Quicksilver

When I first got Quicksilver I thought it was neat, but didn't totally understand the whole "our app will change your life" rhetoric around it. Well, today I'm here at my Atlantic desk (I've mostly been at home) using the office Mac and I'm punching away at some keys like an idiot wondering why the program isn't launching. Maybe I need to hit the key-combination harder, I think. And then it hits me -- no Quicksilver.

Also indispensible (and relevant to PC users) -- Pandora.

Comments

Amen. QS really does change your life.

Have you enabled web searches? By programming common searches into QS strings, you can trigger and type into a query; saves even more time.

Posted by torrentprime | May 3, 2007 4:06 PM

Indispensible, and possibly to be dispensed with depending on what comes of the internet radio royalty fees issue.

Posted by Mike | May 3, 2007 4:40 PM

No. False. Pandora sucks. Just plain sucks. To begin with, treating music as a whole composed exactly of the sum of its parts offends every last artistic sensibility I have. Music I like sounds too much like music I hate to use Pandora. E.g., there is plenty that Arctic Monkeys sounds like that I really love -- like a lot of protopunk -- but I think Arctic Monkeys are deathly boring and shitty. I have found the fruits of Last.fm much better. So unless Pandora has dramatically improved its product since I last used it eight months ago, I'm not interested.

Posted by jhupp | May 3, 2007 5:00 PM

Wait, am I allowed to use that word here? I feel like I've just dirtied the Atlantic waters. (Ha! I'm funny.)

Posted by jhupp | May 3, 2007 5:02 PM

At first I was super impressed with Pandora, but that's changed recently. What I wanted to do was create a single radio station that would play everything I liked, basically randomly, from Jens Lekman to Outkast. In practice, though, doing that creates a station that will play a whole bunch of songs that sound like Lekman, and then a whole bunch of songs that sound like Outkast. What I want is more randomness. I gather that's possible by setting up some elaborate system of several distinctive stations all blended with the QuickMix feature, but that's more complicated than I want to have to deal with. Better, I think, to just set my mp3 player to play my whole library randomly.

Posted by Paul | May 3, 2007 5:03 PM

yes, Pandora really is pretty great.

Posted by Matt OWU | May 3, 2007 9:31 PM

Quicksilver is not only the best Mac software program; it's in the run for best program period.

Posted by dj moonbat | May 3, 2007 11:27 PM

Pandora changed my life. Seriously. I've gotten more new music in the last six months than in the previous six years. I'll admit to being basically a musical shut-in, but that's pretty damn valuable to me. That said, the service clearly has flaws, many of which stem from the way it classifies music.

I'm playing with Last.fm now. It seems neat, but its streaming implementation is stuttering for me, which Pandora basically never does. This is sucky.

Posted by NBarnes | May 4, 2007 5:58 AM

jhupp, if you don't like a song, you just tell it - and it will never ever play that song again. So you can dump the Arctic Monkeys in a few clicks. Paul, QuickMix is easier than setting your alarm clock. what do you want from these people? They give you all this great music for free and you complain that they don't come round to your house to tie your shoes for you.

PS- all net radio is in deep what-jhupp-said. Go to www.savenetradio.org to help.

Posted by bloix | May 4, 2007 9:45 AM