Learn AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting.
AppleScript is one of two technologies offered by OS X Mountain Lion that make it easy to automate repetitive actions on your Mac. AppleScript is “programming for the rest of us.” It can record and play back things that you do (if the application was written to allow the recording — Finder, for example, was), such as opening an application or clicking a button.
AppleScript is an incredibly natural and intuitive scripting language that helps you automate tasks in OS X. I'm quite fond of the syntax and how easy it is to learn and write, but there are definitely some areas that are harder to pick up than others.
An Xcode project (AppleScript or otherwise) has many more files and settings than the Script Editor (if that is where you are coming from), since you can build many different types of applications - note that you can also access various Cocoa classes and methods from a regular AppleScript in the Script Editor.
AppleScript can let you automate tedious tasks and add a slew of useful features. We offer 10 ways you can use it to make your life easier.
Why AppleScript? I'm a DJ and sometimes I'm on one end of the room with the mic and my computer is on the other end of the room, but I always have my phone on me, so I decided to create an OS X Wifi Volume Remote Control.As part of that, I had to dig around a little bit and learn some AppleScript.
AppleScript was originally conceived to be easy enough for non-professional programmers to read and write, with the history of Hypercard behind it. This is for those rare occasions when they needed to automate something that they do with multiple applications manually.
The level of AppleScript support in OS X and Mac apps has changed repeatedly over the years. AppleScript recording in the Finder, for example, was completely broken in OS X 10.0 and wasn’t fixed.