Those who cant research, shouldnt write tech articles.

Posted on June 24th, 2008 by phiber811, under main.

Wow. Just…wow. TheStreet.com has an article written by a guy named Jonathan Blum. In this article he espouses the the many awesome abilities and capabilities of Automator. However, in paragraph two, he tells us point blank, that he didnt do his research, and that he has little idea what he’s talking about. And I quote,

“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.”

Hello? McFly? For the love of butter. Do some research. Let me make this abundantly clear. In October of 1993, apple released a scripting language called AppleScript that was the outgrowth of their previous product, HyperCard. Then, in April of 2005, Apple shipped Mac OS 10.4. Included with 10.4, was an application called Automator. Automator is designed to take common actions, that are pre-defined, and then let you build actions that can play out, in sequence. Its basically a simplified plug and play building block kit for AppleScript. Was it devised, written, developed, tested and released in any way by Microsoft? Nope. 100% Apple.

Please, Mr. Blum, learn to read. If you’d done even the most basic research, you’d have pulled up the “get info” window on the Automator app, and seen that its Copyright 2004-2007, Apple Computer. What does this mean? It means that Microsoft had nothing to do with it! Two seconds, and you’d have known this. Pay attention.

As a caveat though, I will offer this. The “full version” of office comes with some Automator actions. Now, to say that the Student and Home edition isnt a full version, given no automator, is kind of stupid, but still. To think that because Office came with automator actions, means Automator is an MS app, thats silly. Thats like saying that because my U2 edition iPod came with U2 songs, Bono made it for me. Uh, no.

When I put something up on MYM, I look shit up. I check stuff in order to make sure I’m not misstating something, and that I’m not wrong. And this is my small mac nerdery blog. Blum’s article got published on The Street, which has some decent readership. I guess that when it comes to technology writing, fact checking is optional these days.