Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
I asked myself: If I could pick only one automation tool from this topic, which one would
it be? For me, that tool would be Keyboard Maestro (see
Control Your Mac with Keyboard
Maestro
),becauseit'ssoversatile.Itmaynotbethebestlauncherorthebestclipboardutility
or the best text-expansion tool, but it does a respectable job at all those tasks—in addition
to its crucial core features of creating macros and letting you assign keyboard shortcuts to
commands.
Don't get me wrong: I'd miss LaunchBar, TextExpander, Nisus Writer Pro macros, and
AppleScript every single day. So, for me, the right answer is to use a bunch of tools, each
for specific purposes. But as you're getting started in automation, learning one tool (or a few
tools) more deeply is better than learning many tools only slightly.
Finally, I should caution you not to buy automation apps just because they sound cool, or
because you hope to think up problems for them to solve. That's like going to the hardware
store and buying a tool without having anything you need to use it for. (Which, I admit, I'm
prone to do, but I don't recommend.) Start with the problems you want to solve, and then
find an app or technique that can solve them.
