Makes sense. Each of us our own habits and workflows. I try to keep my hands on the keyboard as much as possible on my Mac. Even on the iPad, I use the available keyboard shortcuts whenever they are available. 
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Thanks to this episode I’ve now downloaded, installed and configured Alfred 4 and am happily benefiting from its many features.
Is there a way to customize Alfred to search the Apple Support knowledge base?
Set up a custom web search with this URL:
https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&q={query}
And see also my posts here
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I am having trouble with LaunchBar - searching. I’m having trouble typing and searching it simply finds an app that starts with the latest letter I typed.
Haven’t used LaunchBar in a few years but what does Show Index look like?
Have you tried reindexing your drive or at least choosing Update Index?
Here is a video demonstrating the issue I’m having with LaunchBar. Please excuse the bad audio.
Is that just the way it works?
It should be a retype delay problem: in preference you can set after how long LB resets and “thinks” you’re typing a new search.
Try playing with the slider 
edit: probably it is useful to state that LaunchBar works in a way that does not allow to type more than one word, or to “pause” while typing as you can do with spotlight o Alfred (if I remember correctly). When I started using it I had similar problems and had to learn to type fasts the first relevant letters for the search.
I tried both LaunchBar and Alfred - uninstalled them both.
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Alfred is the first thing I install on a Mac. I have even installed it (with permission) to do 15 minutes of work on someone else’s computer. I just have to have the find/open/in search tools available to me. Spotlight results are too slow and fuzzy for my taste. I don’t have a lot of power ups, but I heavily use what I have installed to paste time stamps, generate passwords, paste lorum ipsum text, and do some light text expansion for frequently accessed codes and phrases. And I’m slowly expanding that list, but I’m careful not to load in a bunch of features I rarely use because the uncertainty about what’s possible slows down my thinking when I hit opt+space for some reason.
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Here is what I tried to do with each:
Alfred - I did a search for a specific file, it couldn’t find it and kept wanting to send me to Google to do a web search. I knew the file was there because of Spotlight.
LaunchBar - When trying to type a search query, it simply finds an app whose name starts with the most recent letter I typed. It drove me crazy! I posted a video showing it, earlier in this thread (excuse the bad audio). The end result was that I couldn’t get to the file I wanted.
It was a bad experience with both apps. Can you believe that I had my credit card ready to buy one of them? In the end, I guess I’m sticking with good old Spotlight.
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Did you type find or open before you typed the file name in Alfred? It uses Spotlight’s index, so the results should be the same.
What kind of file were you searching for?
Alfred’s Default Results include the most essential file types; Applications, System Preferences, Contacts, and any file types you’ve added.
When you need to expand your search scope beyond these core file types included in Alfred’s results, the File Search keywords are here to help you.
A video file that’s on my system.
See the article I linked to. By default Alfred limits file search results to Applications, System Preferences, and Contacts. If you’re searching for another file type you need to use a search keyword like “open” or “find”.
I hear you. Alfred default is to launch app. For file searches, you need to type a space or ‘ before typing the file are to tell Alfred you are looking for a file.
It’s unfortunate that Alfred does not perform file search as it’s default behavior but I guess that’s probably by design. I wonder how often are users /potential customers confused by this.
Once you have the habit of always hitting space before a file search, searching for files in Alfred become second nature and you will appreciate what other things it can do that Spotlight can’t.
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Do people not read manuals anymore?
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I suspect that most people haven’t read manuals for decades.
Few apps even come with decent manuals anymore.
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https://www.alfredapp.com/help/guides-and-tutorials/
https://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/index.php
In the days when apps were still applications, I would always give users the documentation after I installed new software. Later when they had a problem and called me, I would tear the plastic off their manual(s) and try to help them.
Steve Jobs once famously said “People don’t read anymore”.
At least when it comes to manuals, IMO, they never did.
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I must need clinical help. I really like reading user manuals and bemoan the fact that some developers have abandoned them. (I’ve been very glad for the Take Control of series because a lot of those books—like the one for LaunchBar—really do make up for the absence of a manual.) The Scrivener manual is a particularly nice example of a useful reference book.
I also like reading English grammar handbooks, style guides, reference books, and the like.
The only manuals I don’t love are man pages. They are generally so poorly written that I’m often more confused after reading one (xargs (1)?). I read a man page and then Google for examples so I can understand what I just read. It reminds me of the line from Beetlejuice: “This thing reads like stereo instructions.” (In fairness, they do make perfect sense once you already know precisely how the function you wanted to use operates.)
…but I digress.
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