[moonmonkey]

I enjoy using Automator and its much smarter now we can use variables (since Leopard) and prettier since Snow Leopard.

I still get the feeling its very rarely used by most people and I wonder what direction Apple are taking it in.

I would like to see in the next version:

The ability to use simple logic to make decisions (if, then, else etc.) to chain actions together
The ability to comment sections of actions
Much more extensive library of actions and support in Apple applications
Smarter multithreading (running an action should not lock up the app and multiple actions should be able to run concurrently).
Its still not as simple as it could be (although still an amazing usability achievement), perhaps some extensive qualitative usability testing to identify common problems would benefit it greatly.

Any other ideas?

[cgc]

Automator mostly suits my needs, however I've considered AppleScript as a way to do tasks Automator cannot do. Seems simple.

[Salty]

Every time I think, "Oh that's something automator could do!" I find out that Apple's apps don't support it. For example, maybe you want to export a whole folder of pages docs to .pdf files? That sounds like something the automator team would have thought up. Nope! How bout convert all these .psd files into icns files in preview? Nope! I think Apple should really realize one of the BIG things people wanna be able to use Automator for is switching file types. I may use .pages for my poetry, but if I wanna send a whole bunch to someone, I wanna be able to quickly convert them! It's one thing for Adobe apps, or Microsoft to ignore Automator, but it's bad when the third party Mac development community supports Apple's stuff better than Apple does.