Arstechnica article on Automator and OS X scripting

Terpfen

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GREAT article by Ars. A pretty solid and long overdue introduction to the real power features of OS X. Automator, Services, and AppleScript are excellent tools that don’t really have a parallel or analogue in Windows.

I recently switched to Mac OS X as my primary desktop operating system after spending over a decade on Linux. Although Apple's operating system supplies practically all of the command line tools I know and love, I want to spend less time in a terminal window and start cultivating workflows that integrate better with the Mac user experience.

In my quest to tear the power of the command line out of the terminal, I have found that Apple's Automator tool is a powerful ally. Although it's not as mighty as the command line for improvisational automation, it's useful for defining stand-alone operations that you want to be able to repeat. I've used Automator over the past week to build simple applications that replace some of my personal shell scripts.

One of the most compelling features of Automator is support for building services—headless applications that are pervasively accessible throughout the operating system. Many services are context-sensitive and designed to process or operate on user input. A brief and unscientific poll of Mac enthusiasts revealed that few actually use the Services menu. Despite its relative obscurity among users, I've learned to appreciate its value.

Apple offers a number of its own services—like one that supports dictionary lookup on a selected word—that work with the platform's standard applications. Third-party developers can also create services to deploy with their applications. Automator makes it really easy for regular end users to create their own services with specialized behaviors.

As a Linux refugee, one of the features that makes Automator particularly compelling is that it allows me to integrate command-line operations, commands, and pipelines into my Automator workflows. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you two of the ways that I use shell scripting in Automator services in order to simplify my work.
 
No, sorry.

You could do exactly the same thing in the second page of this article with Powershell and a tool like AutoHotkey or even the macro tools of a keyboard to bind the action to keystrokes. If I get the chance I'll recreate this example in Powershell.
 
You could do exactly the same thing in the second page of this article with Powershell and a tool like AutoHotkey or even the macro tools of a keyboard to bind the action to keystrokes. If I get the chance I'll recreate this example in Powershell.

PowerShell and Automator were created to serve entirely different purposes.
 
PowerShell and Automator were created to serve entirely different purposes.

I'm not saying otherwise. You started out saying that there was no analog of these OS X tools in Windows. There are certainly tools that can create the equivalent functionally of this particular example in Windows and that was all I was trying to say.
 
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I'm not saying otherwise. You started out saying that there was no analog of these OS X tools in Windows.

And this is true. Windows doesn’t have an equivalent to Automator or Applescript. I’m inferring that you’re claiming Powershell = Applescript, but that’s not really the case. They accomplish different goals. Powershell is not an analog of Automator or Applescript for that reason.

Powershell is certainly a powerful tool, though.
 
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