Alfred is a program that can definitely help you boost up your productivity. With its help, you can immediately make calculations, search documents on your Mac, take control of iTunes, manage your clipboard data, and so much more.
The utility is packed with easy-to-configure settings, so you don't need much computer experience in order to use this tool on your Mac. Still, if needed, you can find on the homepage of the developer plenty of useful instructions regarding the use of this program.
Alfred lives on your Menu Bar from where you can access its Preferences panel. The first thing you need to do is to define a hotkey for immediately revealing Alfred's main window. On this screen, you will be able to enter your commands. For example, you can write "13.5*0.24" and the utility will immediately make the calculation for you and give you access to accurate results. You can also use Alfred to immediately launch programs, open documents, search contacts in Mac's Address Book, etc.
Furthermore, if you're using the full version of the product, you can design your own workflows to complete tasks more efficiently and cut down repetitive manual assignments. The program lets you link various global hotkeys, tasks, and keywords.
The only thing you need to consider is that some of Alfred's features are already available on your Mac. The Spotlight utility has many of Alfred's capabilities.
Hence, I can't find a single bad thing to say about this tool. It works perfectly, provides you with many useful advantages, and comes with a fair price. Give it a try if you're looking for a way to boost up your productivity.
v1.2 [Apr 13, 2012]
This is a huge release with 2 new colour themes, Large type support and much more! See alfredapp.com for more details.
NEW FEATURES:
* 2 new themes from user theme competition - Dark and Smooth & Pistachio
* Large type support, use ⌘L to show the currently typed text or calculation in large type
* Drag results (files / images etc) out of Alfred into emails, graphics apps, Finder
* New 'Advanced' option for Default Result types, add any file type you like to the default results (still recommend open/find/[spacebar]prefix for file search)
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Overhaul to file searching algorithm allowing, now non-continuous word based matching
* Improvements to the 'in' keyword allowing for disjoint keyword matching
* More exact matching for 'text files' in the default results, no longer matches .ics files
* Improved decimal point configuration in the Calculator, now allowing forced decimal separator output for comma based locales
* Alfred.app no longer shows in results and typing 'alfred' now opens the preferences
* Add Xcode's new Applications location to the default search scope
* More flexibility on the Spell/Define keywords, allow matching on items not in the dictionary
* Less aggressive scientific notation rounding for the calculator for better 0 approximation errors
* More intelligent 'eject' keyword to prevent false errors when a drive is successfully ejected
* Code and performance improvements
* Fixed / improved text and help throughout the preferences
* Make MAS version startup / welcome sheet non resizable and close using Esc key
* Allow ⌘^Q and ⌘^W as hotkeys, previously blocked by over-protective code
* Update the core window renderer to fix a quirk behind the preference cog with transparent themes
* Remove deprecated code and make Alfred more future proofed for OS X
