No matter what anyone tells you, the coolest and most useful freeware and donationware is on the Mac. If you use OS X, you cannot live another minute without Butler. It's primary job is to work as a user-configurable application launcher, but brother, how it's changed the way I use my Macs. This guy's giving away some patentable ideas here. Here's the short skinny on Butler. You use Butler's simple GUI to build No matter what anyone tells you, the coolest and most useful freeware and donationware is on the Mac. If you use OS X, you cannot live another minute without Butler. It’s primary job is to work as a user-configurable application launcher, but brother, how it’s changed the way I use my Macs. This guy’s giving away some patentable ideas here.Here’s the short skinny on Butler. You use Butler’s simple GUI to build either a flat or hierarchical list of commands and files that you launch or open frequently. This single tool allows any or all of four launch options for each command/file: Type a global (systemwide) hotkey composed of a meta key (command, option, control) and a single character; click a menu bar icon; select an item from a menu that pulls down from an icon; or type a hotkey followed by a textual abbreviation.Grouped commands are special because one hotkey, click or abbreviation can launch everything in that group. Butler also provides an easy way to launch otherwise unclickable apps including Java, Unix command line executables and non-Applescript scripts. Butler has preconfigured command sets for iTunes, System Preferences and Web searches, among others. Butler has been criticized for being too complicated, but I never found that to be true. Defaults make it safe to ignore anything you don’t understand. If all you want is to attach apps to hotkeys, Butler’s defaults will get you there with no distractions.You can also drag and drop your way to a new Butler shortcut. Drag any draggable file or application icon into Butler’s configurable hot corner. Butler’s config interface pops up instantly. You can drop the icon wherever you like, between existing menu items, in a particular positon on the menu bar, in a command group or wherever. Or you can just drop the thing and move it where you want it later or make it invisble so it only launches with a hot key and/or abbreviation.Butler fills in most of the gaps in the OS X user interface that I find most annoying. Lately, I’ve taken to using Butler groups to organize files and browser bookmarks for projects. There are other ways to do such things, and others prefer different approaches. But I find that Butler matches my way of working. Butler is donationware, which simply means that there’s a Paypal icon on Peter’s download site that feeds his tip jar. Support donationware. Awesome Mac and Unix apps aren’t easy to write and the Mac is immeasurably enriched by unpaid developers’ efforts. If we fail to voluntarily fund gifted developers, freeware projects like Butler will either become shareware or be abandoned. Neither option benefits the user or developer communities.——– Technology Industry