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Recently, I was at the Apple Store online, and I had a rather depressing realization:

Almost none of the software that Apple sells is AppleScriptable.

Now, first, we should define some things:

1. AppleScriptable: Possessing an AppleScript dictionary. If the only way to AppleScript an application is via UI Scripting, or "do shell script", the it's not AppleScriptable.


2. Software that Apple Sells: Software products that you can buy from the Apple Store's "Apple Software" section. Things that ship with the OS only count separately if you can buy them separately. So for instance, iChat would count, Mail would not. (I know this is an arbitrary designation, but it makes sense. I can't buy Mail outside of Mac OS X, but I can buy iChat outside of Mac OS X.)

So now, onto the rather depressing bits...

Now, some will say "It's unfair to exclude the OS". This has some merit. The OS is scriptable, has many dictionaries, and you can do a lot with it just using AppleScript, and you can buy it as a separate product. Okay, done. We'll count Mac OS X. We will even include Mac OS X Server, because root code aside, it's a separate product, and includes features not in Mac OS X. We'll also include FileMaker Pro, but just once.

So, on the Apple Software section of the Apple Online Store, there are 15 products that we will look at for this article. There are more entries, but I'm excluding differently licensed versions of a single product, (Family packs, 10 - user vs Unlimited), different versions of the same package based on owning earlier products, (upgrades vs full installs), items that don't run on the Mac OS, (QuickTime Player Pro for Windows) add-on components for for other products, (QuickTime MPEG 2 Playback, Garage Band Jam Pack), and things that aren't really software packages at all, (.Mac).

Now of those 14 products, there are seven scriptable products, 9 unscriptable products, and one that I'm not sure of. (iLife '04 is both scriptable, for iTunes/iDVD/iPhoto, and unscriptable, for iMovie and Garage Band). I don't know if Quicktime VR Authoring Suite is scriptable or not. So not even half of Apple's commercial software products are definitely scriptable. If you want to break it down more, none of the Pro applications are scriptable.

That's right. None of Apple's crown jewels support AppleScript. (An argument can be made for Filemaker, but that is lumped in with AppleWorks, Final Cut Express, Keynote and Logic Express. So since Apple doesn't consider it a Pro application, why should anyone else?) In fact, If you look at Apple's Software page, and go by groupings, the only categories that are mostly scriptable are Mac OS X and iLife.

Keynote? Not scriptable.
Final Cut Express? Nope.
Logic Express? Nope.

I'll go even further here. Can you remember the last time Apple shipped a brand new product that was scriptable from v1.0? I could be wrong, but I'll say iTunes. I don't believe iDVD 1 was scriptable. Let's look at the impact of that statement.

Apple has not made AppleScript a part of a new product since iTunes, which is one of the oldest applications Apple ships!

This is beyond appalling. It's...well, the only word that makes sense here is "asinine", which if we look at the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary definition:

\As"i*nine\, a. [L. asininus, fr. asinus ass. See Ass.] Of or belonging to, or having the qualities of, the ass, as stupidity and obstinacy. ``Asinine nature.'' --B. Jonson. ``Asinine feast.'' --Milton.

Seems to fit the attitude responsible for this.

It can't be that AppleScript has no inherent value for customers. AppleScript is an integral part of customer use of the Mac from small, single person scripters, such as yours truly, all the way to major companies that depend on AppleScript for theil livelyhood, such as The Boston Globe. There have been so many studies that show the advantages of system scripting languages, and of AppleScript in particular that the need for an easy to use, comprehensive system scripting language is a fact. No OS can be called "modern" without one.

It can't be that automation has no place in creative applications. Adobe, Quark, Stone Design, and Media 100 have proven this wrong. While you cannot automate creation, in any creative agency, regardless of final output media, there is an incredible amount of repetitive monkeywork that begs to be handed off to a script so that the humans can do the stuff that only humans can do. There's absolutely no sense in paying someone top dollar to resize every video by a factor of two.

It can't be that Apple sees no value in AppleScript. Considering the improvements in AppleScript in every OS release, and the amount of work this takes, if Apple didn't see a point in AppleScript, why bother?

I really can't tell you why. I can't even tell you for sure who's responsible. I can tell you who is not at fault: The Core AppleScript team. I'm pretty sure if they had the people, they'd just add the scripting implementations themselves. But honestly, i think the team that designs the UI for Final Cut Pro has more people than the entire AppleScript team. (I can't tell you for sure, but I'll bet a beer I'm right.) Sal and the team do the best they can to get the word out, but they can't force anyone to change their attitudes. And if I had to put a finger on the reason why Apple does the worst job of almost any mainline Mac software vendor in supporting AppleScript, I'd say it's an attitude issue.

(No really, once you get out of the OS, Apple does a simply crappy job of supporting AppleScript. Adobe, Microsoft, Quark, all do a FAR better job. It's really, really REALLY sad when MICROSOFT not only has better AppleScript support across its Mac product line than Apple, but in some cases, does a better job of it too.)

