Speedy Mac is an application I came across the other day using a service called prMac. Speedy Mac was crated by Altomac, a software company that has three applications available on their site currently. From reading the press release Altomac sent out, Speedy Mac is described as an application designed to speedup your workflow, it is claimed that it will open documents, applications, folders and websites. Speedy Mac is sold by Altomac for a price of $27 USD, so I download the free trial of Speedy Mac and gave it a try.

What is Speedy Mac? Well it’s a program that adds an icon to your menu bar which lists recent and favorite documents, folders, websites and applications. Clicking on an item in menu will open it, Speedy Mac’s preferences allow you to add and remove favorite items. Speedy Mac is also available as a floating strip. In addition to opening files, folders and websites Speedy Mac also has a list of Tasks, which are an assortment of pre-installed and user expandable AppleScripts and Automator workflows.

Speedy Mac overall seems to be something I would have liked to know about when I first switched to the Mac, the best way I can describe Speedy Mac is that it’s a simplified Quicksilver. What I mean by that is that Speedy Mac aims to make simple tasks simpler and quicker. Quicksilver can be a little confusing to a new Mac user, and Speedy Mac seems to simplify some of Quicksilver’s most used features.

The install process for Speedy Mac is somewhat strange, in order to take advantage of all of Speedy Mac’s features you must enable assistive devices in System Preferences, something that caught me off guard and made me question the purpose of enabling this feature. When this is enabled, Speedy Mac will “watch” the websites and files you’ve recently opened and display them as recent items. Like Quicksilver, Speedy Mac launches an icon on your dock, but unlike Quicksilver, there is no option in the Preferences to hide the dock icon.

The two images above are the application icon and a screenshot provided by Altomac, below I have some screenshots of my own. I’m not sure that Speedy Mac is worth $27 USD, a lower price and I’d be more receptive of it, if you’re willing to learn a more advanced system, a free alternative is Quicksilver, otherwise checkout the free trial of Speedy Mac. I would recommend trying Quicksilver if Speedy Mac sounds like your type of app.

More: Speedy Mac on Altomac or Press Release.
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