We've just released the latest update to Alfred, making it (hopefully) even more helpful to you. The big changes have taken place in Alfred's iTunes integration so let's have a look at just how much you can now control your music experience only using the keyboard.

Within the Powerpack's iTunes Mini Player you now can:

• browse your music collection by Genre, Artist or Album, navigating as you would within iTunes itself
• play music from a Playlist (currently only basic functionality but we'll be working hard to make it better in future releases)
• play a Random Album - depending on how adventurous you're feeling, it can be either truly random or you can play a random album from a certain genre or by a certain artist
• reindex your music library by clicking on the lightning bolt - this is especially useful if you've recently changed or updated your music collection
• use updated shortcuts to get even quicker - the basis for these is always "Alt + Cmd + __". Use down arrow in that space to play/pause a currently playing song, left and right arrows to move to previous and next song, up arrow to play a random album. You can also rate your songs by using "Alt + Cmd + number from 1 to 5".

For a complete list of what's new, you can have a look at the change log.

Like what you're seeing? Our next few releases will focus on user experience improvement rather than completely new features. We'll polish and tidy up the recent features and tweak some of the older, established features. As ever, Alfred is in very active development and there's lots more to come, so hold tight.

It's been a while since I wrote my last post on the blog (Alfred is about to get a whole lot better) and I am over the moon with how much progress I've made with Alfred in the last 6-7 weeks.

Let's just look back to see what has changed on a technical level - under the hood really:

• Completely new architecture to allow for additional views of data, used in the file system navigation, iTunes view and Actions view. This new architecture was designed with plugins in mind so as Alfred matures, Powerpack users will be able to create and use their own plugins sitting on top of Alfred core
• Deeper integration into OS X with cocoa interfaces being built for AppleScript to interact with Finder and iTunes
• Enhanced performance and caching of system metadata with the biggest gains seen in Applications searching
• Full code review of TODO comments, leaving no stone unturned making a number of core level stability improvements

All this while creating the actual Powerpack features, which sit on top of these new architectural changes, and performing extensive Instruments analysis (I'm addicted) to ensure that there are no leaks and no hanging object references.

What does all this mean... well, depending on your Mac spec, Alfred is capable of using under 20Mb of memory when fully active and less than this when idle. It also means that there have been ZERO performance hits by adding in the Powerpack.

This is just the start!

Even though there are many positives, I have to admit that I am not fully happy with the iTunes mini player. Due to my mantra of 'release now, fix later', I released the iTunes mini player before I wanted to. Because of this, it is lacking playlist support, there are quirks when trying to play certain songs, it requires the songs to be OS X indexed, making it temperamental and there is no NAS support yet.

Fear not! This is my main focus for 0.7.1. I am rewriting the core of the iTunes player to use the iTunes library XML instead of the metadata. This not only means that your music will be found regardless of the state of your library, but will also add playlist support and browsing your music without having to search for it! Put it this way, iTunes mini player is going to rock! :)

What next?

I have a number of usability enhacements to make in the coming releases and then will be working on AppleScript plugins, full Address Book integration (viewing your contacts from within Alfred) and starting to work on the native plugin API so that you (and we) can add in amazing third party tools such as 1Password and Evernote.

Powerpack

If you haven't yet picked up the Powerpack, grab a copy now to get on the awesometrain and see the Powerpack as it develops! Remember that buying the Powerpack is what keeps the speed of development up - it means that I don't need to take on other contract work to buy dinner (and food for the kittens!)

Did I say "buy the Powerpack" yet? No, I don't think so... do it! :D

I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate how awesome you, our users, are! The community we have built with over 3000 Twitter followers and a growing Get Satisfaction forum (Our new forum is Alfred Forum) is truly amazing and has been extremely motivating.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Image credit: Michael Dales on Ember]

Following a solid week of testing and tweaking, the Powerpack was released for general availability on Monday. The feedback we received from you has been mindblowingly positive and you seem to be having as much fun using the new features as we are.

For those who missed the details of the 0.7 release, you can find out more on our redesigned website. There, you can still download the core Alfred app for free as well as buy the Powerpack.

We're listening: Alfred Forum

Until now, we mostly dealt with support questions either over Twitter, where answering a question in 140 characters was sometimes tricky, or by email.

To help you find answers to your questions when we've got our heads down developing new features, and to give us somewhere to answer your questions properly, we launched a Get Satisfaction forum. (Update: You'll find the new forum at http://alfredforum.com.)

There are already some great conversations going, like "What is your favourite custom search in Alfred?", so what are you waiting for? Join with your Twitter, Google or OpenID. It takes two seconds and you'll be in good company, we promise!

What's coming next

What? Did you really think we were going to kick back and relax now?

There are a few small bugs which we're tackling for 0.7.1, but mainly, we're looking at further feature improvements. In particular, iTunes will be much improved, with support for playlists and NAS drives (Network Attached Storage, in other words, hard drives on your network but not attached to your computer directly).

We're also starting to plan 3rd party integrations and the plugin architecture. In the future, this plugin architecture will enable you to write your own plugins for Alfred, extending it to do anything you like.

On that note, we're putting a call out for a developer who can create a plugin for Alfred to make Hannah a sandwich. ;)

Overall, our users have been brilliant over the recent weeks, providing us with tons of helpful feedback during pre-release and since general availability. A huge thank you to everyone who has helped us spread the word about Alfred - we couldn't do it without you!

