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I used to work tech support as well... For this case if I was on a user machine and needed to browse for apps I would open Finder.app and navigate to /Applications, this is what I did even with Launchpad existing because it's more convenient to navigate and search as it's just a standard window instead of some full screen thing. This would mean I could continue reading documentation alongside the finder window.

> sometimes with custom hackery to get different versions running in parallel and stuff.

Most users just aren't doing this, they open up their Mac, install a few applications and then just use it as intended; they don't need to customise things and wouldn't care to spend the time even if it benefited them. If they are capable of implementing these custom hacks and things they are likely intelligent enough to navigate via Finder and Spotlight for almost all use cases.

> If you can name the 20 apps you use the most often, you are the elite of the elite, the top 1% of 1% of computer users.

I don't think so, most people I know whether that's friends or colleagues (some technical, some not) use maybe 3–5 apps:

Browser Word Processer Spreadsheets Notes Task Management (reminders, asana, jira or something) Music Player (some just use the browser)

people don't have 20+ applications to remember day in day out.

Hell even as a power user I only really use:

Terminal Browser IDE Creative Tools (Logic, Final Cut, Compressor, etc.) Notes Reminders Music Player



It seems to me that your answer is really spelling out my point, illustrated with examples.

It says:

* "I'm a terminal user"

* "I am a programmer"

(Which means, "I am therefore more technical than 99.9% of people"

* "I use an OS carefully handcrafted to make the file manager an acceptable app browser"

(Because what you describe is impossible on any form of Windows or non-Apple Unix)

* "I use a sophisticated tool which can find things both by name and by description"

You are not arguing my point; you are in fact reinforcing it.




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