I’ve often thought that Automator demos well to people who haven’t seen it. It looks like magic, it’s drag-and-drop simple, and it really does have possibilities. I saw this again today, showing off a standard “download every image from the current page in Safari and then process each picture” workflow.
I have a recurring problem with Automator. Beyond demos for tasks I don’t do very often, it seems as if every time I use it, I hit a brick wall. That’s it, I even call this the Automator Brick Wall.
Maybe the brick wall will be smashed by the version in Leopard. They certainly seem to be leveraging it (or its UI) — take a look at Podcast Producer and System Image Utility in Leopard Server. I’m hopeful Automator will finally save me from doing things over and over.