Five weeks ago, we announced the Powerpack, a set of incredibly powerful features sitting on top of the Alfred core. We've been working intensively, putting every spare hour into the planning and development of these exciting features.

We're now just days away from releasing the pre-release of the Powerpack, ready for our eager users to help us test. But more details on that further down. First, I should introduce the new features, shouldn't I?

Powerpack features

In this first Powerpack release, you'll find three major features:

The File System Navigation provides a very easy way to browse files without using the mouse. Using only the keyboard, you'll be able to quickly skip to the files you need without opening Finder.

The Result Actions brings the ability to work with and perform actions on files anywhere on your computer with just a few simple keystrokes. Open, copy, move or email files with a quick key combo. We'll add even more actions later on.

The iTunes navigation, which is still in development, gives you control over your music collection with a quick search. Browse your songs, albums and artists plus rate songs, all within Alfred. In the future, you will also be able to browse your playlists, genres, radio and much more!

This is just the beginning

These are just a few of the planned Powerpack features on our road map. We already have plans to improve the three features above along with adding fast access to your Address book, 3rd party tools and web services integration, Clipboard History, improved AppleScript support and more.

Grab the Powerpack early

From Monday 23rd August, you'll be able to buy the Powerpack to use with the pre-release version of 0.7. (Want to help test the pre-release, I hear you say? Here's how you can get early access) A week later, or once we're satisfied of the stability of the release, we will make it general availability.

The Powerpack is great value, priced at only £12 until we get closer to 1.0. That's cheaper than two cinema tickets (hold the popcorn), than a Moleskine notebook with a cheap pen or than a pizza and a couple of beers.

Future updates marked 0.X and 1.X will be included under this license, so you'll have many more features to look forward to, as well as feeling good for supporting indie software development!

As previously mentioned, past donators will all receive a license key to thank them for supporting us when Alfred first launched.

New website

Accompanying these new features will be a whole new website look, which we hope you'll love as much as we do. Our Twitter background gives you a sneak preview of what the new site will look like.

Developing the Powerpack has been quite a ride so far. We're committed to creating the best productivity tool for Mac you'll ever use and in a few days, you'll be able to try it out for yourself.

See you on Monday!

Cheers,
Vero

In the past number of months, Alfred has been my side project and I have managed to squeeze it into every spare moment I have. This includes writing the software, replying to many support emails, being really active on Twitter and listening to quite a considerable amount of feedback and feature requests. Alfred has had tens of thousands of downloads and we estimate that we have thousands of 'regular' day to day users, which is amazing considering the software is still in beta and has grown entirely from your word of mouth.

I can tell you now that I have LOVED every moment of it to date - The sense of community has been overwhelming and extremely motivating. It has also been good to see that many of the popular feature requests are in our existing long term road map. In other words, you guys have really helped focus what is important.

The future of Alfred

As we approach 1.0 and the end of beta test period, the sense of community and love has made me think long and hard about the best way to make Alfred sustainable into the long term. It has also made me realise that I didn't want to just draw a line and take away what people use daily by making 1.0 a paid-only product.

I want to continue to grow the Alfred user base and its evangelists as much as possible, giving people the choice to support future development. I also want to start taking Alfred more seriously rather than it being just a side project. Therefore today, I am excited to tell you about the future of Alfred (I feel like I should be wearing a black polo neck shirt with a keynote presentation up on a big screen).

Announcing the Alfred Powerpack

The Powerpack will be a paid set of incredibly powerful new features sitting on top of the stable and robust core of Alfred.

These features will have the same simplicity, speed and usability of Alfred but have much deeper integration into OS X, allowing you to use Alfred for much more than just launching apps and finding files - ALL from quick keyboard actions.

By offering a paid add-on to Alfred, we can keep the core of Alfred FREE and give the choice to you, our wonderful users, to both support the development of Alfred and get WAY more awesomesauce!

Here is a sneak peek just a few Powerpack features I am currently working on:

• iTunes mini player / music navigator
• File system navigation and file operations
• Much better and faster access to Contacts
• Much more control over how Alfred looks
• An integrated AppleScript studio allowing for easy AppleScript add-ons

The list of features I have planned is actually really rather large and definitely exciting, so you will have to stay tuned. I would also like to make it very clear that the Powerpack will never bloat Alfred or get in the way of people who simply want to use Alfred as a launcher :)

What you can expect in the next few months

• The Powerpack is still in the works, I am hoping to start giving early access within 6 weeks.
• In the next release you will most likely see a Powerpack tab in the preferences but won't be able to use it yet.
• Ollie (@olliekav) has created a new website - it's almost ready and it's gooorgeous!
• Basically, continue to use and enjoy Alfred!

... Oh, and one more thing...

When the Powerpack is first made available, it will have a special pre-release price to thank you, the early adopters, for saying such great stuff about Alfred: http://twitter.com/alfredapp/favorites

Note: The people who have already donated to Alfred will be getting a license as soon as they are available.

Sign up for updates

Sign up to our newsletter on alfredapp.com or from the About tab of the Alfred preferences to get announcements and newsletters hot off the press! Also, follow @alfredapp to join our growing community :)

Cheers,
Andrew