Chapter 1. Introducing AppleScript

AppleScript is a scripting language for automating your Mac. With AppleScript's help, many tasks that you would normally perform with the mouse and keyboard can be turned over to your Mac to deal with, freeing you up to get on with more interesting or important things.

What is AppleScript good for? AppleScript's greatest strength is its ability to communicate with hundreds, if not thousands, of Mac OS X applications. This makes it ideal for all kinds of application scripting tasks—anything from simple, one-off scripts that you run once to perform a particular task, up to large, complex workflows that will perform vital functions for months or even years to come. In fact, most of the power of AppleScript comes not from the language itself, but from the applications it talks to.