Software: Mac Automator a No-Brainer for Small Biz

Want to know what might be the best reason to put a spiffy new Apple (AAPL Quote) Mac in your small business office? It's not the hip ads or the easy-on-the-hand keyboard that comes with the iMac, or the ridiculous debate about whether Apples or PCs running the Microsoft (MSFT Quote) Windows operating system are faster or easier to use.

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," has been enabled with powerful new integration features as part of the new Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (starting at $400) suite of office software.

Yes, you have to buy the whole Microsoft Office software package to get Automator to work as a small business would want it. And no, the cheaper $150 version of Office for Mac will not support Automator, which comes built in to the Apple OSX operating system. And yes, learning Automator takes time and real effort. But Automator has the potential to bring once-complex business process programming within reach of your operations.

Considering how much of what we do in our digital working lives is repetitive -- modifying documents, targeting PowerPoint presentations, updating spreadsheets -- Automator creates tantalizing options for the smaller business."

Automate Me

In theory, Automator is basic: It lets you sequence functions that go on inside a program with functions that go on outside a program. So, for example, not only can Automator cut and paste text within a Word document -- just like macros for those of a certain computer vintage -- but Automator also allows you to automatically put that text into other applications, say Excel or PowerPoint. It even allows you to store it as a media file or place it in your iPod or other portable device.

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