When you import a file, Devonthink creates a keyword index of the content, like a local Google. The index allows the software to search for hidden text within a range of different file types, including text, Adobe PDF, and HTML.
Devonthink can also display any locally indexed Web, Word, text or PDF file in its own application window.
Text can be instantly copied into a new document for editing, as Devonthink also includes basic text editing and outlining functions. This dual functionality of searching and editing has found Devonthink an audience among journalists, researchers, students and academics who are attracted to its unique combination of document collection, searching and editing.
Jobs also showed off Dashboard, which combines OS
Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Dashboard is Konfabulator, a $25 utility for displaying small, at-a-glance apps on a glass-like layer displaying OS X’s brightness and volume control icons. Konfabulator, the brainchild of the developers of Longtime Mac, Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke, overlays the screen with useful features and information in an attractive way.
In addition to “Widgets” for weather or stock prices, Konfabulator users have created their own stylish-looking webcam viewers, digital clocks and calculators, as well as windows for displaying unopened messages in Mail, iTunes and calendar items.
Konfabulator’s features, as well as its distinctive appearance, are almost exactly mirrored in Apple’s Control Panel. Some of the Dashboard widgets (Konfabulator uses the same name) are also fed data from built-in OS X applications, such as iTunes and iCal.
Objective Development’s $20 LaunchBar comes close to at least part of Tiger’s system-wide search functionality.
Simply press Command-Spacebar and start typing. Immediately, LaunchBar comes to the foreground and produces an organically growing (and shrinking) list of candidate files that match your search term or app or task abbreviations. Typing “goo,” for example, will open Google in a browser window.
LaunchBar makes it easy to navigate your hard drive and returns iTunes song lists, iPhoto albums, and contacts in the OS or play iTunes almost instantly.
