I was all set to be made happy by Jonathan Blum’s latest article, “Mac Automator a no-brainer for Small Biz.” The first paragraph indulged me. In it, Blum talks about the ridiculousness of the Mac vs. PC debate, and leads into his biggest draw to the Mac: Automator. Then, the second paragraph hit like a ship being slammed up on shore by a Tsunami, dashed to pieces on the rocks, all it’s crew members dead. Seriously.
Rather, for my small business money, the single most exciting productivity tool probably lies hidden deep inside some Macs: Automator. This piece of code, which Apple describes as a “personal automation assistant,” is part of the new Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (starting at $400) suite of office software.
*Spits out drink* What!? Did Blum somehow manage to completely avoid researching this product he so admires? Did he simply assume that because the last thing he installed was Office 2008, that Automator must have come with it? How on Earth, nay, the universe, does such a glaring error not at least make it past the editors?
It gets better. In what is set to be a glowing review, Blum prefaces the article with one of the biggest cons of the software: “Yes, you have to buy the whole Office software package to get Automator. No, the cheaper $150 version of Office for Mac won’t cut it.”
Appletell Hint of the Day: This isn’t a con because Automator isn’t part of Office!
I honestly cannot fathom how this slipped through the cracks and fell onto thestreet.com, but I’m here to correct it for the one or two of you who may not know. Automator is a great application that allows you to create workflows based on finding files with certain parameters and then applying actions to them. It is part of Mac OS X, and thus ships free with every Mac. You’d think Blum could have caught that.
Read [TheStreet.com]
Just an FYI, it appears thestreet.com has made edits to rectify the problem.