder.

Peter (programmer of Butler) wanted to make a simple and fast Application launcher and "many tricks pony".

[Zettt1981]

There are many pro's and con's for these 2 apps but i think you hardly can compare both apps.

By this time (22.08.2007) i use QS instead of Butler, but i tend to think about how i can improve Butler with some AppleScripts...(my opinion is that a programmer can extend Butler just like he wants...)

[fcommmisso]

very true, i hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the info and your patience.