AppleScript is an immensley powerful integration tool that has been built into Apple Macintosh systems for some time. With the advent of Mac OS X, AppleScript has become ever more useful.

Often referred to as "digital duct tape", AppleScript allows you to control scriptable applications. This means that you can combine a number of applications to create a uniform workflow or to automate oft performed tasks - a simple example would be to automatically resize pictures dropped into a folder on your desktop.

And when we said "control scriptable applications", we weren't telling the whole truth. Under Mac OS X we have something called UI scripting which gives us the ability to control most applicaitons which don't have AppleScript support. Effectively, UI scripting allows you to script the process of clicking on buttons, typing in text boxes etc.

To make things even more effective, AppleScript also gives us full access to Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings with the ability to "do shell script".

Digital duct tape indeed.

You can read more about AppleScript at Apple's dedicated web site http://www.apple.com/applescript/.