LaunchBar 4.3 makes our favorite launcher even better with Instant Open and Instant Send, along with oodles of other neat tweaks.

At today's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demoed the first feature-complete developer beta release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, showing off slick new features, including what appears to be the most significant overhaul of the Finder in some time

Google has released the first public beta version of Google Desktop for the Mac, an application that rapidly searches files on your computer, messages in your Gmail account, and Google's existing index of Web pages, all in a single interface

When he introduced Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on stage during last week's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, Steve Jobs was clear about how there were more "top secret" features coming in Leopard

LaunchBar 4.1 Adds Scripts and Dictionary Lookups -- Objective Development has released LaunchBar 4.1, the latest version of their highly useful (and for some of us, utterly essential) keyboard-based launching utility

LaunchBar 4 Lifts Off -- Objective Development has released LaunchBar 4, a major improvement on its highly regarded utility that opens files, bookmarks, and more using adaptively generated keyboard shortcuts (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS-671) The new version adds more index scanners (such as the capability to search iTunes and iPhoto libraries, Sherlock channels, etc.), search templates that let you search Web sites like Google and the Wikipedia directly from LaunchBar, the capability to browse database records (iTunes playlists and Address Book, for example) without leaving the LaunchBar interface, and a new multi-threaded indexing engine

We're always amused when collating software gift suggestions because of their breadth. The Mac may have less software available than Windows, but there are still far more interesting programs than anyone could ever hope to try

Beating a Path to Path Finder 3.2 -- The folks at Cocoatech have released version 3.2 of their flagship Finder replacement, Path Finder. With Path Finder, you can navigate your hard disks, see invisible items, sort in many ways (including "smart" sorting, which distinguishes applications, folders, and packages from normal files), make a new file or folder (without its jumping around the window!), list files into a text file, copy a pathname, accumulate files from many locations to be moved or copied to a single location (the "Drop Stack"), get extensive information about items on disk, and loads of other things you wish you could do from the Finder

As before, the second URL below each thread description points to the discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be much faster, though it doesn't yet use our preferred design. Intego Trojan Warning -- Readers discuss Intego's press release about the MP3Concept Trojan horse

LaunchBar 3.3 and 4.0b1 Released -- Objective Development last week released both LaunchBar 3.3, the latest version of their slick keyboard-based application launcher, and LaunchBar 4.0b1, a public beta of the next major version (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS-671)

Objective Development today released both LaunchBar 3.3, the latest version of their slick keyboard-based application launcher, and LaunchBar 4.0b1, a public beta of the next major version (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS 671)

LaunchBar 3.2.10 Improves Help -- Objective Development has released LaunchBar 3.2.10, a minor update to the extremely useful launcher utility (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS-671 for a full review)

Objective Development has released LaunchBar 3.2.10, a minor update to the extremely useful launcher utility (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" for a full review)

Way back in the dawn of computing, there was a word processor called WordStar. Many people who used it heavily claimed that its keyboard controls had become embedded in their fingertips, but I never quite understood what they meant

In the previous installment of this series on Mac OS X utilities, I looked at Mac OS X programs that restored common capabilities provided by third party utilities in Mac OS 9

In the first installment of this series on Mac OS X utilities, I looked at utilities that restored capabilities inherent to Mac OS 9 that we had all been accustomed to over the years

With the advent of Mac OS X 10.1, I'm using Mac OS X nearly all the time, but many of my long-standing work habits have become useless. That's because those habits rely on third-party utilities that haven't made the transition - and, one fears, may never do so