Searching files
Actually, Alfred will allow you to search all files (if you start the search with an apostrophe: ‘P11D would find me all files with P11D in the name).
While I prefer Alfred, Spotlight itself as well as Finder are able to search the content of files :) See here for example: http://imgur.com/bEp9qoM
You will see that I explicitly searched for “Content contains …”, but that’s what the search does by default in Spotlight and Finder: searches by name or content!
As for finding a filename in command line, the “locate” utility is quite useful.
For finding content in command line, you can do “mdfind SIGTERM” and will have the same results as Finder. It’s also super quick:
$> time mdfind SIGTERM
[…]
0.50 real 0.03 user 0.01 sys
The thing is silver searcher is always looking inside the files, which sometimes can be good, while mdfind (and Finder and Spotlight) will use the Spotlight database, which is updated every time a file is written to disk (the content is indexed).
OS X has really good built-in tools, even if they aren’t as discoverable as they should be.
Date in menu bar
The default menu bar is definitely able to show the time and date, you just need to configure it to do so: System Preferences > Date & Time > “Clock” tab > “Show Date” & “Show the day of the week”. However, it doesn’t display the calendar when clicked, which is where your alternative is better ;-)
Other apps
I assume you’ve simply looked at equivalents of the Windows apps you like, but now, let me tell you about apps that are specific to OS X which are excellent.
Every time I install a new Mac, I make sure I have at least those four apps: Alfred (which you have), iStats Menu, f.lux, and the most important: Little Snitch.
iStats Menu is an amazing apps that allow you to monitor your computer from the menu bar. You can see CPU, Memory, Disk space, Network (most useful!), and provide a much better, more useful “battery” icon. It is super useful to see what is going on at a glance.
f.lux can be weird at first, but once you get used to it, you can’t go back. It basically changes the colour balance of your screen depending of the time of the day, making it easier on your eyes during night time. You can ask it to do it based on your location, so it knows the proper sunset/sunrise times!
Little Snitch is a network monitor which also acts as a powerful firewall. I would not connect to any WiFi other than mine until I have Little Snitch installed! It is very powerful and customisable, and worth absolutely every penny. I was at a “hacker” camp the other day, and it prevented a good 2 or 3 ssh attempts in a minute or two, at which point I decided to close SSH for the camp :)
