There is no doubt that much of the beauty of Mac OS X lies in its simplicity: to install an app just drag it into a folder, move it to trash to uninstall it ,keep it in dock to quickly launch it.

Three simple processes that Windows users are still dreaming of.
But what happens when you have several applications on your Mac but do not want to keep all in the dock?
You need a  “launcher”, a small app that could be easily and that can afford to run any application in less than 2 seconds.

We therefore talk about  QuickSilver.

QuickSilver is a very lightweight program, which can be invoked via keyboard shortcut that allows us to enter even the first 3 letters of what we want, press Enter and launch it.
The first time you start QS it makes a quick scanning of our Mac to keep in memory the names of all that was found.
Therefore, we do an example, if I am in Safari and I need
 Skype, I invoke QS via CTRL + Space ( customizable shortcut), type “sky” and press Enter.
And here is Skype.

Simple and fast, it took 2 seconds. Perhaps it would have taken even more to movin’ to the dock.

If in our Mac we have more apps that begin with the same letters, we should not worry: QS is, infact, keeps its cache our frequent choices, and although I have both Firefox 3.0.8 Firefox 3.1b3, QuickSilver knows that it must run b3 version after typing “Fi.”
I think it’s simply amazing.

But most of all, it helps productivity: saving time, even a few seconds every day,  makes you feel its effects in the long run.

Another advice that I’m giving you is to use as a pair with QS Spotlight: QS is very quick in finding the apps to be launched, but Apple’s Spotlight takes 3-4 to find ALL in our Mac.
 Basically, I only use Spotlight to find folders and files.

In short, since I tried QuickSilver I cannot work without it anymore.