For some reason, there's a lot of people at Apple who don't see AppleScript as necessary. I won't say they all uniformly hate it, (although some encounters with the Pro application people make me think that in the gilded halls of Final Cut Pro, AppleScript is about as welcome as Charlton Heston at a PETA rally), but for whatever reason, they don't see the need for it. Maybe they don't WANT their users and customers doing things with their work that they didn't include. Okay, I can see that. Programmers can be just as egotistical as anyone else. But I cannot see a valid reason for not doing this. In fact, I'll state that it may be costing them hardware sales.

Here's an example:

I call it a Conversion Service. It's for people with masses of old home movies that want to convert them to DVD. This can be done manually, but it's a pain in the ass. Here's how it works.

1. Bring a box of tapes to the CS Store.


2. Pick out the templates you want to use for your tapes. You could use one template for all the disks, or a different one for each.


3. Decide on your output format. You can get more onto multilayer, but that will cost you more, and take longer, since making those is more complex, but hey, you want it, no problem.


4. Retail person takes the tapes and gives you a date to return. You return, and you have a nice set of DVDs of your old movies.

Of course, for you Far Side fans, you realize that step four is where a miracle happens. Only it's not a miracle, it's just automation.

The person takes the tapes into the production room. This has n A/D converters for various tape formats, x racks of Xserves, connected to the A/D converters, y DVD burners, and z DLT drives, (for the folks who just must have multilayer discs to be in with the kool kids. Hey, got money? Kinda stupid? I'm your best friend!).

Now, pay attention, because this gets cool, and fast. Put the tapes in as many drives as you can. Go to the master console, and click some boxes, fill in some data for customer type, template, output type, menu music, etc. Then hit go (if the output types are not loaded with blank media, worker gets fussed at about it.) Human intervention is now done for a while. The Xserves go to town, rewinding tapes, (that's right kids, you don't even have to do that.), and converting them to digital video. The video is then analyzed for file size. If it's too big for a single disk, it's broken into properly - sized chunks. Each bit of video is then inserted into the template. The other parts of the template are filled in with pertinent customer data. The projects are then rendered, and output to disk. If one project has an error, the worker is notified as to which machine, and what kind of error it is. (Since any possible automated response is taken care of, this is only for stuff that needs a human!). Now, we get burned to disk, and we're done, right? Heck no sparky, We got liners to print. That's right, once we're done, that color laser sets to printing up the nice inserts for the DVD cases. Hey, what good is a bunch of unidentifiable blank cases? Okay, now we're done, let's go ahead and get the human. What does the human do? Puts inserts in cases, puts disks in cases, puts disks and tapes in a nice box and sets them on a shelf.

That's it. If you can automate this, then you can have one person running racks of Xserves all busily chugging away and working. Unfortunately, you can't do any of this with Apple's software.

That's right.

Why?

Well, for one, Apple doesn't make any software that is scriptable and could run the A/D converters and dump this tape data to digital form. Now you can buy scriptable software that does this. My favorite is BTV Pro, from Ben Software. You want to know what this product costs? Well, an unlimited site license is $700, and a single copy is $40. That's right folks. A product that just destroys Final Cut Pro as a production tool is only $40 per copy, and for less than the cost of a single copy of Final Cut Pro, you can give it to your employees like prizes in Crackerjacks.

That, boys and girls, is sick.

Now, you can almost use iDVD for some of the last part, that is building the projects from a template, getting ready to burn. But iDVD, even in version 4, still lacks a "burn" command, (although I imagine you can work around that with some other tools.). However, if you want it output to DLT for multilayer DVDs, then you have to use DVD Studio Pro, and of course, that's not scriptable. Once again, we see how a supposedly "Pro" product gets its head handed to it in a production environment by a product that costs a tenth of what the pro product costs.

This is just silly. No, it's more than silly. It's asinine. It's costing Apple sales on products that will never exist because Apple is too shortsighted to enable their creation. It's costing Apple hardware sales to run these products that will never exist because of the unjustifiable resistance to automation in Apple software products.

It also makes Apple, and esp. Steve Jobs look stupid.

Steve can stand up there and talk about AppleScript, use AppleScript, have his minions push AppleScript all he wants. He can talk about "eating our own dogfood" until he's blue in the face. When it comes to AppleScript, all you have to do is look at the products that Apple really cares about to see what a flow of bovine excrement it all is. Impressions count, and the impression that people get from Apple on AppleScript is not good. It's not consistent. It's not "This is a critical technology that Apple supports 100%". Not even close. Instead it's, "Well, it's okay for other ISVs and some OS tricks, but if you think we're going to sully our crown jewels with it, you're nuts."

That is what is known in the industry as "bad".

It makes it very hard to get AppleScript into products, or to improve AppleScript support. "Why should we care, when Apple doesn't?" That's a perfectly legitimate stance. You don't lead by being behind, or by half-heartedly supporting something. There is only one way to lead. To be in front, and be fully committed. Until every single piece of software Apple sells is as scriptable as possible, then Apple is not doing anything close to eating its own dogfood.

Apple has been halfway supporting AppleScript for far too long now, and it's hurting not only the platform, but the people who pay for that platform, and they need to stop. This asinine attitude towards AppleScript is illogical, indefensible, and borders on dumb.

I've had a lot of adjectives for Apple, but "dumb" is not one I use often. I'd hate to have to change that.

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