Automator premiered in Mac OS X Tiger, dubbed as “AppleScript for the rest of us.” Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but it hasn’t really seemed to have caught on for me. Maybe it was because some of the aspects of the UI were quirky, or maybe I just don’t do enough repetitive tasks on my computer.

Leopard only brings a few changes to Automator, which mostly acts the same as it did before. Now, one would pretty obviously guess that there’s now new Automator actions out of the box, which is nice, considering that Tiger’s Automator always seemed to leave certain actions out. Automator also now gives you access to variables, so you can easily drag in today’s date, or your short username, or a random number, for example, and these variables will automatically reflect the status when you run the action. And, like practically everything else in Leopard, you have an iLife media browser. (You know, I find it weird that practically all of Leopard has access to your iLife apps, but you STILL have to buy iLife separately!!!)

Probably the most notable new feature in Automator is the ability to record actions. When you click the new Record button in Automator, Automator is hidden and a floating window appears to let you know that Automator is recording. Then, you do your action, and when you’re done doing your action, you hit Stop. Automator creates a new action called Watch Me Do which lists your actions.

However, I repeatedly tried recording different actions, and found Automator to be VERY unreliable. Automator actually records your mouse movements, so when you play back these actions, it actually moves your mouse around. However, Automator doesn’t check to see if the mouse is doing the same thing to the same window, and almost always gets screwed up. (One action that I played back ended up selecting and deleting the text in a document, and then saving it, even though that’s NOT what I told it to do!) And sometimes, Automator completely ignored various actions that I did with my mouse. In short, this feature is horribly unreliable and I wouldn’t trust anything to it.

So Automator has a few new features, but other than for having access to some new actions, Leopard’s Automator is not going to be a reason for Automator-lovers to upgrade. And as for that Record button, Apple’s going to need to order some boxes of bug spray direct from the warehouse.

Feature Satisfaction Rating:

Be sure to check out the other articles in the Leopard Feature Presentation, occurring throughout the month of November here on Webmacster87.info.

Tags: actions, AppleScript, Automator, bugs, features, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, recording, review