The Best and Most Useful Mac Application I've Ever Used

This'll come as no surprise to the power Mac-heads out there. But I am finding more and better ways to use Quicksilver than ever before.

Sure, its a perfectly kickass application launcher but it does so much more that I've been able to clean out my dock to the barest of bare minimums.

Today I learned how to use the "Append to..." command to easily and quickly add tasks to my many and varied tasklists without even opening the documents. 43 Folders has a good rundown on how this is done and it took a little working but I've got it down now and it kicks ass.

I'm now able to quickly and easily add tasks by invoking Quicksilver, starting with a perid then type by task, tab to the next window and start typing Append to and the next window pops up, tab to that and start typing the text file you want to append to, hit execute and get back to whatever you were doing without any delay.

But, truth be told, I just learned about this neat feature on Zen Habits. Now I'm going to start implementing the other tips to make my workflow even slicker and more seamless.

If you like working efficiently and intuitively (and you're on a Mac) then definitely check out Quicksilver, it'll transform your computing. And I've barely even begun to get into all of what Quicksilver is capable of doing for me.

The Epitome of Frustration

You want to know what sucks serious balls? Trying to figure out how to recover my data from the dead hard drive I pulled out the other night. Disk Utility, the free and mostly useless program that came with the computer, is powerless.

I found a way to copy the hard disk using the Terminal and Unix but the goddamned info is so obtuse and annoying that it is more trouble than its worth. The language is incredibly aggravating to read and just not something I'm picking up despite numerous attempts to figure it out. I know there are Unix folks out there who could whip this crap out like nothing but that isn't me.

And I'm deeply annoyed at the lack of warning. OS X could very easily have notified me that the drive was having trouble but it doesn't unless you set it up yourself. So what's the point of having a S.M.A.R.T. enabled drive if you have to go and run Disk Utility to find out the health of your drive? That is just stupid and wrong. Apple (and other computer makers but I can't speak to them) should be more proactive, the system should alert users so that we aren't put in this incredibly difficult position.

Yes, I do back up but my last back up was a little while ago, before I'd done quite alot of new stuff. And all of that stuff is locked up in a 2.5 inch brick.

After much research and weighing of options, I opted to buy Disk Warrior 4.0 to get my shit back quickly. Of course that didn't work out quite as planned. The auto-download screwed up and the file won't unstuff. So I went through the email delivery of the software and have been waiting for a fucking hell of a lot more than a few minutes for the email now. Sure, the CD will be in the mail tomorrow but I don't want to wait, I just want my info, my apps, my music, my photos and my bookmarks back NOW. Right fucking now. Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW!

So I'm frustrated, tired and feel like half my life is temporarily lost. I think I'm going to go to bed and hope that tomorrow is a better day, computer-wise.

But I really do think Apple should be more proactive in warning of problems. Or, at least, the default should be warnings that can be turned off or down. That would have saved me an amazing amount of time and aggravation.