• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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When OSX came out there were three new features that Steve ranted on about. The first was Spotlight, which I use a lot and really like, the second was Dashboard, which a quick scan of the articles in the Mac section of my blog will clearly show I like a lot, and the final one was Automator, which I’ve really neglected. I never even bothered to play with it properly until today! But, better late than never and since I had a free hour and some backups I wanted to automate I figured I’d give the classic rsync shell script approach a miss this time and see what Automator could do for me.

Introduction

In case you’re not familiar with Automator the idea behind it is that you can write scripts to automate repetitive tasks or tasks that you do a lot but without typing or seeing a single line of code. For the full Apple hype have a look at the Automator page on the Apple Site.

So, the question is, does Automator live up to the hype? Well IMO it does. It did take me a few minutes to get into the swing of things and I have to say I’d probably never have figured it out without looking at the sample workflows but once I got into it it was dead easy. You just drag and drop in the actions you need in the position you need them and then tinker with the options on each action until you have what you need. Something I found really helpful was that you can create complex workflows by chaining together simple ones. I initially started by trying to write one killer workflow that would deal with all elements of my backup but I soon realise I would be much better off breaking the task up and then creating the killer workflow by adding together all my small workflows.

My Experimental Workflow

I wanted to back up to a SAMBA share that is not that big so I was only interested in backing up important stuff. To me important stuff meant:

1. My email
2. My FireFox bookmarks
3. My Work Documents

So, I started by creating a simple workflow to archive my Thunderbird folder to my desktop, move it to a folder on the share and then re-name it with the current date. Then I used that as a base for creating similar flows for my FireFox settings and my documents. Finally I tied all this together with a flow that did the following:

1. Connected to the samba share
2. Ran the three backup flows
3. Ejected the samba share

Within 30 minutes of starting to play with Automator for the first time I had the above done, tested and working. I can now very easily and very quickly backup my important stuff to my samba share.

Below are some screenshots of some of my workflows to give you an idea of what the interface is like.

(above) The workflow for backing up my email.
(below) The workflow that ties all my small workflows together

Not Perfect

However, there are a few things that annoyed me, firstly, Automator crashed once when it had just finished saving a workflow. I’m not accustomed to Apple programs crashing so that worried me a bit but it only happened once and since then I’ve been poking around with automator for hours with no more crashes. The other thing is that I can’t get the action for disconnecting from the share to work. I’m not sure if the problem is with Automator or with OS X’s samba. Mind you samba support on Tiger has been flaky to say the least so it doesn’t really surprise me that Automator has some issues with it. The important thing is that it can connect to the share which it does without problems.

Conclusions

Automator delivers on it’s promise of letting you do powerful things all within a simple drag and drop interface. The range of actions available is simply phenomenal ranging from simple sysadmin tasks like moving and copying files or running shell scripts to automatically burning backups to CD and automatically processing entire folders of images. Automator also integrates with just about every Apple program so you can automate more tasks than I could possibly describe here. To get some idea of how many actions there are have a look at the screenshot of the action browser pane below. Yes, it crashed on me once but I’m still very happy with it and will be using it a lot.

Tagged with: operating system • Automator • software • review • OS X • Apple

Well I was about half right with my predictions for yesterday’s Apple announcement. New Mac Mini’s are a reality but no super video iPod and, as I expected, no iTablet. What we did get instead was an iPod stereo. I have zero interest in the iPod stereo so I’m just going to talk about the new Mac Mini.

Read more

Tagged with: hardware • review • Mac • MacMini • Apple

So, Apple have something big to launch today and apparently what ever it is will be fun. That rules out an Intel XServe and probably also an Intel PowerMac. I’ve been waiting for years for mac to do a tablet computer and considering their recent touch-screen patents it’s not entirely impossible that we will finally get an iTablet but I wouldn’t bank on it, I may find that fun but it’s probably not Steve’s idea of fun.

So, what DO I think Steve has up his sleave? Well I think it must almost certainly be media related so bearing that in mind my money is either on the TiVo like new MacMini I had expected at MacWorld in January or a new iPod dedicated to video with a large display and touch-screen controls.

Mind you I’m usually wrong so time will tell!

Tagged with: media event • Apple

So yet another Macworld has come and gone so it’s inevitable that Mac-heads reflect on such things. Personally, my predictions were about 50% right and 50% wrong on the big stuff. The Intel iMacs were a complete shock to me, the Intel Notebooks, totally expected.

