Slashdot Mirror

Others have already pointed out how bizarre the original story is, but there seems to be no mention of AppleScript. If you're on OS X, you get the Unix command line plus scriptable applications through AppleScript with raw scripts or GUI-built actions through Automator. It's all built in to a clean installation of the OS. Amiga afficionados should be familiar with the concept via ARexx.

Many third party application support AppleScript, though as the environment seems to gain more and more inexperienced and/or lazy programmers, proper integration into the OS X framework environment seems to get worse and worse. That includes code from Apple. Given the extremely sharp decline in Apple's software quality over the last couple of years across all of their platforms, it's currently rather hard to recommend any of it. Probably needs to be filed under "a very good idea, destroyed by the incompetence of the modern software industry".

Well, you see, the examples you present are not problems, they are automation. There's nothing wrong with automation, part of developer time is spent doing automation. However, the reason most people here disagree with the "tools for programming" is that programming includes developing new stuff, new algorithms, new components which then can be automated, by you, or other people.

So yeah, maybe Wiggins should get a mac and learn about automator, the useful programming tools for the masses.

Lol, the problem with dumb people is, that they *by definition* don't know how *dumb* they are. Hence they are projecting it to others. Also known as that Dunning-Kruger effect. Its extreme case is, when the intelligence is so far above that person's head, that it is indistinguishable from nonsense to them.

You're is such a case.

And immediately jumping to “you’re a Mensa member" and specifically highlighting "I'm no retard" only makes that all the more clearer.

You do realize, of course, that having a serious grammatical error in your tirade utterly undermines your argument, right?

It is supposed to be "YOURS is such a case." I don't even know where "You're is" falls in the "grammatical errors" category; but it's a pretty bad one. (My sincere apologies, however, if English is not your first language).

The problem is that you mistake being a memorizing drone for actual intelligence.

Where did you get that impression? As I said before, I am an embedded (hardware/software) designer with over 30 years of (paid) experience. I also do application (ERP) programming, and a bit of web development (although I don't think I do web dev. well enough to get paid for it). I'm pretty sure that most of that calls for much more than rote memorization.

If you had any intelligence, you would very simply *not* be able to work with an Apple environment.

That's your opinion, and a pretty indefensible one, at that. Not to mention nauseatingly self-aggrandizing and elitist. (And everybody thinks that Apple fans are the elitist ones! Sheesh!)

Because it makes the very things one then needs, impossible. Instead it *forces* one to dumb down and use that retard mindset, to even be able to use its interfaces.

What is it that the "Apple Environment" (whatever that is!) makes "impossible"? Or is it simply the fact that, in your (not-so-humble) opinion, one must demonstrate their superior intellect at all times, by using, what? A CLI exclusively? Guess what? You can do that all day long on OS X, if you really think that makes you "superior". I'm really confused about what you think you can't do on OS X that you can do on another platform, if you possess the necessary skillset.

As they say: A poor craftsman blames his tools...

Make no mistake. I have extensively tested their products and services, before coming to this conclusion. They just don't support having a brain.

If all you want to do is launch Safari and cruise Facebook, sure. But what about those who spend their days in XCode? Are they "brainless" as well?

No file manager,

Funny. I seem to be able to manage terabytes worth of files with Finder. And if you must have a Windows Explorer-type multicolumn "source-target" view in a single window, there are third-party apps for that. Same with batch file-renaming. Other than that, Finder has some pretty sweet capabilities that no other "File Manager" has.

And then there's Spotlight...

no scripting possibilities at all

Boy, did you ever just step in it...

Nevermind the fact that, as a UNIX, it has the same "shell scripting" capabilities, like in this example, that come as part of the Bourne-Again SHell it runs as a CLI. In addition to that, there is also "Automator" and its bigger (and older) brother, AppleScript, which are quite unique, and (especially in the case of AppleScript) very powerful. And even cooler,

How is the GUI design is so dumb that users are confused about the simplest of tasks, and have to rely on information stumbled upon a web forum? How is that good, solid design? It means the use is *not* intuitive.

Look, we could all be driving cars with joysticks. But we stick to the steering wheel because it's a pretty good interface design. If you want to redesign something, then you ought to pull your very own personal internal Steve Jobs out of your ass. It had better be something better than a joystick.

That is stupid design. You are raising the user's cognitive load, instead of unloading it. That's why we have GUIs, because it's so much simpler than learning to concatenate Korn shell syntax, Bash syntax, and remember a shitload of esoteric commands (although all Unixheads do...). We unload the user's cognitive load, his/her working memory, etc. The user becomes more relaxed, productive...GUIs are not necessarily or always better, though, as we know from experience (see below GUIs X CLIs).

Mac OS X is a wonderful example where GUI can meet Unix-style CLI intelligently (Automator): http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/

You wanna see example of a simple and intelligent interface, done by people who thought long and hard about how to do these things? Try this demo of the Enso interface (follow on-screen instructions):

http://www.schuderer.net/ensoid/

Enso is now open source (it used to be Windows-only - BTW, I just learned this today), with the nice New BSD license.

http://code.google.com/p/enso/

Here's more brainfood on interfaces (GUIs X CLIs): http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/07/05/the-graphical-keyboard-user-interface/

http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/

Which is the UNIX approach to dong things, which has worked out very well for a long time.

So how do you pipe iApps together to perform more complex tasks?

AppleScript and Automator

Instead of being limited to only stdin, stdout, and stderr, they let you pipe objects between apps and even let you put the end result as text to use with stdin on a command line tool and back again.

There are plenty of examples for both languages on how to do most scripting/piping tasks with not just iApps but most OS X applications.

Script editor even lets you compile your apple scripts and automations down to applications, which gives you the same functionality as a shell script starting with #!/bin/bash and being chmod +x

Here is a nice screen shot of the GUI Automator editor showing the apps it can put together, some actions in the app it has selected, and the methodology for putting together each bit of the script you want to do, coincidentally using an iApp.

For anyone who's good at Excel formulas or macros, Automator will be a snap. Similarly, anyone used to shell scripting will find Apple script just as easy.

Put USB pen drive in Linux. Where is it? Ah, there. Filddle with something. Loose it. Where is it? Climb, climb, climb the folder hierarchy until you find /whatever/media. The down, down, down to you home. Divide Dolphin. (Note: there's at least one Linux distro who reconsidered exposing the whole file tree to ordinary users - Gobo Linux)
Try Windows. All folders are what MS decided. Whatever you want is in My Documents. But, is it? Search for a item. Retarded interface (in XP, a retarded dog, even).
Use a Mac. Clickity-click. Wife tested. Power-user tested.
And I'm tired of writing scripts. Automator tasks are so much better.

That's not what the original poster is asking. They want to rename the files using the time, date, and location metadata in the file itself, rather than ordering them sequentially.

No, you don't need to write a batch file. Automator is graphical. You drag the operations you want into the sequence you want them and click play and it runs.

http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/