5. Robot with a Pipe: Mac’s Automator
Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. The circuits are so intimately interwoven that the anthill meets all the essential criteria of an organism.
—From Lives of a Cell (Lewis Thomas)
With the exception of the Actions included in Photoshop and Illustrator, Automator (which comes with Mac OS X) is the easiest-to-learn automation tool available today. Using its prewritten modules, you can quickly assemble an automated workflow—in fact, it’s a bit like playing with Tinker Toys or Lincoln Logs. But there will inevitably be occasions when the task you want to accomplish isn’t covered by any of the prewritten modules, so I’ll show you how to build your own as well, using free tools ...
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