Well, we may as well start with the BIG stuff, and lets face it, the move to Intel CPUs is the biggest thing to happen to the Mac since OS X. I fully expected that there would be Intel based Macs unveiled this January. I really didn’t expect Apple to let a whole year pass between their announcement of Intel Macs and those macs being unleashed. Why was I so sure? Simple, sales would have started to plummet as we got nearer and nearer to the summer as more and more people started putting off getting a new Mac until the new ones were out.

Personally, I had expexted the iMac to be the last Mac to get the Intel treatment. Why? Because they were the most recently re-vamped and were not particularly unders-peced or anything like that. Since Intel PowerMacs have been available to developers since last summer I was quite sure that an Intel PowerMac would be the first Intel Mac to be released, WRONG! After that I had expected Intel Notebooks to be the next because lets face it, the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks were just not good enough to compete anymore. Another machine that I expected to get the Intel treatment very early on was the MacMini, again it’s a G4 and again it is rather under-powered compared to what’s out there in the PC market. I also expected to see it released with Front Row and a to be a full TiVo complete with TV Tuner. This could still come to pass in the next few months but nothing at Macworld about it. Basically, I’m shocked to see a G5 machine replaced with an Intel chip before all the remaining G4s are all replaced. What makes it worse is that I accepted delivery of a 20" G5 iMac yesterday!

There was nothing really major with regards to the iPod in Steve’s key note. We got the usual sales figures with the standard blurb about how great iTunes is doing but nothing really new or revolutionary on that front was revealed to us.

The other major part of the Keynote was apple software. Aperture looked very impressive as did the new and improved iPhoto with its PhotoCasts. I was also impressed by the themes in iMovie and the PodCast Studio in Garrage Band also looked good. However, what really intrigued me was the release of iWeb. There can be no doubt that the pages it produces look very flashy on the surface and that the interface seemed very good, however, I am reserving judgment on it till I see the source code that it generates. Perhaps Apple will have achieved a miracle and invented WYSIWYG web software that doesn’t suck but I’m not convinced yet!

Finally, going back to the Intel thing for a moment, I have to say I like their new adds about Apple "liberating" the Intel chip form the dull little boxes they used to be confined to. The slogan on their web page is also great IMO; "What’s an Intel chip doing in a Mac? …. A whole lot more than it’s ever done in a PC".

Tagged with: media event • review • Apple

Rumors are doing the rounds that the Intel based macs will have a different Boot Chime to the current G4/5 macs out there. One wonders why something this trivial and inconsequential would even warrant reporting but in the mac circles this is big news (if you don’t believe me google for it) and people seem to be genuinely emotive about the issue. This might lead you to believe that the mac startup chime is something special like Beethoven’s 5th or some such – nope, it just makes a load bong that scares the crap out of you if your volumes is up on the high side! Unless they make it do something genuinely annoying like play that stupid ‘Intel Inside’ jingle from the Intel adds I genuinely don’t give a shit what they do! People have said that Apple inspire fanaticism more than any other OS and when you read some of the comments on blogs and boards about something as trivial as the noise your mac makes about once a month when you need to reboot it you are left in no doubt about the existence of this fanaticism! What I’d like to know is HOW they inspire this crazy passion and loyalty, figure that out and you’re made for life!

Tagged with: Apple

So, I got my very shinny new PowerMac (dual 2.0Ghz G5 with 2GB RAM) today and I’m just blown away by just about everything about it (it’s FAST, the Apple Cinema Display ROCKS) but one thing has proved a real disappointment, the Mighty Mouse that came free with it.

I have been playing with the settings for ages and all I can’t get the right "button" to do ctrl+click (right click to non-mac users) like any PC mouse will do when plugged into a mac. I can get it to do "Button 2" which is ctrl+click sometimes but only sometimes! The side buttons are useless and the only thing I can see them doing is giving people RSI! "Just squeeze" is what Apple say, gimme a bloody vice and I might have a chance! I don’t have particularly big hands and I can tell you now I’d do myself an injury if I had to use that "button" a lot.

Thank heavens there is a Logitech Comfort Cordless Desktop winging it’s way towards me as I type!

Tagged with: mouse • hardware • review • Apple

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